Vacuole Robes

Anne-Marie Skriver Hansen, Vacuole Robes, white elastic stretch band pipes with zippers, 2 Bluetooth Create USB interfaces, 2 accelerometers, 10 linear spring-loaded potentiometers, 2007. (© Anne-Marie Skriver Hansen. Photo © Santanu Majumdar.)

Using physical interface experiments, I investigate the area between people's physical and social needs and boundaries. The intent is to give the viewer-participant a physicoaesthetic experience that may change her/his kinesthetic perception and physical interaction with other people. The Vacuole Robe interface is an attempt to provide a feeling of oneness. When two people interact through the sound medium of the Vacuole Robes, they create a soundscape to which both can contribute on a continuous basis. Each participant cannot see, but can only hear, the combined result of their common movements. Participants are separated from each other by cocoon-like robes that exhibit their bodily shapes and movements. By separating participants from the awareness of their looks while they interact with the work, I try to create an ambivalent feeling of being exhibited-—and at the same time safely enclosed and hidden—in the piece itself. The Vacuole Robes invoke forms of communication that have become superfluous in a time when the spoken and written word dominates.