Audio Matrix
Place of Living
is an audio-visual system which starts up with the interaction between 16 sources of laser light, a computer in communication with the system of optical sensors and X visitors whose movement activates the sound and establishes one – from the limitless range of possible and always new, temporary transformations/variations of the ‘place’. Thus created ambience is not a space or a place with determinable dimensions and coordinates: it is, before all, a transferable system or principle that functions like a virus, adjusting with equal efficiency to any space-carrier and transforming each of them simultaneously into a static metaphor of globalized, networked information society, but also into a playground at and inside which it can be ‘exercised’.
Although it changes its shape, the network always consists of light. Laser beams become carriers of absolute visibility: not only do they generate light, but (with the help of optical
sensors) they can also ‘see’, reporting each presence and body movement to the core of the system. As in the foucaultian panopticon, the system of “permanent registration” enables the establishment of supervision, and the computer becomes the embodiment of the “central tower” that can see everything and that responds using appropriate measures. In the ambience of Tanja Perišić, registration of a body results with sound, i.e. sounds which function like warnings or reminders of its position in the strictly regulated network.
Or, according to the artist: “I used only recognizable ‘figurative’ sound artefacts recorded at various places and no-places that are used by the system to keep subjects functioning regularly but also to maintain its own function.”
Body movement results in continuous crashing with the system that exercises
discipline using alarms, telephones, cash desks in shopping centres, windows operating system, planes, automobiles, police sirens and emergency vehicles. The subject can, therefore, be kept/ keep itself in the network in different ways. It can try to hide/ be hidden avoiding registration. And maybe it can simply loosen up/ get loosen up a bit and accept the game. Everything will be all right.
The project of Tanja Perišić Place of Living is realized within the Uradisam.ART.LAB (DIY.ART.LAB) platform, which was started by KONTEJNER in 2006 as a long term research, educational and production project. So far it has produced six art works (Ines Krasić, Ivan Nikolić-Lesh, Martina Mezak, Silvio Vujičić, Ivan Fijolić, Ivana Franke, Marijan Crtalić) which were presented within Device_art 2.006 project in Zagreb, Beograd and San Francisco, in the organization of KONTEJNER. The aim of
Uradisam.ART.LAB project is the encouragement of artistic creation based on creative use of technologies and scientific achievements, by establishing cooperation between artists and various experts in production of new art projects. It is actually research artistic practice on the intersection of science and technology which requires creative cooperation between artists and various science – technology experts. This project aims to establish cooperation between Croatian artists and experts interested in cooperation, to connect them according to their creative affinities, educate them in areas and skills that are not a part of their acquired knowledge.