Between Telemorphosis and Security Zones
Dublin. March 2020.
Between Telemorphosis and Security Zones is a collaborative installation developed with the painter Dominique Cowley. This installation attempts to be a strange, uncertain space situated among everyday places. It is the result of the spatial interactivity between screen paintings, QR codes bridging to other material spaces, and sonic presences. Here, every element is a way out and a link towards other realities.
This space in-between-places was born as a project under the frame of the MFA Art in the Contemporary World, run by the National School of Art and Design of Ireland. However, the opening of this multichannel installation coincided with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland. The virus also circumvented this system, and the project remained in a latent, incubational stage at the Return Gallery of the Goethe-Institut Irland in Dublin.
Between Telemorphosis and Security Zones attempts to be an environment where the audience log in and experience the whispers, winks, clicks, swipes, and reflections that occur within it. It addresses some of the issues of a hyper connected, screen-managed, contemporary life. The swipes of a tactile social sphere, along with a subject always in reflection, are some of the main features that prescribe the engaging of the audience in this work.
My collaboration to this project is resumed in two sonic pieces and a hybrid digital installation, bridged by QR codes available in the gallery space. The first of the audio files is a multi-channelled sound work, composed by a collage of personal recordings and open license sounds. It attempts to be an encapsulation of everyday spaces and new social practices arisen by digital technologies. Similarly to that of Les Immatériaux, this sonic ambience provides a split between sight and listening. The audio musings are an autonomous layer to the exhibition providing a counterpoint when taken in with the visual works. The sounds are a mixture of electronic signifiers of smart phone communication and some counterparts in the natural world. Tweets and birdsong, the hum of bees and the hum of electricity are playful but also evoke societies’ immersion in the digital and the subtle way that this technology has become part of the everyday. When in the space, the visual and ambient auditory aim to evoke the idea of a crowded mind, of this multisensorial clutter and a digital mediation of our existence.
The second sound work is an audio guide to the installation in the Return Gallery of the Goethe-Institut Irland. Its overlapping with the elements already found and listened to in the Return Gallery, contributes to the experience of the crowded mind, constantly connected and augmented through the digital. You can listen to the audio files here and here.
