/both sides now\
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
[Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now, 1966]
HOW WE DO [NOT] LISTEN?
u:\sharing a reality\\
The way we perceive and comprehend reality as it unfolds around us is not necessarily truthful, but rather based on our formed understanding of it, a subjective reconstruction of facts and events in their becoming.
The new Digital Era brought a limitless offer of data extrapolated from the globe, which is translated in a endless possibility of choice available to our own interpretation. The more options are available, the more chances of composing the progression of stories become available to us. Yet this sensed freedom of grasping our own truth, of choosing our own version through filtering the options in the best respect of our believes, is only apparent, if not illusionary. In reality, we are restlessly struggling to even start processing this overwhelming amount of options. We thus, tend to rely on filtrating tools that are often self-built as well as influenced by external systems of selection based on preset and personalised criteria. As instance, established over-structures such as filter bubbles or designed algorithms, exemplify models that shape the reception of information and knowledge produced around us, thus contribute to impress our intimate reading of the outer happenings.
The way we construct our own perception of reality, the process of decision-making, choosing, filtering the evidences, deeply interrelates with the pattern that builds up own identity.
The fragmentation caused by these systems unfolds in a confusing identification of the self with multiple self-generated identities, and an alienating detachment from the surrounding grounds of the reality. By this stage, our sensibility, not confronted and exposed anymore to the reality of the facts, becomes anaesthetise and our partial individual understanding grows dangerously into the conception of the whole. Indeed, by being increasingly enclosed in our bubbles, with only ourselves daring to question what is entering, we are urged to nothing but perseverating this inner illusionary dialogue. At the same time, through the opening of customised filtrating tools present in our daily experience, our own perception grows into a reproduction and chase of likewise believes and ideas, which are simply strengthening the view of the world we already have, without although questioning its incompleteness. Thus, we then need to comprehend that we are able to only reach a partial understanding of the whole picture.
The looking for tangible evidences of this reproduced reality is constant and constituted within the system. The way fragments of stories are collected and achieved follows an established procedure of selection and recognition of what is true or it may be possible to be. Usually these evidences are based on visual and proved information, a scheme that is strongly supported by the governing socio, cultural and economical system we live in. However, if we dare to challenge this perception of reality, how could we try to understand it differently?
\\What happens if we could challenge this process of perception limiting out sensorial exposure to only audible evidences? Could the limitation to oral communication become a trigger to investigate deeper the perceived insight we have of the surrounding reality or does it still perpetuate/reproduce individual bias of judgment?
[What]
How do we (not) listen to what is happening around us? Are we actually listening?
Do we chose what to listen (or not to listen) to?
earphones\listening\\
Speculating directly over the medium of audible material, intended here as only source for knowledge construction, the installation aims to question the structured systems in place upon which reality is commonly perceived.
This system of earphones reproducing fragments of a polarised and alienating narrative, becomes a tangible reproduction of the external structure that is constantly influencing individuals’ identity and their version of truth, memories and believes.
As an enactment of a filter bubble, the echoing words pumped in our ears confuse the listeners disintegrating the whole comprehension of the story. I and you pronouns switch the subject and the object of the narration, a monologue becomes a dialogue between the system and the listener while loosing completely any sense of communication. Looking at things in different ways, deciding what to see in what we perceive, choosing our point of view based on our knowledge and precedents experiences, do we possibly know that we are understanding the same thing? Can we even communicate it to us or the Other?
Listening to sound, noises, voices activates other layers in how we redesign our own reality. The way we listen and receive what we hear can be indeed, still subjected to external systems. However, in this format, not only our own imagination for interpreting the available material is finally activated, yet, as we are requested to take consciously part into the decision making of selecting what to actually listen and not to listen to, our judgment towards certain previously perceived as apparent “objective facts”, can also be revised. By framing events, facts happening within a certain path of understanding; by rebuilding forking stories as cases through different evidences; by representing different truths through listening partially or associating different perspectives, we choose what we should believe.
SOUND SYSTEM
installation\\
[who]
I & You: Same and different persons,
who am I listening to?
I am I, talking with you. I am I, who is listening. You are you, the listener. You are you, to whom you are talking to. I am myself, you are the other.
u:system\start\I&you\\
As users exploring a system, choose your own narrative path.
Play from >\start and pick what to (not) listen to between the options, following the pre-designed structure.
\\ Who is choosing what?
Playing with the concept of multiple-self, identification and alienation, in the format of a podcast, a series of “tracks” guide the listener through choosing their next audio among the availability of choices according to their preference.
The use of different pronouns will though generate the confusion about who is in actual control of the decision-making process.
\\ How the influence of filtered bubbles is shaping our own way of understanding the world?
\\ Who is really building our own identity?
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TRACING IN BINARY
speculative work\\
filtering a REALITY
sharing a REALITY
[Where]
If we then consciously choose to focus on single details,
while the overall is still giving a different picture, and
create our own and personalised conceptual model of truth?
space of speculation//
The filtered reality disconnected us from perceiving the beyond our own bubble. By not being exposed anymore to the wholeness of how things unfolds around us, we lost awareness of the significance of it pursuing the illusion of “possessing the Truth”. Observing the constructed model as a metaphorical representation of how the current systems works, mechanisms can be unpacked and understood. It is then possible to speculate about alternatives - using the same binary language.
\\How would look like a structure that, instead of leading us towards isolation, is able to break up this filtering process and allows a different navigation in between the multiplicity of options and a pattern of processing them that lowers down this polarised position of us as individual.
SHARING A REALITY
script//
[When]
temporality//
Challenging the sensorial perception of reality by being together here and now. Sharing time with the Other is not necessarily linked to the physical presence within the same space and voiceversa. The stimulus generated by audible material can go beyond the notion of spatial perception: what creates the space of con-division is indeed the shared reality that two individual live simultaneously.
"Facts, not memory. That's how you investigate. I know. It's what I used to do. Look, memory can change the shape of a room. It can change the colour of a car and memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation. They're not a record. They're irrelevant if you have the facts."
[Memento, 2000]