110 bits per second
Interactive Multimedia Installation
2015

In an exterior social arena of signs, signifiers and limitless reference, individuality is determined by statistics and is seemingly ruled by capital in all its various forms: fashion, politics, career, class, likes, dislikes, aspirations, whatever brand of toothpaste you happen to be into at the moment; ad damn near infinitum. This public identity is performative, a construct, an open artwork, a perpetual production, a character played to perfection by the actor beneath.

While reductive, a common analogy is to liken the brain to a computer, the ‘processing power’ of which is conceived of as being 110 bits of information per second. Within one’s interior space a constructed external identity is relinquished, absorbed absolutely when all “110 bits per second” are engaged in an act of curiosity and play: an end and purpose in itself.

Who are you in that present moment, when not the identity you have built of yourself?
Who is the actor, the dancer dancing the dance?



Concerned with notions of play, practice and flow, 110 bits per second is a 6-channel interactive multimedia installation, structured so as that the viewer’s participation has an essential function in how the work is formed. Without interaction the installation is silent. Six touch-sensitive controllers affect the track volume and opacity of six respective screens, requiring up to six operators to reveal the video loops in full. The installation sets up a situation in which a number of possibilities can take place and the audience work together to bring about the artwork, highlighting for the viewer their own importance and responsibility in constructing and bringing meaning to a given experience.

_________________________________

exhibited:
110 bits per second @ TACTIC exhibition space, Cork (IE) 2015
©David Mathúna
2024