Exhibitions

Locations

Format: screening

A breathing dystopia or the sonification of social distancing Masks have been present in our species history since a long time ago. First as an aesthetic symbol that inflicts respect and fear, evolving into different motifs that announced peculiar messages. These conventions changed in the XVII century, when these artefacts started to be used with medical purposes. In our days, a mask is a charged symbol during the pandemic, referencing the different ways that an item of prophylaxis can be politicised in the face of an airborne pathogen. The mask distorts the voice and is an item of human synthesis, that is to say, it is a technological device that changes the expressions of the wearer. Here, we have connected four masks through electronic-analogue amplification systems by sending the outputs from a microphone situated inside each mask to a speaker system mounted outside of a different mask. One microphone to a mask linked in series, in a daisy chain. When a source of output is exposed to its own input, a feedback loop is created, which focuses and amplifies resonant signals. The voice, which comes out of the face of an individual who is wearing a mask in this particular technological inter-connexion, is the sound of the person in the matrix to their immediate right hand side. The amplified voice can be silenced, magnified, distorted and exaggerated into feedback. That is, the proximity of the sound can be made more or less, closer or further away, more or less intimate. The feedback analogy reverberates with our current circumstances, in which our survival is linked to our adjacency and the alteration of the contemporary human relationships: to stay separated, in order to prevail and avoid Covid-19 feedbacks. This event will be live-streamed from SoundsAbout on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/udkberlin_sounds