BY SANDRINE ALBERT
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction .........................................................................................................P. 3
2. Interaction
.............................................................................................................P.
3
Understanding how interaction can be facilitated via the use of the
human senses..P.3
How can interaction become a less guided experience........................................P. 6
Have I succeeded in providing a freer / less restricted interaction in “rooms, murmurs and memories”?
........................................................................................................P.
6
3. Participants
..........................................................................................................P.6
Would the
initial concept of “rooms, murmurs and
memories” have engaged the participants
in a similar
way?...................................................................................P.7
4. Site
specificity ......................................................................................................P.7
What are the advantages and risks of using a site with a cultural, economic or spiritual history?.......................................................................................................................P. 7
Which are my motivations for using a specific site?..........................................P. 8
Is site-specificity the best way to trigger interaction with urban environments?.......P.8
5. Conclusion............................................................................................................P.8
6. Additional
information........................................................................................P.
9
1)
I provide an environment,
which creates relations between different elements (such as the participants,
the site, the installation, the event and myself). I aim to install a dialogue
between them. As I believe it creates a piece which is more “living” and transforming
and where the elements have an influence on each others. Part of this process
is based on questioning the consumer / passive society we live in and on
examining our relations with our physical environment.
2)
First of all, there are
three distinct elements to be analysed in the project: Interaction,
participants and site including the relations between them and how to manage
them in my next installation: “rooms, murmurs and memories”[1].
.
Installation art is one of
the art-forms, which has the potential to engage with the biggest number of
human senses. Usually visual and auditory senses although other senses have
also been used. In order to understand the different ways of using these senses
in my own work I have researched on the theories dealing with them as well as
the senses themselves and the manner in which they affect our understandings of
the world. I wish to analyse this in order to understand how interaction can be
facilitated via the use of the human senses, how it can become a less guided experience
and how I can apply this in my next piece
“rooms, murmurs and memories”.
There are at least nine
Senses*[2]
known to humans amongst which are gustation*[3],
thermoception*[4],
nociception*[5],
equilibrioception*[6],
proprioception*[7]
which I will not be using for the installation “rooms, murmurs and memories” and therefore not investigate here.
My installations have always stimulated the visual senses*[8]. In “rooms, murmurs and memories”, I am planning to minimise the stimulation of the Vision*[9] in favour of others. I will hang a number of bed sheets in one of the hotel’s room, the participants’ shadows will be cast on the bed sheets with the aid of a strong white light. I have taken the decision to keep the visual stimuli to shadows (moving shapes and colours) on white bed sheets in order to provide “space” for the participants’ other senses to be stimulated without causing a onerous feeling.
While walking in Park Güell,
designed by Gaudí, in
My initial project for the St Pancras Hotel was to feel the hotel room with the furniture one would generally assume to find in a hotel room: bed, wardrobe, set of drawers, lamps and chair. After careful consideration of the question of, whether or not, this amount of visual elements would leave space for the participants to appreciate what was on offer to their other senses, I have decide to reduce the visual inputs. As I believe that it is important to create a balance between the senses being stimulated. Because I aim to create a “whole environment” (by this I mean an environment where the participants’ mind is involved at different levels through their senses) I need to be careful to leave space for the participants to engage with the work of their own wills.
Audition*[10]
is a sense I am increasingly becoming interested in. I want to experiment
further with it in “rooms, murmurs and memories” as
I believe that it could provide the participants with greater freedom to
interpret and interact with. As hearing is a sense, which leaves more room for
interpretation than seeing does in our society (“I’ll believe it when I see
it!” – we are surrounded by visual stimulation, most of the technologies we use
are based on it: television, cinema, video games, computers... we rely on
vision to for most of the activities we accomplish).
I am planning to record a
series of stories from people from different backgrounds in different
languages, to reflect on the fact that hotels are places which home a very
varied range of people. This recordings will be played in the hotel room via a
stereo, which I will be using for the installation. Although I am using sound
inputs, and that one of my reasons is to promote different interpretations and
provoke the participants into engaging, reacting, analysing, acting or following whichever action they find
appropriate, I was concerned that using actual narrative elements might
diminish or even abolish the required effect. As it could tight down the
participants’ mind to a passive act of listening instead of giving it tools to
investigate. This is also why I decided to use different languages as some
participants will understand certain stories and other others, thus leaving
space for interpretation, intuition and imagination. I think that there are arguments for and
against this choice, one could also argue that a narrative story will engage
the participants as it will give them a more concrete / familiar source of data
to deal with.. As I could not come to a conclusion by myself, I have decided to
experiment with this and ask the actual participants ( I will question 10 to 15
persons) at the show what their thoughts on it are.
Olfaction*[11]
is a “new” sense I want to introduce in my work. When I say new, I mean that
although I am aware that smells have been present in my work previously, they
have never been there through my choice but solely as “residue” of the sites I
was using, which I appreciated as I thought it was an interesting way of
introducing the participants to the site and a good way to incorporated on of
the element of the space .I am not trying to take this aspect away by hiding .
