Digitized urban life – Art exhibition analyzes man-city relationship

Real Snail Mail, image of the Installation © boredomresearch

Another man dressed in a blue-black tape suit walks in bizarre loops throughout the area. He climbs the stairs in the building where the silver man has collapsed. When they meet, the silver man lies lifeless and deflated as the blue-black man discovers him.

Although their quest seems to be one for contact, the two prefer their solitude and will brave any challenge for a new hiding place. With their faces hidden, traditional means of communication are lost. Their interaction is a shadow of what modern people enjoy.

“The work confronts its viewer with a futuristic scenario to provoke questions about landscapes and life forms, as well as the interaction between the two,” Melanie Zagrean, another curator, said.

Some artists focus on human communication, both in reality and in the virtual world.
Tudor Bratu’s work Conversation Piece is one example in which an interactive multimedia installation recreated the 11 classical organs.

Each key is connected to an audio file. When a key is pressed, a short sentence or fragment of a sentence is pronounced through the speakers, in either a male or a female voice. The topics range from philosophy to art history, but they also contain personal reflections on the experience of everyday life.

The installation can be used to either compose ever changing stories or to generate a conversation between the two voices. “In its attempt to capture elusive human communication, snippets of conversation and thoughts, the piece manages to materialize an urban landscape and allows the audience to reflect on itself by the compositions that it creates,” Zagrean said.