video, audio piece
2009/10
15 wireless headphones
5 transmitters with a range of about 100 m
3 three wooden boxes attached to pillars and a bench
5 mp3-player one map per person
with the voices of 5 commuters
Sound Recordings, Editing -
Dina Boswank
Photography and Drawings -
Julia Boswank, Dina Boswank
Sound Assistant -
Florian Meyer
Installation Support -
Michael Bielicky, Julian Baumann
Furniture -
Markus Tauber
Link to audio piece on BR3 Hörspiel Mediathek -
https://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/sendungen/hoerspiel-und-medienkunst/artmix-galerie224.html
[Installation views, at a river underneath a highway crossing, in Karlsruhe-Entenfang, 2009 // „ArtMix.Hörspielfeatures“, Broadcast and Streaming on BR3, Bayrischer Rundfunk (Radio), 2009 // „V-Kunst. La vie en général“, video art festival and exhibition, Galerie Greulich, Frankfurt am Main, 2010]
Commuters were asked to observe and compare the immediate neighbors as well as using them as a trigger for own memories and behaviours. Therefore they got voice recorders. The car next to them, animals and own memories got into their spotlight and formed short fragments of curiousity, surprise, boredom or sadness.
These edited recordings were hearable in between the fragmented and confusing architecture of a highway crossing in Germany via a wireless headphone system. Five transmitters with different audio sources were hidden and one had to search for voices and noises with the help of a map.
As the radiowaves were widening the car cell for the observer, they did also start a communication with the architectural setting of this typical highway crossing and its effects. As we are permanently confronted with fussy noises, the mobile audio player has created a space of immunity and safety, some kind of a sound bubble, which is surrounding us in the urban space. These machines are alluringly alive. They are widening the borders of our self-centered everyday perceptions and are experimenting with our body as a junction of technological mediacy.
The architectural facts of highway bridges and underpathes are the cause and the effect of the thoughts being heard over the headphones. Here they get into communication with each other.
[This is an excerpt of a text within the foldable map and book documenting the derive through statements such as the work‘s title borrowed from the music group Kraftwerk. The book was printed and available in a self-published edition of 10. It still is available as PDF as per request to the artist.]
[Videostills of the documentary video with photographs made on a trip across the Gotthardt passway in-between the Swiss and Italian Alps, which is the route most tourists go for on their way to the Mediterranean beaches and therefore the most famous traffic jam spot of the Alps.]