As realistically, it is very difficult, probably even impossible, to use an
odour-free space as even in a sanitised space (which would be against the basis
of my work) I would be working in there, or the participants who would enter it
and would bring odours into the space. Keeping this fact, in mind I am
interested in introducing certain selected smells in certain selected areas,
while keep using the building’s smells. Smells are a difficult medium to use as
they are difficult to control: they can get easily mixed together. However, I
feel that smells also have unique proprieties, which interest me. In my
experience (and I found, via discussions that this to be a commonly shared experience), they have the possibility
to connect directly to certain parts of the brain and instantly bring back
specific memories. For the “rooms, murmurs and memories” project
I am interested in separating the smells in order to trigger specific
sensations*[12].As
my goal is to connect the participants to the space in order to enable them to
question it and triggering personal memories is a way of establishing
empathy. I will put different smells on
each bed sheet. This smells will be connected to some of the stories being
told. As I am in the process of recording the stories it is difficult at this
stage to give concrete examples of the smells, but I can however plan using an
hypothesis. Let’s imagine one of the sound piece is relaying a story, which
involves coffee, I will then pour some coffee (or an surrogate with equivalent
smell) on one of the bed sheets. One of the facts I need to take into account,
is the probable apparition of additional visual elements ,which might result
from this, as it might be difficult to find transparent ways of adding smells
to the bed sheets. The advantage of this, on the other hand, is be the
resulting “indication” of the potential presence of a smell on the bed sheets.
As the participants will, or at least might, by a process of mental connection,
realise that a smell is often attached to a stain, whether this would happen or
not, it would most certainly attract there attention and hopefully cause them
to investigate closer. I feel that this additional visual elements would be
minimal in comparison with the other elements involved (shadows, sounds,
smells, site, participants) and therefore feel that the advantages would
overcome the drawbacks of having too much visual input (which I explained
previously). I will, nevertheless, endeavour to keep the visible stain to a
minimum and try to find transparent alternatives whenever possible, if I feel
that they do not undermine their prime
function which is to “smell right”. (i.e.: I will use transparent substitute
only if I feel that they replicate faithfully the original required smells.)
The other problem that the introduction of smell without a visual element
(stain) onto the bed sheets poses is, whether or not the participants will
notice them but this is one of the implications of giving more space / freedom
of exploration: some of the elements might not be taken into accounts by all
the participants: my involvement in this collaboration is to provide the
elements while the participants part is to search them, engage with them and
analyse them.
Finally, Tactition*[13]
is the fourth sense I will, consciously, introduce in “rooms, murmurs and memories”. I am using this term, tactition, in context to the external world. The
participants will be able to walk through the installation, as the bed sheet
will form a structure, which they will have to go through, within the room and
therefore will have a degree of physical contact with them . Although this
sense will not have such an important role compared to the others as it is
present as a by-product (the bed sheets are there, originally, in order to
create shadows and support the smells not to be touched), I feel that it is
nevertheless necessary to acknowledge its presence and its role, as it will add
another physical connection between the piece and the participants.
Although I am interested in
understanding how the senses function and the different manners in which I can use this knowledge, my
goal is to provide the participants with different options for interaction
while remaining as minimally directing as possible. As I believe that our
society is often too directive, coercive and dominant, and that, as
individuals, we have less and less options to explore, decide and experiment.
Have I succeeded in providing a freer / less restricted (i.e.: with options
which can offer different roads to follow according to the participants choice)
interaction in “rooms, murmurs and memories”? In
the past, I have followed a scheme of: “here are the elements you can use and
this is how to use them”. This provided interaction but only within the
parameters that I had laid out and that the participants had to follow
(although they could always choose not to interact with the work). With “rooms,
murmurs and memories” I offer a variety
of choices, one can decide to get more involved with one sense than the other.
I believe that freedom of interaction cannot exist without loss of control.
This means that I need to accept that the installation can be transformed or
“destroyed” by this I mean that the original context would be lost beyond recognition.
3)
At this very late stage I feel that I should explain, in case it is not clear, that by participants, I mean each individual whom will enter the room, I choose to refer to them as participants, as opposed to audience or public, to reflect on the fact that the nature of my work is to involve them and create some interaction between them, the installation and the site. Thus making them actors as well as viewers.
As I explained before, I ask the
participants to act as well as consume or in other words interact with my work
in order to break the trend imposed by our society, where our power of decision
is eroded. I believe in empirical knowledge, and therefore find it important
for the participants to sense in order to assimilate their surroundings. In the
initial concept of “rooms, murmurs and memories” I envisaged to
invite the participants in a reconstituted hotel room where they would have
listened to fictional episodes of what could have happen in the hotel room. In
addition they would have had the option of opening drawers to view photographs
of this fictional scenes. Would this have engaged the participants in a similar
way? I believe not. By proposing them to involve themselves to a greater
extension than just watch and / or listen and by being able to give as well as
take, I believe that I give the participants, or at least enable them, to take
a step towards meditation on subjects such as: their status in their day to
day life (via the restriction and
freedom of action in my work), the use of their power of communication (via the
interaction between all the elements in my installations), a knowledge of their
cultural heritage and therefore the relativity of their own status/ life (via
the site-specificity of my projects).
