Elahe Rostami
Rotations
Rotations is a participatory sound-driven installation that responds to the anxieties and isolation caused by the abrupt shifts in the society. It investigates a new form of playful somatic interface that mediates virtual presence through interpersonal synchrony, rhythmic motions and audible creations. Distant participants are encouraged to situate their own bodies through the soundscape interface and in relation to one another.
The interactive experience explores the idea of telepresence through motion and collective auditory harmonization. It invites distant participants to listen and to create melodic pieces through the rotation and rhythmic motion of the pendulum swing-seats. The installation allows participants to harmonize, compose and co-create tones as they question their collective somatic experiences of time and space in relation to each other living as distanced bodies in hybrid digital worlds.
EPHEMERAL PULSES OF A FINITE SCROLL
Listen,
Will you echo my sound exactly?
How many intervals of infinity can measure my distance from you?
Listen,
Which direction are you swinging to?
I yearn to situate your body,
Where are you scrolling from?
Then sound.
Will you synchronize your pulses to the motion of my grief?
Sound,
and arrive,
in this deprived, throbbing, tellurian place.
Elahe Rostami
05 NOVEMBER – 15 DECEMBER 2020
Co-presented by Trinity Square Video and Dames Making Games and supported by EQ Bank
Remote Realities presents the 2020 Themed Commissions, which were produced over summer residencies. This year’s theme focuses on how one plays in isolation; how isolation shapes our preferences in play and what reactions to games are being cultivated in this current reality. This situation encourages and inspires us to invent or reinvent activities to provide entertainment while in isolation. We are interested in these newly founded feelings towards play and the cravings and rewards that come from these re/inventions.
In times of separation we find the ways we play games inverted, with digital games needing to recreate the physical spaces we crave to occupy, and analog games that thrive in physical spaces being moved into digital forms. The works created by this year’s Themed Commission residents explore alternative ways of connecting to ourselves, each other, and the world; from collaborative world-building experiments and a guided tour of expanded virtual realms, to forming distanced contact using telepresence, virtual reality and auditory immersion.
Installation : Rotations
This participatory sound-driven installation responds to the anxieties and isolation caused by the abrupt shifts in the society. It investigates a new form of playful somatic interface that mediates virtual presence through interpersonal synchrony, rhythmic motions and audible creations. Distant participants are encouraged to situate their own bodies through the soundscape interface and in relation to one another.
By incorporating reflective, plastic sheets and white ropes the sculptural and visual aesthetics of the swings act as materialized metaphors of time, place, and longing in a the digital infinity scroll. Infinity scrolling that is used most famously by popular social media in times of social isolation can create a feeling of disorientation and as people endlessly travel down a page that never ends.
The interactive experience explores the idea of telepresence through motion and collective auditory harmonization. It invites distant participants to listen and to create melodic pieces through the rotation and rhythmic motion of the pendulum swing-seats. The installation allows participants to harmonize, compose and co-create tones as they question their collective somatic experiences of time and space in relation to each other living as distanced bodies in hybrid digital worlds.
Each of the distanced pendulum swing units consists of two parts, a stationary sculptural reflector ring, and the rotatable pendulum swing seat which houses the Sound Synthesis Unit (SSU).
An Empirical Evaluation of sound output modes:
Tangible remote communication systems
Through research, the effectiveness of the system in terms of task completion time and task completion accuracy was tested.
• We compared two different sound output methods: headphone, and speakers.
• The results indicated higher speed of task completion time using the speaker output in comparison with headphone output.
