Echidna

Echidna.

© 2009/2002 Tine Bech and Tom Frame, Photo © Nicolai Amter

Echidna is an interactive sound sculpture, made partly in collaboration with PhD researcher Tom Frame from the Surrey Space Centre. Echidna is like a fussy tumbled creature that has its own (electronic) voice. When it is touched, and the electromagnetic field around it is disturbed, sound emerges. The sculpture is made of tangled wire and sits on a plinth with electronics inside. It hums happily until touched, at which point it will squeak and react to one's presence. The work combines a circuit which directly measures electrostatic changes in the environment and a custom-designed phase-locked loop system, used to drive an audio speaker.

Tine Bech (Master of Fine Arts, Sculpture) is a visual artist and researcher who works with interactive installations and public art. She was born in Denmark and now lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Bech's work has been exhibited in Scandinavia, Europe, Russia, and the United States, in venues including Aarhus Kunstbygning (Centre for Contemporary Art, Denmark), the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art (United States), L Gallery (Moscow), Trøndelag Centre of Contemporary Arts (Norway), Bankside Gallery, and The Royal British Sculptors Gallery (United Kingdom). Bech was selected for the Cultural Leadership program Method-Artists Leading Through Their Practice (2009), and was recently awarded a PhD research grant at the Digital Culture Research Centre, The Pervasive Media Studio (University West England).

Echidna.

© 2009/2002 Tine Bech and Tom Frame, Photo © Nicolai Amter

Bech's work is intentionally accessible and, according to the artist herself, often "hums and reacts with a playful anthropomorphic life that is liable to take you by surprise." Bech focuses on the use of interactive electronics and location-tracking technology, urban spaces and environmental elements—including gravity, water, sound and light—in order to develop spaces where play and experiences of immersion take place. Bech's work investigates the use of interactive technology and how it can address the interplay between the digital and the physical, exploring the body moving through the environment in which it is immersed. The body is the membrane through which we must necessarily relate to the world. However, the borderline between the two is not sharply defined; body and world are entwined in a constant dialogue. This dialogue is an important part of Bech's work.