“Anästetiker”
Evelina Rajca (Fellow at Rijksakademie Amsterdam and PhD candidate at Bauhaus University Weimar Media Study Department, Based in Amsterdam The Netherlands)
http://www.rijksakademie.nl/NL/resident/evelina-rajca
ABSTRACT:
“e-conductor” is an artifact of the research project “Anästetiker” (2012–ongoing) by Evelina Rajca. Within this research project different artifacts show experimentally to what extent the density and aggregate”d” state of matter influences the presumed presence or absence of options for action. Rajca is interested in elaborating different methods in order to figure out “how we can become aware of substances that we do not sense `directly´ but that affect our well-being”.
The various investigation of her long term research culminate in a complex mixed media room installation or they can be shown separately as audiovisual installations. “E-conductor” is a two-channel audiovisual installation. Within the first channel an experiment with solid carbon dioxide (CO2) is presented, which doubles as a compositional sound study. Dry ice is placed in a sealed partial vacuum glass box. A brass pin inside the box strikes and drills through the dry ice. The pressure in the box rises due to the sublimation of dry ice. The needle moves in accordance with the concentration of the gas production. Computers, sensors and detectors steer the process. Inspired by early geoengineering / weather modification experiments – the other channel shows a snowy landscape – crystallizing out of a dry ice cube.
DESCRIPTION:
“e-conductor” is an artifact of the research project “Anästetiker” (2012–ongoing) by Evelina Rajca. Within this research project different artifacts show experimentally to what extent the density and aggregate”d” state of matter influences the presumed presence or absence of options for action. Rajca is interested in elaborating different methods in order to figure out “how we can become aware of substances that we do not sense `directly´ but that affect our well-being”.
The various investigation of her long term research culminate in a complex mixed media room installation or they can be shown separately as audiovisual installations. “E-conductor” is a two-channel audiovisual installation. Within the first channel an experiment with solid carbon dioxide (CO2) is presented, which doubles as a compositional sound study. Dry ice is placed in a sealed partial vacuum glass box. A brass pin inside the box strikes and drills through the dry ice. The pressure in the box rises due to the sublimation of dry ice. The needle moves in accordance with the concentration of the gas production. The sound piece ends with the explosion of the glass vitrine. Computers, sensors and detectors steer the process. Inspired by early geoengineering / weather modification experiments – the other channel shows a snowy landscape – crystallizing out of a dry ice cube.
Solid carbon dioxide, also known as “dry ice,” does not naturally occur on earth, but it is an industrial product used, for example, for the cooling of food. As it changes from solid into gaseous form, there it develops a gas cushion around the carbon dioxide, which, when pressed against a suitable resonating body made of metal, generates extraordinary vibrations. This results in a variety of sounds –cries, sighs, calls of delight and of horror– that are based on different parameters such as volume, surface structure, and temperature of the materials and thus can be deliberately modulated by the instrumentalist. Depending on its density, carbon dioxide has different effects: analgesia –anaesthesia– death. Since the density and aggregate”d” state of a substance determines its level of toxicity, keywords and ideas such as irreversibility and fetish are also of central importance in Evelina Rajca research process “Anästhetiker” and plays a role in another artifact within this project: the sound instrument “fortune teller” made from antique, radioactive uranium glass plates.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:
Evelina Rajca studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She was recently awarded a fellowship at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and at Bauhaus University in Weimar. Her practice is based in between intuitive embodied knowledge and different systems that construct processes of documenting these experiences and translating them into interventions, objects, maps, scores. She is interested in both low-tech and high-tech means of production. For example, her research concerning language and its limitation forms the starting point for Speech sound and the direct meeting of minds. Rajca experiments for instance with the moment when noise becomes intelligible information and vice versa, and possibilities to distinguish value systems within this shift in perception. She studies ways to influence states of concentration and the sensory adaptation of living, human and non-human beings, including artificial intelligence. She challenges their physical and mental resilience. Rajca has shown her work internationally and was recently awarded with a Giga-Hertz Prize for Sound Art by the ZKM, an artistic research grant by Stroom, Mondriaan Funds, Van Bijlevelt Fellowship in The Netherlands and the DAAD research Grant for the USA (Stanford University) and Austria (Art University Linz).