Yalan Wen: I’m Thinking What I’m Thinking
Artist(s):
Title:
- I'm Thinking What I'm Thinking
Exhibition:
Category:
Artist Statement:
The interactive immersive installation resembles a diagrammatic huge brain processing everyday data. The environment combines sound and generative graphics, creating a subconscious experience for the visitor that calls on their intuition and cognition. It asks the question, ‘Are we completely conscious of our thinking patterns when making a decision?’
As an artist in a contemporary world, making paintings, installations, and mixed media artworks, I look for the similarities between people’s thoughts and actions to know what connects them. I take inspiration directly from my surrounding environment. The subjects include aspects of ordinary life that usually go unnoticed. By putting them in an unexpected context, I change their meaning. I playfully experiment with levels of consciousness and behavior such as inaction, omission, and aleatoric processes that function within my abstract works. The compositions or settings present poetic images that balance the work on the edge of recognition and alienation. They combine symbolic ideas and graphic languages. Using programming for the linear organization, and also randomness in the process, the artworks function with known and unknown elements.
Technical Information:
Stepping on the rug triggers a chord sound, and the lines drawn on the projection screen will then turn into words that fall on the TV screen. And stepping off the rug releases the texts back into lines. When triggered, the sensor asks the computer to access a dictionary and search for an adjective that first describes the word, “thinking”. Every time the computer is triggered, it searches for a synonym for the previous adjective, and this will potentially shift the meaning as many times as the rug was stepped on. The change from the synonym’s synonym is subtle and may go unnoticed.
The fabrication of the installation aims to create a vintage look that gives a sense of time passing, as the thoughts are always based on memories. The spatial sound design let sound travel up and down, left and right through the installation. The force sensor under the rug is powered through an Arduino microcontroller, allowing the computer to get the signal and reach the dictionary. Through this electrical trigger system, sound and words can be changed when someone steps on the rug.
