! (MULTICHANNEL)

Audiovisual Installation (2010)
7 loudspeakers + sufficient subbass
steel and plexiglas tank
coloured fluid. pneumatic technology
6m x 6m x 10m-50m(height).

A vertical line of loudspeakers plays a downward sliding tone which is followed by a heavy subbass punch on the ground, very present in the installation, too low and therefore not audible in the video documentation.

The punch seems to trigger an'eruption' in a tank, which is filled with black liquid. The liquid erupts in the form of a round wave, which disintegrates and splashes in all directions. Over the duration of the exhibition a black speckled, dirty image thus forms on the initially clean, white floor.

What compromises do we make when we interpret the world by the ambiguous information we receive from our senses?
Because of the temporal and spatial conjunction of the two independent events, the ‘falling sound’ and the visual impact right after, we interpret the scene as cause and effect. Synaesthetic perception enables the physical experience of an intermodal illusion. The exploration of the phenomenology of the senses culminates in the investigation of illusions, this raises the issue of the fallibility of the senses. As we seek consistency in the perceived world we reduce it to a fragment, which appears coherent when related to our life experience. Technological advances offer us ever greater reason to distrust our senses, though.

Concept/Realisation: Anke Eckardt
Programming: Peter Votava
Pneumatic: Bastiaan Maris
Tank Construction: Zolle

EXHIBITIONS:
EMAF - EUROPEAN MEDIA ART FESTIVAL (Osnabrück, DE), April-May 2012
TODAYSART (The Hague, NL), Sept. 2010
CYNETART (Dresden, DE), Nov. 2010