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download blindspot catalogue.pdf

blinddate is a large-scale, high-resolution, video performance that is part of an ongoing project entitled blindspot.
blindspot is an interdisciplinary research project about perception, based on the long-term, ongoing cooperation between various artists and scientists working at IBILI – Institute of Biomedical Research in Light and Image, University of Coimbra.
Formal support for the blinddate performance is provided through three simultaneous high-definition video projections that are synchronized and combined with sound collected from the laboratories. Although at times the three sequences show the exact same image, each has its own independent structure.

blinddate explores the meta-language of laboratory life, through an approach where objects are dissociated, dehumanized. This approach further explores the paradox that objects, that are generally viewed as practical tools in the hands of the scientist, may become anthropomorphic representations by posing as autonomous entities in a series of portraits.
There are only brief glimpses of an organ, as viewed and imaged through a machine, thus adding to its alien character. This is a performance where objects are the only “true” characters. The organ remains an organic object that is being calibrated and assessed for its physical properties. The machine “looks” at the organ which becomes the object of calibration.

blinddate also comprises a subtle questioning of the fallibility of scientific procedures that rely on the calibration of machine-made measurements (movement, position, temperature, light absorption, etc). Useless scientific information, taken from experiments that went wrong, is shown and confronted with the apparent precision of the instruments’ calibration.

The sound is based on recordings done in the lab which are partly filtered and recycled. The sound occasionally synchronizes itself with the images eventually losing them again. By using this approach, the soundtrack is deliberately used to alter and modulate perception of the image.

As a whole, blinddate is an ongoing research project about portraits of laboratory life and
representations of scientific language, exposing its limits and crossing the traditional boundaries of life-outside-of-the-laboratory. The project is certainly not a documentary on laboratory events but rather a real-time experiment that is directed in the space of the laboratory with its occupants.

Paulo Pereira, Coimbra 2006