ENCOUNTER IN THE DAWN (2021)

a photo of 6 glass bottles stnading on a marble top inside a venetian church
a photo of a wooden installation, pyramid-shaped arranged wooden planks holding up moitors showing processing animations, the bottom covered in golden foil, standing inside a venetian church. An altar can be seen in the background.
a screenshot imag from the KOSMICS website, with a photo of an ultra sonic speaker, and description text for the artowrk -Enouncter in the Dawn-, shown at the Venice Biennale in 2021.

Interactive Media Installation
Exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2021

Alex Wenger, Anna-Lina Helsen, Kimin Han, Christina Vinke

A portal to outer space, “Encounter in the Dawn” invited visitors to detect sounds, identify otherworldly fragrances and ponder about stories of other planets. To embark upon a journey using their senses of sight, sound and smell, travelling to a hypothetical planet.

The installation “Encounter in the Dawn” is a portal into outer space and references Arthur C. Clarke and John Horton Conway in its nature. Using extra terrestrial data from satellites as a seed of true randomness (of life), olfactory representations of space and visual ques, viewers are transported to another planet, called “Planet of the Elements”. There the five elements Fire, Water, Earth, Air and Ether are found – and can be heard coming from unidentifiable origins.

My role in this project was the research, extraction and production of the olfactory elements. Starting by researching reports of the smells of outer space I started to gather materials that were mentioned by astronauts in interviews and experimented and worked on with extracting their scents in the Bio Design Lab in Karlsruhe. The best results were created using an ultra sonic cleaner. I created six different scents, out of which we as a group chose one that would be sprayed out of the installation into the room at an interval of 30 minutes.

The visual processing of data in the installation, combining the incoming satellite data with interpretations of the elements was created initially by Alex Wenger, who constructed the framework. Then the elements were split up, and each person worked on the processing code for one of the displays on the monitors in the installation. As my element was water, I wrote the code to resemble a liquid-like flowing and spilling movement of the visual shapes.

The five different sound elements were quite literally thrown into the room using ultra-sonic directional speakers. The sound is reflected from the surface onto which the soundwaves impact, making it seem as if the sound is coming from different directions of the room. The sound pieces were created by Kimin Han, and the soldering of the speakers was done by Alex Wenger and me. The construction of the installation was done as a group, with the aim to convey the feeling of constructing something whilst traveling, visually standing out of its environment whilst resembling the shape of a bonfire around which humanity has been telling stories for thousands of years, letting others become a part of their journey.

Many thanks to the Lithuanian Space Agency (LSA) and KOSMICA Institute for giving us this fantastic opportunity to be part of the “Liquid Cosmos” exhibition in the Lithuanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021! Many thanks in particular to Nahum Mantra and Julijonas Urbonas.


IMPRESSUM