PITMM (Particles of Interest: Tales from the Matter Market)
House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany

"For the market, nanoparticles hold the 21st century’s great promise. For critics, they are a vision of pure horror, as long as the toxicological risks are not known. The era of unregulated nanocapitalism has already dawned..." (read more from the PITMM site).

Starting with some of the narratives produced through Ricardo Dominguez and Diane Ludin's PITMM project, I created this interactive installation, hoping to translate some of the hype and hidden penetration of nanotechnology into an experiential tug-of-war.

Here is some video documentation - it may need to be fully downloaded before sound and image sync up, and is best heard through headphones or external speakers.

PITMM Berlin demo
Walker: Julianne Brandes
Video shot by: Manuel Forster

As visitors move through the installation, they tune the soundscape with their bodies. If a visitor simply passes by a pedestal, or stands in front of it, she triggers a particular mix of sound played in a particular way. But if her curiosity leads her to spend more time and play with the visible sensors - if she moves closer and further from the sensor "eyes" - she gains controls over the sound. She can slow or speed it up, dissolve and fracture texts, mix in new sounds that contradict or harmonize with key narratives, or unfurl longer, stranger nanotales and nanodogma. The piece becomes something that can be played, not just heard. Blasts of air interrupt this process, repelling some visitors, but not before blowing particles and sucking visitors' surface cells into our nano-sonic exchange. At times, particle sounds swirl through speakers, swarming and surrounding the visitors. (These effects are hard to convey in the documentation.) The installation was experienced by visitors to the Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt and used in performances by Ricardo Dominguez, Diane Ludin, Amy Sara Carroll and Césaire José Carroll-Dominguez.

The interactive installation functioned as part of a series of interventions presented by PITMM this October 2007, at the House of World Cultures in Berlin. (These interventions were in turn part of the 4-month Nomadic New York series curated by Andre Lepicki at the House of World Cultures.)

Project Credits:
Principal Investigators: Ricardo Dominguez and Diane Ludin
Interactive Sound Installation: Nina Waisman
PD programming: Marius Schebella
On site construction: Pierre Galaud, Julianne Brandes, Tristan Shone, Diane Ludin
Voices: Veronika Bauer, Nevllle Billimoria, Philipp Danzeisen, Ricardo Dominguez, Laura Booth Freda

Thanks to:
Eva-Maria Helfrich
Hermann Volkery
Andre Schultz
Julianne Brandes
and all the generous people at the House of World Cultures

PITMM Site