MANUSPECTRUM

Scientific collaborator
Elena Badea, first degree scientific researcher, Project Director, coordinator of the Working Group “Heritage Science” within the National Research-Development Institute for Textiles and Leather, ICPI Branch, Bucharest.

TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

Interactive installation with tactile stimuli and video-audio effects (parchment stretched on the traditional processing frame, artificial fibril consisting of conductive paths, touch devices, MIDI Controller, laptop and Ableton Live Software, audio system, Kera audio device, video projector, tetrahedrons dressed in sheepskin, mini-laboratory box, sketchbook, collages).

CONCEPT

The Manuspectrum installation proposes a different “writing / reading” of the traditional parchment manuscript, addressed this time to the whole perceptual system, starting from tactility and extending to auditory and visual, even kinaesthetic – to perceive reality with the whole corporeality. The project is based on the concept of parchment as a multilayer support of information (genetic information, historical information, technological information, artistic and cultural information), defined following the scientific research conducted during the residency at the Institute of Textiles and Leather. This multilayer character gives the processed skin in the form of parchment the position of forerunner of digital multimedia because both have a hypertext depth and a hypermedia information complexity. Subsequently, because of research conducted in the personal laboratory through a series of experiments and tests, I highlighted the major role of the skin in the complex coordination of the perceptual system in relation to external stimuli. The parameters of these research were converted into elements of multimedia artistic language, the installation simulating the complex relationship between interiority and exteriority, between opening and closing the circuit of the installation with our own skin, and between these polarities is created the substance of the work.

Keywords: Carbon, collagen, (electrotonique) conductibility
Collagen is the constituent structural protein of some of the most important tissues of the body, such as bone tissue (collagen I), circulatory (collagen III), muscular (collagen VI), endocrine (collagen XXIII), cerebral (collagen VIII), etc, which proves its ability to interconnect the whole body. At the same time, collagen mediates the relationship between the inside of the body, namely the nervous, perceptual and immune system, and external stimuli (temperature, humidity, mechanical stimuli), contributing to the real-time transmission of information in both directions. This mediation is based on an exceptionally good electrical and thermal conductivity of collagen (with an essential role in body thermoregulation), which can be explained by the presence of structural water in the complex architecture of the triple helix, a component underlying fibril, fibres and bundles, fibres that make up the tissues, but also through the chemical composition based on amino acids, organic carbon compounds, which are electrically and thermally conductive elements par excellence.

Photo&Video Credit – Qolony Association

Fusion:AIR 2021