L’Invisible / 2009
Soundpiece created solely for Circus Hein at Frac Centre Orleans 2009
Parabola directional speaker, amp, MP3-player (6 commands in French and English) Dimensions variable, speaker: ø 76 cm; 30,5 cm high
‘As you are standing here in this room with art…standing under this speaker…watching all these ideas…don’t listen to what I am saying to you…’ - the visitor hears a female voice murmur and looks around, searching for the source. A loudspeaker on the ceiling permits only those within hearing distance to perceive it. It is, of course, too late to ignore it, as it has aroused curiosity about what it has to say. ‘I’m not going to suggest to you that…you will be totally comfortable clapping hands…couldn’t you imagine yourself doing it as you are standing here in this room with art…what would that be like? How would you feel then?’ The voice proposes to the listener various interactions in the room, involving the surrounding artworks and other visitors. Kristoffer Akselbo uses natural language processing (NLP) for the texts, which is supposed to make communication easier thanks to its simple sentence structure, and it is often used in advertising and by magicians and hypnotists. For Akselbo, the texts read are a means to establish a connection between the place, the visitor and the objects. Alluding to Alexander Calder’s kinetic works, Akselbo sees his installation as a kind of mobile in which the voice as a kinetic force causes the viewers to move. The listeners are left to decide whether to follow the instructions. After every sequence, the voice encourages them to do so: ‘…yes, you can do it.’
The project was supported by The Danish Art Council
