endless_song#1
(a ritual machine)

How would a group form and interact that communicates wordlessly, organizing itself into a collective presence through tapping gestures and triggering the individual voices of a choir?
The endles_song#1 is composed from 7 independent voices. One audio-visual loop serves as the background voice that is always present. Six further voices will be instantiated by the audience through their smartphones. Each QR code represents one voice of the endless_song#1.
By asking participants to activate the choir through their own mobile phones, the work reaches directly into their personal, handheld space, an intimate zone normally reserved for private communication. The simple act of tapping their screens becomes a bodily gesture that links their device, their touch, and their voice-triggering role within a collective presence.
There is also a digital only version below. Play the movie and scan the QR codes to perfom the work.
Background
Social interactions which are nowadays very often mediated by technical infrastructures: touch screens, algorithms, and networked systems. This mediation will shape a future society in which human behavior, language (both as an interface to machines and to other humans), and mostly opaque algorithms together form the social fabric. We will soon live, and perhaps already do so, in a world where not only language, but also software, determines and legitimizes meaning and value.

From : Affective Computing, by Rosalind W. Picard



Digital only version. TRY IT OUT YOURSELF!