Sensory environments

2014
Organic objects and sound and light installation

A space created to potentiate the presence of the people who inhabit it.

Researching the awareness of human beings I found out that being alert through the senses and only thinking when strictly necessary, enhances the state of consciousness and enables one to be in the present.

For this exercise, I put myself one rule, to not use written information. This, with the aim to foment emptiness in the spectator’s mind and preserve the sensations of surprise and astonishment during the experience.

The installation is composed of soundscape recordings, LEDs, plant fibers, dried seed coats, and insect exoskeletons, collected in varied places from Colombia. It consists of a soundproof dark room (5m x 4m approximately) where the objects hang with threads from the sealing and over the walls are some of the exoskeletons. Each seed coat and exoskeleton has a LED inside which projects its shadow that moves freely around the room. Simultaneously a soundscape is heard.  There was a rainy tropical forest at night, but now there are just the noises from the drops falling through the plants or over the bodies of water and from insects like mosquitoes, frogs and cicadas.

The possibility for the people to move the hanging objects and likewise the shadows with the simple act of breathing or moving around creating air currents gives the installation an interactive quality. It also favors recognition among the people who inhabit the place because of the lack of light, where the faces are sporadically illuminated.