ayayay:
windowTears:
Contextualization:
The forced migration of people for political or economic reasons and the consequent separation from their loved ones is an everyday, dramatic phenomenon that is reproduced on a global scale. The conditions of political and economic instability, coupled with the symbolic uncertainty of imagining possible futures, coupled with an unprecedented hyper-connectivity, have generated a silent void. The virtuality of the other, the emptiness of the here in a telepresent now. How can I look out your window and draw in the air you breathe?
ayayay is a work that addresses the geographic and temporal distance between people who love each other, proposing a work that techno-ritualizes this grief, as a gesture of reparation, interweaving references to keywords from my previous work such as: body, absence and information (submit[], 2003), global north-south relations ( antarctic, 2009 ), ritual, dew point, (dewPoints[], 2014), as to the 1969's Random Walk Series of Manfred Mohr or the song "Ay ay ay" composed in 1913 by the chilean Osmán Pérez Freire, among others.
Conceptualization:
The work uses the condensation of moisture on a window and the subsequent drawing/erasing on it as a metaphor for the updating and liberation of memory, and as a ritualization of an "I miss you." It thus proposes the possibility of a physical meeting, in a here and now, of both the sender and the receiver, an attempt to make affections and distances tangible. This is referred to by the work both in its geographic, spatial, and temporal dimension.
The work is proposed as an anachronism, in which everyday objects are brought together with technological objects and gestures within a retro-futuristic aesthetic. The sending of messages is done in a pseudo-Morse code, locating the geographic positions and the time elapsed since the last time you saw your loved ones, feeding the database to a symbolic condensation point, which activates the drawing on the windows. And what is drawn? Random walks, from their point of origin trying to reach their destination. The window defogs. And so the cycle repeats.
Purpose and motivation:
ayayay arises as a result of the experience of having to separate myself from my children for work reasons. From the rupture of that daily routine, and its replacement by another, from the intensity of the days with them, to the emptiness, the abyss of unwanted distance. From the impotence of the squares without their laughter, and the eternal walks trying to reconfigure memories and the now.
But losing the privilege of being in the daily routine with loved ones in exchange for subsistence is not at all an exception in this city, nor in my country. Nor in the world. And my little ordeal was small compared to the reality of many. And it is small compared to so many Latin Americans for many years. It is greatly missed in the global south.
Or in the local or global "norths", from where we long for those who remain in the provinces. If the work had a purpose, it would be to raise awareness that technology per se does not bring people together, and that we have rather built a world made to not miss, to not meet, in which we subject our bodies to the consolation of the intangible.
Choice of technique:
cryingWindow_device:
Humidity condensator
LCD Screen
Humidity+Temperature Sensor
Knock Actuator
Window Frame
Glass
Dual Axis Plotter
Eraser / Rubber
Recipient / Hoses, Wires
missU_device:
Console composed by:
Daylight worldmap
LCD Screen
Telegraph Key
Control Panel
Plinth
cloud_device:
Data base
Web services
web_device:
mobile and web user interfaces.
Dimensions and spatial relations:
The installation plan is a circle of 6 meters in diameter, in which a regular hexagon is inscribed. At each vertex, a cryingWindow module (secured to a mounting grid) and a miisU module (on a pedestal) are positioned alternately and facing the center.
Relationship to the public:
In the installation, the public can either interact with the work contemplatively or by sending messages from the missU_device. From the web or mobile, users can also connect to the work, being able to monitor the status of the installation in real time and having an interface analogous to missU, from which they can send messages to the cloud.
Technical requirements:
The work is designed to be displayed in a space of about 8x8 m2, with a mounting grid. Internet connection. Electricity.
Justification of the scale selection:
ayayay is a highly technically complex work. The cryingWindow module consists of a moisture condenser that fogs up a window and, based on the accumulation of entries in the database, proceeds to draw on it using a 2-axis plotter equipped with a rubber/eraser. The missU module consists of a physical interface from which you geolocate your position and recipient, having a telegraph key to send your message to the Cloud database. This will "condense" these messages and then re-display them as random walks on the windows.
For its production, the work requires the creation of specialized teams for hardware and software respectively. Industrial engineers and designers in charge of the design and programming of refrigeration systems, machinery and functional structures and software engineers and developers for the implementation of the software and connectivity.
