INVISIBLE x FREQUENCIES x IDENTITIES
Are invisible frequencies part of your identity; your essence? Come decide for yourself as your digital data is rendered through a complex array of antennas and signal processors into the analog world of light and sound, generating cymatic patterns and soundscapes that mimic the complexity of the social ecosystems that these invisible frequencies secretly inhabit.
As the era of Wi-Fi and 5G marches on, we (the squishy analog, ecological beings that use these technologies) are increasingly alienated from the mechanisms and machinations that drive the tech we use on a daily basis. In every pocket and street corner there lies a transmission vector into the omnipresent “cloud”, forever pinging out invisible data packets that encode little parts of ourselves, ready to be received and interpreted by any device that cares to listen.
The widespread adoption of these devices has created a perceptual obstruction of the devices themselves; we have simply forgotten that the digital data encoded by these objects is as much a part of our identities as the clothes we wear, or media we consume. Who you are on social media informs others of who you are as much as your actions in the “real” world, and similarly, your conception of your own online persona shapes your in-person persona as much as the reverse is true.
While the clothes you wear, or the music you listen to, or the people you hang out with are tangible, real objects that you can experience with many of your senses, the data that makes up your digital self is intangible, relegated to the invisible packets of data that stream out of your cellphone into the cloudy ether, never to be seen or heard by your naked eyes and ears.
Enter INVISIBLE x FREQUENCY x IDENTITIES; a cymatic installation that renders these invisible data packets containing your digital identity into the “real” analog world using light and sound. In the center of the Art Bar lies a sculpture that contains a bowl of water attached to a speaker and a radio antenna. A spotlight shines onto the water and projects the waves onto a screen. The radio antenna inside the sculpture picks up the digital data radiating out from your cell phone and transforms it into audible frequencies to be played by the speaker. As the speaker vibrates, it generates interference patterns in the water that once represented your digital identity. The more people there are surrounding the sculpture, the more complex a pattern will be generated, symbolizing the complexity of social ecosystems that our digital identities create.
By rendering the invisible parts of your digital identity, we hope to deepen the understanding of how these signals actually exist, and to form a material connection between the abstract data and the originators of that data; to personify and reify the invisible waves emanating from your pocket into something tangible and beautiful that you can touch, see, and hear.
Location
Former Art Bar
1873 Granville St, Halifax, NS B3J 3L6, Canada
Wheelchair accessible