The Apparent Silence of Tinguely’s Aquatic Machines, 2022 

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Projection in the 3D dome of the Galileo Galilei Planetarium, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Curated by Melina Berkenwald

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HD video 1920 × 1080, WAV audio incorporated

3:05min​

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Video credits
Performance by Emilia Álvarez
Camera recording by Julian Salinas
Video editing and sound by Emilia Álvarez
(Edition 1/4) 1st Visual Arts Acquisition Prize, Espacio Finnegans

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ABOUT

Performance performed in the empty pools located in the outer basement of the Galileo Galilei Planetarium in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The sound is extracted from the performance made in the Tinguely fountain in Basel Switzerland and is reproduced from the empty pools of the subsoil using them as new resonance boxes, generating a mutation of the sound as an organism that continues alive and in movement. Playing a Live set of Techno.

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THE APPARENT SILENCE OF TINGUELY´S AQUATIC MACHINES

Was a performance in which during the action I enter into the Fountain wearing a waterproof suit, a radio signal system incorporated inside the suit and a Hydrophone (microphone for water), which allows sending and playing live and raw audio signal with the sounds produced under the water of the Fountain, generated by the mechanisms in operation of the kinetic sculptures in the density of the water. The signal was received by wireless headphones that I had delivered to the audience outside the fountain, seeking to explore a new perception in how to perceive, experience and contemplate the apparent environment.

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Conceptually I seek to generate a visceral decentralised experience of a body, connected in a network that exceeds the physical field. Taking the environment and the public space as an animal-technological body, composed of organs that can be linked to each other through listening practice and sound. For that with the movements of my body and my translation inside the fountain I seek to enter into communication with the sculpture-machines in an attempt to listen to their internal voices, with the idea of becoming one more kinetic sculpture within the Fountain and the landscape and produce a continuous communication network inside and outside.

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In the technical aspect of this project, I took the Fountain as a water stage and each machine sculpture as a musical instrument. Each sculpture has a motor and a movement that produces a particular sound pattern under the water, as if one was the kick, another the drum, another the hit hat and so on. Giving a sonorous expression of the techno and noise genre with voices in its most abstract expression.

Emilia Álvarez (b.1985) Visual and multidisciplinary Argentinian artist.

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