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Communicator is an instrument for the expression of collective desires, wishes and thoughts. It is a night-time, site-specific installation at partially-abandoned welding plant for the duration of the festival.  User joins local WI-FI network, then, via QR code opens a website with a field of entry. Entered text then transmits through the Morse code to the matrix of xenon searchlights installed on top of the de-commissioned tower. This can be seen within a few kilometers away. Searchlights themselves have been associated with authoritarian regimes in part due to the military precedent of anti-aircraft surveillance. Indeed, the internet too, is a legacy of a military desire for distributed operations control. By ensuring that participants were an integral part of the artwork, the intervention attempted to establish new creative relationships between controlled technologies, ominous urban landscapes and a local public. It’s an opportunity to say, deliver, or an appeal on the scale of the city to someone specific or to all at once.

Communicator
Installation for Detali festival  
Programming: VJ Ra
Curation: Anna Potyomkina
Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine
2021