Schizotopic
Schizophonic
2009, In-situ installation in public space
Headphones, door handles
Schizophonic
The passerby could find herself/himself at the thin line between the two spaces, the public and the domicile one, perceiving sounds from both dimensions as her/his ears will be in fact the interface of the two dividing surfaces. The passers-by access a prerecorded field recording, that consists of interior audio soundscapes (left headphone part) and open audio soundscapes from the street (right headphone part), both recorded simultaneously at a window level, by placing one microphone outside and one inside the house. Naturally, certain sounds from the exterior are also captured from the interior microphone and vice versa. The external sound is being processed and then it is re-directed to the headphone part that is set to reproduce the interior soundscape. While certain sounds are passing 'in one ear, out the other' the listener becomes aware of the space in the head - in between the ears sound traveling space- as if the dividing surface was located in the middle of the head – split of the head.
Schizotopic
A reversal of the inside (private) and the outside (public) space is introduced by placing window handles, accessible to the passers-by, on the exterior window surface. This creates a contradictory environment, where the streets are regarded as the private space, safeguarded from the interior of the domiciles. Action to be seen as an invitation to reconsider the definition of what could be a dividing barrier.
They'll have said who I am, and I'll have heard, without an ear I'll have heard, and I'll have said it, without a mouth I'll have said it, I'll have said it inside me, then in the same breath outside me, perhaps that's what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that's what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, I'm neither one side nor the other, I'm in the middle, I'm the partition, I've two surfaces and no thickness, perhaps that's what I feel, myself vibrating, I'm the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I don't belong to either.
Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable in Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable. New York: Grove, 1991, p383.