Interfaces de lo Invisible

This project is a pretext to listen and walk together, thinking about the invisible layers of our environment. Interfaces of the invisible seek to find how to approach the incommensurability of environmental processes and their planetary scales and the effects that manifest in the climate emergency we are experiencing. We know and know of numerous technologies, literature, and even television series trying to explain these phenomena without affecting us. It has been called the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Climate Change, Global Warming, Third Extinction, etc., but there seems to be no clear reaction to such a break. We are then interested in working on that gap between the scale of the message and the recipients of said message, to which we could not react despite seeing the graphs, reports, news, or experiencing it first hand.

We understand that this gap is caused, on the one hand, by the immeasurable nature of the multiplicity of scales involved and connected, and on the other, by how technologies and data are visualized and communicated. Therefore, this research seeks to understand and recognize this climate emergency through affective relationships supported by contemporary art methodologies and emerging and accessible technologies.

Section

The exhibition is conceptualized through a geophysical section. It is about working the different pieces according to their relationship with the parts of said section. Thinking in the section is a relatively complex task, almost impossible since the conventions used to build a section are never adequate or faithful to what they want to represent by definition. A section is a construction of the interpretation of a space seen from a plane that we will never be able to observe. In this case, this plane is built by different mechanisms and technologies from which this exhibition’s different pieces or workshops are obtained.

Subsoil

The subsoil and everything it hides becomes apparent through the use of a geo-radar and the displacement of its series of antennas that emit and receive signals that build a map formulated in space and time utilizing electromagnetic signals; a radargram. Walking with the said interface and observing the section built on the screen while moving forward creates a human-machine-environment relationship that dislocates the walker's sense of scale. Said technology is used to find underground objects lodged in the subsoil of geological and anthropogenic origin and lately to find bodies of missing people in mass graves – which says a lot about our current condition.

The radargram surrounding this room comprises fragments of the readings obtained in the historic center of Querétaro. On these walls is part of the representation of the electromagnetic traces in a section 3 meters deep, making apparent the sedimentation that has taken place. the street for more than 500 years. Streets that were a ditch, part of the main road inland, an old Franciscan orchard, or an underground parking lot.

It is important to note that the images are a representation of the contrasts in the dielectric properties of the medium, in which the greater magnitudes in the contrasts due to the presence of materials other than the subsoil itself are highlighted employing black or white stripes. . The real value of these images is given by interpreting the anomalies found, trying to make visible what is causing the contrast. The interpretation of the radargrams is refined by compiling information on the historical context of land use, architecture, and infrastructure of the streets along which the readings were made.

Sedimentation

Just as the geological strata join together and become part of the subsoil, the ideas and ways of thinking about our life and relationship with our environment become sedimentary. This is, then, an invitation to make these layers apparent both in the geological and environmental aspects and in the ordinary of our existence; to re-know how we organize the world.

Atmosphere

The other invisible layer is in the upper part of our section. The atmosphere, understood as a fluid, governs human, non-human and more than human lives in an absolute way. We feel the air, the rain, the heavy particles from the thousands of cars in the city; eyes watery, throat dry, head aches, animals come and go when it rains. The city is flooded and has no drinking water. We are touched and touched by the same environmental phenomena that run throughout the continent and we witness their increasingly unfamiliar behaviors. So, is it possible to navigate the city thinking about the atmosphere?

There is no sound without atmosphere.

What analog technologies exist to make their behaviors present and what would then be the role of sound in the multi-scale understanding of the planet? The piece suspended in the courtyard acts as an instrument and interface with the atmosphere. Through the continuous movement of the wind, the strings of the piece generate vibrations that make the hollow tubular resonate, causing it to translate these vibrations into sound each time the wind travels. The piece is active and is dependent on the behavior of the atmosphere. This atmospheric instrument is connected to an FM transmitter whose waves travel to a receiver that amplifies the readings in the room, activating the pulsations of both radargrams, causing a moiré effect. This overlap between spectrogram and radargram speaks of the relationship between the geological layers and the atmosphere, which are closely related. By superimposing the atmosphere and lithosphere in this way, the different relationships between sedimentation, erosion, water cycles and the environment become apparent.

Partners

BEMA, deriveLAB, Geoscience Center, Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, and Zone Sound Creative