after z axis (the order of things), 2019

The interactive sound installation consists of 7 human-sized scanning stations. The stations are designed so that upon entering, the sensors activate the single-board computers to (pretend to) scan, analyze, describe, and quantify the audience members, and present these predictive and analytic statements via the speakers (for example, statements such as ‘you may also like…’ or ‘you have exhibited signs of…’ or ‘your data has indicated…’). In actuality, the computers are running a program that has been programmed to, once the sensors are triggered, play a random combination of descriptions, narratives, predictions, suggestions that have been formulated and recorded beforehand and stored in a database. In doing so, the scanning stations highlight the logic of human-as-data, while emphasizing the limits of informatics through the presentation of incoherent and nonsensical fake information. The modular, standing, human-sized structures were conceived to emphasizes a history of measuring bodies. Its close affinity to the human form highlights a rhetoric of quantification and measurement, leading to the potential of sequences and order. 

This project was generously funded by a Canada Council for the Arts Concept to Realization Project Grant for Media Artists.

documentation - Vancouver 2019