Verena Friedrich: TRANSDUCERS
Artist(s):
Title:
- TRANSDUCERS
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 2009
Medium:
- transparent glass tubes, hair samples
Category:
Artist Statement:
TRANSDUCERS is an experimental installation composed of several transparent glass tubes hanging at different heights through the space. Hair samples that have been collected from different individuals have been implanted into the custom-made laboratory glass tubes.
A single human hair can be merely debris, but once its information is decoded through DNA analysis it reveals itself to be the repository of our biological blueprint. TRANSDUCERS explores this phenomenon by providing an alternative means of decoding and classification. Enhanced with electronics, these vessels bring the inanimate biological matter to life again: the object under investigation—the human hair—is triggered by the machinery and is stimulated to react. This reaction is registered, amplified, and transduced into an audible output that encodes the hair’s physiological constitution. Each of the devices generates a unique sound based on the donors’ individual hair samples. TRANSDUCERS seeks to question the dominance of science in describing and classifying life and its basic units. Every audible result provides a technological interpretation of identity, produced by an arrangement that points beyond itself to a future reference system yet to be developed, freely oscillating between life and laboratory work.
