home

upcoming_events

labscapes

uncertainty

agents

blinddate

referenceless

setting04_0006

agglomeration

participants

sponsors

download blindspot catalogue.pdf

“uncertainty”

The “uncertainty” installation’s motto is a quote from the Austrian physicist Dr. Manfred Drosg: “ A model can never be a perfect portrayal of reality, and there can never be a part of reality perfectly mirrored by a model”. This statement emphasizes the impossibility of generating the perfect model, as well as the inability of a model to ever fully represent reality.
Indeed, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle broadly establishes, that the act of “looking” at an object changes the properties of that object.
In this installation the camera “looks” and registers the movement of a fluorescein solution set on top of a shaker. The camera is also supported by a similar shaker, set to move at the same speed, in an attempt to reproduce the solution’s exact motion. In a precisely controlled experiment the solution would not move. This, however, is impossible since the movement of both shakers can never be perfectly synchronized. This impossibility is represented on one of the screens, whereas on the second screen the movement has been artificially synchronized through post-production, so that the solution no longer moves.  However, on this screen the whole stage begins to move. The artificial immobilization of the fluorescein solution results in an apparent shaking of the white background that acts as the scenario that fully encloses the installation. The stationary stage is no longer stable and the vibrating solution becomes disturbingly still. A small black border occasionally appears on the screen’s periphery, dissolving yet another reference: the frame of the screen.
The shaking solution is filmed against a white background of precisely arranged tiles, defining a clean, empty stage. The absence of external references and the symmetry of the setting evoke a virtual space and a heterotopic laboratory space simultaneously.
The structure of the interfolded systems in the installation and the manipulation of the “inertia referentials” challenge the perception of space and velocity, causing a sensation of indisposition or malaise.

Paulo Pereira, Coimbra 2007