On the Edge
Århus Kunstbygning, International Digital Art Festival, Catalogue p. 30-34 by Marie Nipper, Annette Damgaard, Thorsten Sadowsky, 2006
Danish version
Tine Bech, Sam Woolf, Dave Lawrence: Mememe
The work Mememe is the fruit of collaboration between the Danish, London-based artist Tine Bech and the British artists Sam Woolf and Dave Lawrence. Their work is characterized by a predilection for interactivity and for installations that explore the relationship between work and viewer through a combination of sound and movement, robots and everyday materials, complex interactive technology and visual simplicity.
The installation Mememe is based on a Real Time Location System, RTLS, a tracking system used by, among others, the military, hospitals and department stores. Four sensors are placed so as to form a quadrangular space containing various pairs of shoes that the visitors can put on. The shoes are tagged with an advanced RFID chip that via the tracking system tells a main computer where the shoes are located. Each of the shoes communicates with a sensor that generates a sound, depending on where in the room the shoe is. The sounds are programmed to change according to how fast you walk and where you are. Different sounds are generated in different zones, and the installation encourages you to play with the volume and tempo of the sounds, using your own body as an instrument. Each pair of shoes has its own recognizable sound, and, as indicated by the title of the work, the shoes seem to be doing everything possible to attract the viewer’s attention: Me-me-me! Choose me-me-me! The shoes likewise react if they get too close to each other, or if you try to leave the room.
During the exhibition period, the sounds change in four phases, so that in the end the sounds for all the shoes will have changed. You will notice this extra sound dimension only if you see the installation several times in the course of the exhibition period. The sounds of the shoes change in step with their being worn in, so to speak.
Mememe encourages not just play, but also reflection on what technology is capable of doing, for better or worse. The work is primarily articulated as an everyday practice – that of putting on shoes and walking, running or dancing - but is based on a complex and advanced technology. Tracking technology can be useful for some purposes, while for others it seems to encroach on personal freedom and civil rights. The technology can thus be said to operate in a continuum between helpful tool and surveillance instrument, and Mememe seems to comment mainly on the latter, since the idea of invisible surveillance and unnoticable tracking is denied with every noisy step taken.
In the encounter with Mememe you are not a distant observer, but an active participant, and soundless, invisible surveillance is replaced by noisy play, freedom and movement. This constitutes a break with formalistic views of art, according to which the surroundings and the context are not especially important to the aesthetic and subjective appreciation of art. In the case of Mememe, it is precisely the performative relationship between work, viewer and space that seems to be the all-important starting point for the creation of meaning. It establishes a visual and auditive dialogue between work and audience, a dance between technology, art and man. Mememe proposes a phenomenological appreciation of art that activates the whole body and all the senses - where the artwork becomes something more than just a visual and intellectual experience.
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