OVERVIEW
TEMPORAL RESONANCES
Abstract
The interactive installation “Temporal Resonances,” specifically conceived and designed for the “CoMciência Call for Occupation in Art, Science and Technology,” addresses the destabilization and manipulation of machine time that permeates our communications via digital media. Regarding time, these communications can be synchronous or asynchronous. In “Temporal Resonances,” these categories are destabilized and the user is invited to explore a gray zone between them.
The installation features two niches, preferably located in the “Temporary Exhibition” room (niche 1) and in the “Call Area” (niche 2). These niches are identical in their elements: each consists of a TV set (positioned vertically) and a wooden module/structure that supports the TV, a surveillance camera, and a pendulum. This pendulum, located in front of the TV, can be manipulated by the user. For example: in niche 1, when standing in front of the TV and the pendulum, the user sees themselves on the TV image after 10 seconds, approaching the installation. Their image on the TV is therefore 10 seconds “delayed.” By moving the pendulum (which is initially stationary, as it is merely hanging), the user alters the behavior of their image. By accelerating the pendulum, the user accelerates the passage of time: the delay that was 10 seconds decreases proportionally (inversely) to the increase in the pendulum’s amplitude. By animating the pendulum, the user causes their image in the past to catch up with their present. In this struggle/game between the persistence of the present and the tireless return to the past, new elements emerge in the interaction: when moving in front of the screen, the user ends up erasing part of their own image. The region of the image where movement occurs (the part of the user’s body that moves combined with the moving pendulum) is temporarily erased, revealing an image behind it. This background image comes from the other niche (niche 2). The user is thus invited to explore the appearance of the other niche and the transitions between past and present. However, the image from the other niche (niche 2) carries a certain degree of uncertainty: is there someone in the other niche at that present moment of interaction? Or is it an image from the past? In fact, both cases are possible. When someone is interacting in one niche (niche 2, for example), their image is transmitted to the other (niche 1). If there is no one in niche 2, previously recorded images from other interactions in that niche are transmitted to niche 1.
Eventually, a user’s interaction in niche 1 may be presented back to themselves in niche 2 (and vice versa). The chances of this happening increase if a user leaves one niche and moves to the other within a 2-minute interval, as this is the time it takes for their interaction to be transmitted to the other niche (the 2-minute interval starts from the moment the user leaves niche 1). However, the presentation of recorded images of this user in niche 2 depends on the absence of users in niche 1 at the moment of their interaction with niche 2. Thus, depending on the combination of these factors (absence and presence in the niches), it is possible that a user never sees images of their own past interaction. Except for this 2-minute interval for presenting an interaction from one niche to the other, the other displays of recorded images are random: the user may see images recorded minutes, hours, or even days earlier.
In addition to images, the installation also has a sonic dimension: when approaching a niche (niche 1, for example), the user hears a low-frequency sound that alternately increases and decreases in volume. This sound comes from the other niche (niche 2). It is amplified by two speakers located on the vertical parts of the structure that suspends the pendulum. When the user in niche 1 moves the pendulum, it also produces a sound at the same frequency. The alternation in volume increase and decrease is dictated by the movement of the pendulum: the greater its height, the greater its volume. Thus, we have a moving sound (a “pan” movement between speakers) synchronized with the pendulum’s motion.
If the user in one niche (niche 1, for example) synchronizes the sound of their niche with the sound of the other niche, their image on the TV disappears completely, fully revealing the image of the other niche. By constructing this resonance between niches, the user temporarily eliminates the obstruction that prevented them from fully seeing the other niche. This resonance is not only between places (the two niches). It can also be between times: depending on the situation (for example: no one in niche 1 + someone in niche 2), the past (a recorded image/sound in niche 1) can resonate with the present (in niche 2). In this case, the past determines action in the present by provoking an attempt at sonic synchronization. Although this synchronization may seem difficult to achieve, if we consider that the period (that is, the time between oscillations / maximum height) in a real situation depends very little on the maximum height reached in each oscillation, synchronization can be easily achieved simply by releasing the pendulum from a height greater than its lowest point at the moment when the sound of the other niche reaches its highest volume.
Although there are several possible unfoldings arising from users’ actions, there are no correct ways to interact with the installation. Its nature is exploratory and its operation is open to multiple appropriations.
Concept
In times of spatial isolation and the proliferation of attempts to share time mediated by technological devices that construct a sense of “presence,” the work “Temporal Resonances” explores the “construction” and perception of time through technological means in moments of communication. This construction resonates with our cognitive apparatus: the illusion of continuity and temporal simultaneity depends on the active participation of our sensory organs and central nervous system. In Temporal Resonances, time as a construct is deconstructed, stretched, distorted to the point of destabilizing even our notion of “presence”: not only the presence of the other (with whom one communicates visually), but even one’s own presence. The manipulation of this “being present” (remembering that images may be delayed by up to 10 seconds) disrupts the symmetry between physical presence and presence “represented” in the image. Thus, continuities and asymmetries between past and present, between local and remote, synchronous and asynchronous, and between absence and presence construct a third “space”: the space of suspension and suspicion of these categories.
In “Temporal Resonances,” the user plays with the media structure of time, dialoguing with an interface that connects them to the other. However, the dialogue is less with the other user and more with “time.” The other here, strictly speaking, is constructed time itself. The other user is merely part of the mechanism of temporal subversion. Thus, in attempting to observe and communicate with the other user (or oneself), the user ends up observing and manipulating machine time.
The interface that constructs this machine/artificial time leads the user into a conflicted game between revealing and hiding, connecting and obstructing. The pendulum is an obstacle that blocks and hinders a broad view of the images on the TV. By moving it aside, swinging it laterally, the user alters what is being observed: their image in the past reaches the present. Therefore, in trying to remove the obstacle to observe themselves in the past, the user destroys the possibility of that observation. However, during this destruction, another possibility emerges: visually connecting with a user in the other niche. But this possibility only persists if the user erases or hides their own image.
This game makes explicit the ambivalent quality of any interface: every interface is an obstacle to the removal of obstacles, in Flusserian terms. In general, for every realized possibility of connection, countless other possibilities are obstructed, and so on. A connection mediated by an interface shapes and determines what can or cannot be communicated and what can or cannot be known about the other. In “Temporal Resonances,” this obstacle reaches its minimum when a kind of sympathy is achieved: when the two niches enter into resonance by having their pendulums oscillate synchronously.
Although the interface is deliberately built with elements familiar to users (the pendulum and the vertical video module, vaguely reminiscent of a smartphone), the deconstruction of the categories mentioned here (local/remote, past/present, synchronous/asynchronous, presence/absence) and the exposure of time as a construct tend to denaturalize the means through which we currently interact with others and perhaps shift the user’s gaze so as to question and appropriate digital communication media in a more conscious and even creative way.
