The leak

Installation | 80X200X250 centimeters | data-driven

With the use of mobile phones within the prison cells, the inmates are able to breach the imposed condition of asceticism. The moment of self reflection is interrupted, the time axis of their thinking process is transported from the past into the ‘now’. A contact to the outer world, to their life outside of the prison walls, is created in the loneliness of their confinement. The architecture of restriction is overcome; the electronic prosthesis creates a leak within the static walls of the cell.

This leak within the power structure is the starting point of this work. It shows how the development of technology can create holes, through which, in the sense of Villém Flusser, “…the wind of communication blows.”

For this purpose, frequency measurements were taken at the walls of the JVA Ossendorf, where a directional antenna was used to measure the walls selectively. The data obtained by this process was then again transposed onto an aerial photograph of the prison with the help of a GPS and a DV-camera. The installation consists of three parts: the lowest being a prison bed, above a plotter and on the highest level a personal computer and a surveillance camera that monitors the process of the plotter. The complete installation is a self-contained machine that only needs electricity from the outside to begin functioning. The plotter is controlled by the seven different videos of the DV-camera, in synch with the camera image it draws the various types of interference onto the aerial view of the JVA. When the position changes within the video, the plotter also changes the marker and the position. This process is not visible to the spectator. He can merely see the projection of the surveillance camera’s image on the uneven surface of the bed. After all of the seven videos and their measuring data have been placed on the photograph, a new cycle begins. The “punishment machine” repeats the same process over and over again. This constant repetition is meant to reflect the ascetic condition of imprisonment. Acoustically, frequency-sounds of the video are mixed with the real sound the plotter makes within the exhibition space.