Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory

installation by: Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand
sound by: Richard Chartier + Taylor Deupree
sonoluminescent installation with digital sound
variable duration/dimension

EXHIBIT: Uncharted: User Frames in Media Arts @ Santral Museum [Istanbul, Turkey] March 20 – September 20, 2009

Combining education, research, production and exhibition facilities in the field of art and cultural studies, santralistanbul now presents the Uncharted: User Frames in Media Arts exhibition realised with the contribution of ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, a pioneering cultural institution for the last 20 years in Europe, ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, also a distinguished design institute in Europe, and independent curators.

The Uncharted exhibition includes a selection of contemporary artworks involving the large-scale use of digital and interactive media. The exhibition features works both by renowned and as yet unknown avant-garde artists and groups of artists from all over the world. Interactive and immersive qualities of the works will be well to the fore to enable the visitors to discover spectacular forms of artistic expression and radical changes in the relationship between the visitor and the work of art. 

In “Camera Lucida”, as your vision acclimates to the darkness, the subtle shimmer of a delicate light emerges, transformed from sound in a spherical water-filled acrylic box in the center of the space. A band of sound waves of varying frequency is converted into light, made visible, by the sound luminescence phenomenon that occurs when it passes through the chemical medium contained in the water. This phenomenon, which in the conceptual phase seemed impossible even for scientists, was jointly developed in laboratories in Japan, Germany, Russia, and Belgium. The “observatory” in the title indicates that the micro phenomena can only be visualized when certain marginal conditions are provided, and the impossibility of comprehending the phenomena even for the scientists because of the limits of accuracy for the measuring devices. This is a trial to connect chemistry and physics, inside and outside the sphere (inside and outside of the world), phenomena and visitors, with this unprecedented method, to make each influence its other. In this exhibition we exhibit the latest version controlled by sound pressure, etc.

For this exhibit the Camera Lucida installation reacts to the sound work “Specification.sixteen” by Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree.

Evelina DOMNITCH (b. Minsk, Republic of Belarus, 1972, resident in Amsterdam) and Dmitry GELFAND (b. St. Petersburg, Russia, 1974, resident in Amsterdam) continue to challenge and visualize new possibilities in physics, computer and other sciences through unique artistic perspectives. In 2002, they stayed in Japan and researched “Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory” as artists in residence at IAMAS, the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences. This piece won the Excellence Prize at the 2007 Japan Media Arts Festival.