title: tangible sounds - tangible portraits
type: interactive audiovisual installation
year: 2014
author/composer: Alexandros Kontogeorgakopoulos (conception, implementation), Aris Bezas (programming, projection mapping), Jérôme Villeneuve (photography)
co-funded by: Creative Europe, EASTN project
first exhibition: Tsepelovo Art Gallery, Greece, July 2014
Tangible Sounds / Tangible Portraits is an interactive audiovisual installation. It was created specifically for Tsepelovo, a village in the Zagori region in Northern Greece with materials from the local environment and photographs from the local people. The exhibition visitors are wearing headphones and walk carefully on two zones in the gallery space covered with barks and stones collected from the region. A very sensitive high quality microphone amplifies extensively all those generated micro-sounds coming from their subtle movements and footsteps and immerse the visitors into a loud soundscape. At the same time, the same sounds trigger portraits projected on the wall just outside the exhibition space. The piece suggests a tangible connection between the materiality of the environment and its local inhabitants.
The image below was taken during the preparation and the experimentation phase of the installation. The barks and stones were carefully placed accoridng to the sounds the produced whn the visitors of the exhibition were walking on them.
