An Anti-Monument to Remember

For a truly interactive installation, 'Frequency and Volume' by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, currently at The Barbican, will take a lot of beating. Presented in The Curve Gallery, the installation runs the full length of this unusual space and provides a unique opportunity to respond and react to the artwork.

Lozano-Hemmer is known for creating large scale interactive installations that utilise new technologies such as surveillance equipment, robotics and computer networks. His artwork is often experienced collectively through audience participation.

As visitors walk through 'Frequency and Volume' their individual bodily movements are traced and processed into live radio frequencies, including air traffic control, mobile phones, radio stations and even radio astronomy.

'The work reveals the unseen but saturated space created by the radio signals that surround us and - more importantly - structure our lives, movements and relations.'  Barbican literature

Artscope paid a visit to the installation and each member of the group immersed themselves in the space. Even small movements became booming radio signals, as the visitors huge shadows were cast onto the walls. One of the group lept across the space making swimming gestures,  and another stretched out his hands triggering the song 'Dancing Queen' by Abba, picked up on a radio station, then masked by loud bleeps from a mobile network!

....I could not help imaging the impact of this installation in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall!!

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