4)
I choose to create installations in abandoned / disused buildings in order to place the participants in a critical context. Through my installations (and their relations to a specific site) I look for the creation of a relation between the participants and the site. When I invite the participants to the St Pancras Hotel, they do not only come to see my work they come to see my work , which is made in connection with the site. My installations can be based on the history of the site, on its past use, on its physical structure or a combination of the above. In the case of “rooms, murmurs and memories” , it is mostly based on its past use. Using a site with a cultural, economic or spiritual history has advantages but could also involve a percentage of risk.
Apart from the fact that these sites provide me with sources of inspiration, or a substructure from which to create, they also have the additional property of being part of the participants’ urban landscape and therefore are familiar to them, usually simply as a sight. This and the fact that they are not cold, white, conceited boxes (I am, of course, referring here to museums and galleries in general) are invaluable assets to bring a mixed audience in an event. It offers the dedicated art goers the chance to appreciate art in less neutral surroundings and entice the non-art goers or occasional art goers to attend an art event and experience it in a unconstrained manner. There is however a possible drawback in using such sites: The fact that the participants might come for the site itself could become a threat if this was their unique reason for coming. Although I welcome additional pretexts for attending, such as curiosity to enter a site one is not usually allowed in, search for knowledge about its history I want them to remain additional. But there is no control, which can be applied over this contingency, moreover there is also the eventuality that a person might come to the event solely out of interest for the site and find him / herself interested in the event itself.
But my motivations for using these sites are not only a matter of providing a “entertaining” location.. I am interested in creating a dialogue between the participants, my installations and the sites, where my installations can be seen as a conductive element for the participants to examine their relations with their physical environment. And vice-versa the use of “disused” buildings is a conducive element to interaction, as it is an object of familiar surrounding to most participants and is a more welcoming one, where the participants can relax and investigate. Is site-specificity the best way to trigger interaction with urban environments? If I placed the participants in a context where they did not connect with the building then they could still interact with elements of their urban environments. So what does site-specificity add to the equation? We (humans) learn about the external world (external to our bodies) through our senses, therefore we learn to trust their judgements (although we are aware of their weaknesses ( illusions, hallucinations and so on)). We are therefore more incline to believe and therefore connect with what we think of as real (what we can touch, see, smell, etc.). So when I place the participants into the St Pancras Hotel, it is not just an advertising gimmick but a real need for them to be able to engage with the issues I am committed to raise: enable people to reflect on their society.
The concept that these
“disused” sites are a reflection of the evolution of our cities’ landscape and
therefore of the societal-economical situation we live in.. When the
participants come to explore “rooms, murmurs and
memories” they will also be confronted
with the fact that this building of architectural significance (it is a listed
building and therefore official recognised as such) remains empty at most times
and will hopefully question this and the pertaining issues affiliated to it:
Loss of activities in the area (the hotel recreated employment, brought a
variety people to the area creating additional income for local businesses and
incoming of cultural mixes); tendencies to build new instead of the
preservation of the old; loss of availability of cultural heritage for the
public. Within the parameters of my art-form, site-specificity is good way of
introducing this issues as it puts the participants directly in contact with
them.
I choose these parameters, of a site-specific context and of using interaction, to create a platform, which provides space for the participants to explore, question and meditate on societal and economic issues. Although I have improved the degree of options of investigation in my installation “rooms, murmurs and memories” I am also aware of other avenues I need to explore in future installations. I will do this by post-analysing “rooms, murmurs and memories” using the answers from a questionnaire*[14] I will give out, experimenting with different concepts and techniques (for example, as I mention before the idea that the installation might need to be destroyed to provide less directed interaction and the future contexts new building will introduce.
5)
This series of
arguments leads me to the conclusion that in order to offer a less restricted
interaction between participants, my installation and a specific site
- in order to enable people to analyse their urban
environment - I need to provide an environment which has different options for
the participants to follow. Creating a variety of sensations, derived from the
exploration of my installation in connection with a site, is conductive
environment to a freer experience.
6)
Additional information
1.
List of questions
to the participants
1.
Did you feel that a narrative soundtrack favoured
your immersion into to the installation? Did it take over the other elements of
the installation or did you feel that it drew you in and facilitated your
interaction with the other elements by giving you a more concrete ground from
which to engage?
2. How did you experience the stimulation of your
senses? Which senses did you feel were
used?
3. How aware were you of the different options of
investigation you had? Do you think you identified all the senses which were
being stimulated or did do you feel you might have discovered more if you had
spent more time in the installation?
4. Did you feel that
you had room to discover things by yourself or that everything was
offered to you in an obvious way?
5. Did you feel that the stimulation of different
senses facilitated your connection to the building and its former use?