johansons.info

Preview at K.Māksla galllery, Liepāja

“The visible light is only a small part of the electromagnetic radiation observed in nature. Depending on the wavelength, different types of radiation have different properties. Within the “optical window” – visible spectrum of light - the wavelengths in the range of 380 to 750 nm are interpreted as colours by the human eye, covering the spectrum of a rainbow, from violet to dark-red.

The eye’s sensitivity to a specific part of the spectrum grants us a glance in the obscure world of immense physical phenomenon of electromagnetic radiation, otherwise hidden to human senses. In fact, the visible light is an illusion, a “rainbow in the realm of darkness” that doesn’t exist as a separate event. What is there is a flow of electromagnetic energy, and the eye’s sensitivity to a part of it’s spectrum permits perception of the information that it caries, facilitating the association between living beings and the world.”

The installation is a waveform sculpture projected on the surface of water by sonic vibration. As a commentary on the process of climate change, the wave patterns are derived from meteorological data acquired during extreme storms of recent years in Europe. The combination of three materials: air, water and sound simulates a chaotic ecosystem where recorded wind intensity and direction patterns are transferred by waves of sound.

During the recent years I have lived in a city by the Northern See. In the autumn and winter, few times a year, strong storms occur. A stream of air particles - wind - rushes and swirls with incredible speed and power, fluctuating in unpredictable force and intensity patterns. It caries dark clouds and forces waves to wash the sea out of it’s coasts, hits upon buildings and produces a terrifying acoustic landscape.

Climate is described as a chaotic system which can be documented using non-linear dynamics and strange attractors; yet no computing device, however capable, has so far been able to predict and interpret long-term weather conditions. Storms and winds have grown stronger over the past years, both in Latvia and elsewhere in the world, indicating climate change. Different indicators show that the world’s climate is changing – the melting of Arctic ice, the positive North Atlantic Oscillation index of the past decades, and other signs show a dynamic process of change, conventionally called global warming or the greenhouse effect. One of the more noticeable manifestations of change is the increasing number and scale of natural disasters and storms that wreak devastation all over the world every year. In January 2005 the inhabitants of Latvia were also caught unprepared by Hurricane Ervin, a storm of unseen strength, which toppled trees, downed power lines and changed the coastline of the Gulf of Riga.

In nature, wind is generated by the contrast in air pressure between adjoining atmospheric areas. A sharp contrast creates strong winds that grow into storms. The changing intensity of wind currents suggests a similarity to sound waves (sound is a change in air pressure). A recorded wind waveform is a microscopic component indicative of an entire global ecosystem in which all events are connected through interaction and feedback relationships. As a part of a non-linear dynamic system, wind waveform depicts chaotic, but not random or predictable qualities.

The composition is a five channel piece for authentic public address sirens. The sirens are mounted across the perimeter of a large resonant space, enveloping the room by spatialization of sound.

ALERT 05 is a blend of composition and installation, in memory of the great uprising of 1905 in Riga. The composition is played on authentic public address rupor speakers GR-1E that used to blast lo-fi propaganda through minds of soviet people. The communication of signal to speakers is carried out by radio broadcast. The composition is dedicated to the revolutionary movements in society, technology and culture of the beginning of the last century. The children of the industrial revolution – the proletarian class demand new kind of art, that opposed to the decadent decay of bourgeois culture, is accessible to everyone: clear and simple as commissar’s speech, powerful and direct as sounds of heavy-industry machinery, shots fired form the cruiser Aurora.

The Installation was premiered on Sept 2005 at Forest of Sound festival, (http://www.skanumezs.lv) in abandoned factory building in Riga.