Third-year student Aisen Carolina Chacin invited to exhibit her work “Liquid Culture” at mfru KIBLIX 2015

2015/10/09

Third-year student Aisen Carolina Chacin was invited to exhibit her work “Liquid Culture” at mfru KIBLIX 2015, held October 7-9, 2015 in Maribor, Slovenia.

The MFRU & KIBLIX Festival in Maribor, Slovenia was held from October 79Th, 2015. In this Festival I presented the Work Liquid Culture in Collaboration with Robertina Sebjanic (link: Http://Mfrukiblix.Si/?P=1853andolang = en ). Liquid Culture is an experimental visual-sound performance that explores the depths of sound perception and water acoustics. This submersive visual-sound performance is the beginning of a series of interfaces that bring the experiencer into a liquid environment, to become part of the ebb and flow of sonic and subsonic carrier waves.

This sonic experience submerges listeners into an auditive aquatic journey that starts from the depths of the Drava River to the cochlear fluid of each listener, directly with a vial of its own water. Listeners are invited to wear HydroBuds, custom earbud vials that contain water from the Drava filtering the sound. These vessels act as immediate physical filters, liquid audio mediators, which become the last transition of sound before perception.

I made two types of low-fi devices that augment the mechanism of the vestibular system. One consisted of acrylic bulbs filled with water and beads. When the user turns their head, they can feel and hear the beads rolling towards the new point of gravity. This simple device that only relies on mechanics has the potential to serve as a sensory substitution device for people who have lost their sense of balance. Although this is a mere postulation, it would be worth testing this interaction. The second model that we created consisted of small tubes, typically used for PCR DNA extraction. This model is more functional than the bulbs because the rolling beads in water are heard and felt directly inside the ear canal.

During our performance we gave the devices to the public in order to experience a representation of how their vestibular system functions. Once the performance begun we played a video about the vestibular system, explaining how these devices functioned. For the remainder of the performance we played videos of underwater shots. We also created sound compositions of underwater recordings with hydrophones, and made beats with low frequency oscillations from 4090 Hz generated with a simple Pure Data patch. After the performance we were featured in Slovenian national television explaining our project, although I’m not sure if there is a possibility to find information about this publication online.