The gallery space is darkened and dominated by an invisible sculpture of silent sound. Your body probes the space listening for the sculpture's spatial form to be expressed though the sounds of your contact with its immaterial presence. Many of the sounds are very physical (breaking ice and breaking glass, creaking metal, falling rocks, bursts of flame). They stand in stark contrast to the immaterial nature of the interaction: your hands and body appear to draw the sounds out of thin air. Intermixed with these sounds are other, incidental, sounds (a match being struck, coins rolling across the floor, the rustling of papers, frogs croaking at night) that, in conjunction with the physical sounds, propose bits of narrative, a sound track for an invisible movie. The interactive sound environment creates a spectral tactility, a confrontation between presence and absence like that which is increasingly present in our daily interactions with our contemporary devices and media.
Dark MatterDavid Rokeby (CA)
Interactive installation, 2010 - 2015
David Rokeby (CA)
David Rokeby is an installation artist based in Toronto, Canada. He has been creating and exhibiting since 1982. For the first part of his career he focused on interactive pieces that directly engage the human body, or that involve artificial perception systems. In the last decade, his practice has expanded to included video, kinetic and static sculpture. His work has been performed/ exhibited in shows across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. Rokeby was awarded the first BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award for Interactive Art in 2000 and the Governor General's award in Visual and Media Arts and the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Interactive Art in 2002. He was awarded the first Petro-Canada Award for Media Arts in 1988 and the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Interactive Art (Austria) in 1991 and 1997.
drokeby@sympatico.ca
davidrokeby.com