Frequency and Volume - Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (Barbican, London)

Shot Sunday 24 November 2009
Mixing desk and first 'sector' monitor.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is best known for creating large scale interactive installations that utilse new technologies such as surveillance equipment, robotics and computer networks. Through the merging of architecture, performance art and technology the artist explores issues of privacy and the control of information in society.

Whereas much new media work is designed for individual consumption, Lozano-Hemmer is interested in making art that is experienced collectively. The true scope and meaning of his work is revelaed only through audience intervention. he has said that 'without hte public, teh peices cannot unfold, they cannot exist; it would be like a play without actors'.

For the eighth Curve Art commission, Lozano-Hemmer transforms this vast space into an interactive immersive installation, Frequency and Volume. On entering the gallery, the work is activated as powerful lights cast each visitors's shadow onto the wall. Through the use of coimputerised tracking devices the visitor's position in the gallery determines the tuning and volume of 48 radios, directly generating the random combination of sounds limultaneiously emitted. The outline of the projected shadow determines the frequency tuned, while its size ocontrols the volume. Thus, the 90-metre-long continuous wall of The Curve becomes like an oversized frequency indicator as found on a radio, while visitors' bodies become antennae able to tune into the radio spectrum of London.

Walking through the space, visitors should be able to activate any radio frequency, including air traffic control, short waves, mobile phones, CB, radio, wireless telecommunication systems and radio navigation. However, owing to UK legislation, access is restricted to channels intended for use by the general public, including; FM, AM, short wave, television, DAB, eweather and amateur, as well as sounds from such sources as radio astronomy and low earth orbit satellite.

The work reveals the unseen but saturated space created by the radio signals that surround us and - more importantly - structure our lives, moveements and releations. We need only to think of mobile phone conversations, police radio transmissions and air traffic control to begin to consider the extent to which these signals shape our day to day existence. Similarly, the gallery is flooded with light, which - like microwave, infra-red, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays - is another kind of electromagnetic radiation, only with a higher frequency than that of radio signals. The vast arc of The Curve becomes like a shadow theatre, whereupon visitors are given licence to relate to each other in a playful and spontaneous way that would be inconceiveable in face-to-face interaction.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• radio
• frequency
• lozano-hemmer
• barbican
• london
• art
• installation
• surveillance
• London