The Crossing

projection on window, 3 corten steel sculptures, 3 transducers (8-Ohm/60 Watt), 3 Raspberries running Sonic Pi, 3 thermal sublimated images printed on metal discs

Public audiovisual installation in the context of the 2022 Brno Art Open, "gGeEnn", dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Gregor Mendel and curated by Milan Milakustic and Milan Kreuzziger:

“The Crossing” approaches Mendel’s inheritance experiments through radical interventions using laser interferences and sonic factors as variables for acoustic mediations. This artwork is part of Kuai's decolonial practice on the scientific biases of the natural history of Amazonian army ants. Instead of addressing these ants as colonies or armies, the project draws inspiration from the Sarayaku people of Ecuador, who called them tamya añanku, the rain ants. These ants are messengers of meteorological changes, announcing the advent of rain, weaving bridges and shelters with their bodies.

This public installation is composed of a visual projection of rain ants crossing laser barriers at night, projected on the back wall of the House of Arts, and three metallic, monolithic sound sculptures. The laser interferences were filmed in the Sarayaku rainforest using 3 low-power laser pointers to register variations of electric resistance via photocells when the corporeal mass of ants run across interfering with the beams. The data are used as sonic factors in Sonic Pi by shifting pitch, attack, decay, sustain, and release to modify acoustic fabrics: compositions based on substrate-borne vibrations of rain ants' movements that were additionally recorded via piezoelectric amplifiers.

Using transducers underneath metallic discs, a wide range of different resonances are recreated. The three sound sculptures portray thermal sublimated images created with convolutional neural algorithms: combining photographs of rain ants crossing the lasers with pictures from a scanning electron microscope of Formica rufa, the redwood ants of Europe: a visual mutation of social organs and body parts between different species of ants.

Exhibitions:

Brno Art Open 2022, Czech Republic

Commissioned artwork for Dům umění města Brna (the House of Arts Brno)