Hybrid Sensorium
HYBRID SENSORIUM explores the way we sense our body within the physical space and the sensory distortions caused both by mediating technology. The artwork is placed in immediate physical contact with the visitor, thus both become vulnerable to emotional contamination. A fabricated structure is superposed on the natural medium of the body, an artificial, permeable membrane that tries to condition our biological needs. The hybrid organism reacts in real time to the rhythm of your breathing and tries to adapt it to its needs, offering digital content in exchange for oxygen. It tests human availability to cede physicality to a constructed environment, while monitoring and archiving the user behaviour. By interrupting the breathing rhythm I wanted to trigger the perception of space as lived interval, suspended reality caused by a syncope in the objective reality. I developed Hybrid Sensorium around innerform concept – a space within, primary state, initial intention that imprints the entire history of a process. I treat form as inexistent in itself, as transient phase of a process, referring to space not as static, but as progression, dynamic content, lived space and time, originating in the interval, syncope, void. It can also be seen as a metaphor of the biological mechanisms of growth and decay inside of a seed, of the perpetually moving point within a process that is simultaneously the beginning and the end of it, scar tissue or material in a state of decay that triggers regeneration.
HYBRID SENSORIUM (2017)
by SAINT MACHINE
what this is: a sculpture trading digital content for your oxygen
what to do with it: insert your head completely into the orifice of the sculpture. A membrane is breathing with you inside, while the intimate sound of your breathing is amplified and propagated outside the installation, exposed publicly. The moment you decide to hold your breath, the membrane opens and reveals a sealed head carrying a unique cavity where senses are mixed. The 3d animation plays only during your voluntary apnea. Your first exhale makes the membrane close again and return to the rhythm of your breathing.
collaboration: Reniform aka Sergiu NEGULICI (animation), Mitoș MICLEUȘANU (sound design), Răzvan VASILACHE (interactivity programming), Radu MITITELU (electronics engineering), Sorin OLEXIUC & Alexandru-Florin VARTIC (behaviour archive&statistics programming)
foto: Roald Aaron
