landscape (ceremony of misunderstandings)
Group exhibition, performance
Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen (DK)
2020
From a clear state, the bare floor is filled with hundred clay dents in which upward-facing rabbit ears point in different directions, while activity unfolds between language, artificiality, technics, and functions of on and off.
The actor creates in collaboration with a synthetic voice which is emitted from a nearby computer, and initiate lines from a poem about a landscape which the actor then completes live. “Listening” to the actor’s addition, the machine then combines misunderstandings of the actor’s words with its own, generating a new entry to “read aloud”. The cycle repeats over and over for one hour and nine minutes. The speech synthesis slowly becomes unrecognisable as language, increasing in rhythm and level of cacophony, while the actor simultaneously attempts to create a landscape with the animal parts.
In Landscape (ceremony of misunderstandings), the machine misunderstands the actor like the actor misunderstands the animal. The misunderstandings are recorded to a file for data exchange (json), which can be read between hominid and machine, and this will be read and played out loud for the duration of the exhibition while the ears collapse on the floor.
Performance and sound installation at Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling 2020, group exhibition. Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen.
Photos: I DO ART Agency