[ one of the best installations i saw recently, first at montevideo, then at v2; text excerpts from noemalab.org ]
by Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand
“Camera Lucida” is an immersive spatial art work creating a fleeting ephemeral materiality by intersecting ultrasound with hyperlight … in essence creating an unstable sonic aurora. Developed in collaboration with numerous physics research labs the ‘observatory’, a transparent gas-filled chamber, converts sound waves into visible light by employing a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence. Here, gaseous micro-bubbles injected within a fluid medium are blasted with ultrasound causing them to implode, at which point they become as hot as the sun and release light energy in the form of sound waves. By modulating, or ‘playing’ the ultrasonic transducers attached to the glass chamber an ever-changing sonochemical environment, visible only within a sheath of extreme darkness, emerges.
Belarussian/American artist duo Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s practice creates cross-disciplinary art works that integrates physics, chemistry and computer science with philosophical practice. With the /Camera Lucida/ they work to harness wave phenomena, both as sound and light in order to examine intrinsic questions of spatial perception and perpetuality. Having dismissed all forms of fixative and recording media, Domnitch and Gelfand’s installations exist as unstable, ever-transforming phenomena offered for observation.
