sonicSENSE blowTank Sept. 7 -Oct. 9, 2010

The Lab, Art.Tech, San Francsico, CA

BlowTANK uses air, water and sound as an erosive drawing mechanism to reveal digital portraits and internal sounds of the body. A robotic arm blows bubbles into a tank of water as a viewer stands on a vibrating ramp looking into a mirror. A computer-generated voice deploys actions to the viewer to secure a digital portrait. An erosive drawing produced by the tracking of air bubbles in the tank reveals the portrait, layered directly on top of the last image.

The air bubbles in the tank and the viewer on the ramp inform the spacialized sound for the installation. The sounds are found audio-clips from Auscultation libraries on the Internet. Auscultation is the technical term for listening to the internal sounds of the body, usually using a stethoscope. On September 17th, portraits of viewers will be uploaded to a SonicSENSE installation for AbsoluteONE in San Jose as part of the 2010 01SJ Biennial.