Mememe
Interactive Sound Installation
The installation Mememe is based on a Real Time Location System, RTLS, a tracking system used by, among others, the military, car manufactories and grocery stores. Four sensors are placed so as to form a quadrangular space containing various pairs of shoes that the visitors can put on.
Created by
Tine Bech Studio
Technologist Sam Woolf
Sound designer David Lawrence
Presented at
DRHA (Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts) conference, UK 2008
Falmouth Live, UK 2008
Aarhus Centre for Contemporary Art, Demark 2006
The shoes are tagged with an advanced RFID chip that via the tracking system tells a main computer where the shoes are located.
Each of the shoes communicates with a sensor that generates a sound, depending on where in the room the shoe is. Different sounds are generated in different zones, and the installation encourages you to play with the sounds, using your own body as an instrument. Each pair of shoes has its own recognizable sound –its step sound, and, as indicated by the title of the work, the shoes seem to be doing everything possible to attract the viewer’s attention: Me-me-me! Choose me-me-me! The shoes likewise react if they get too close to each other, or if you try to leave the room.
Tine Bech worked with Ubisense, a technology company who combine an ultrawideband (UWB) technology platform with a real-time software solution. This live indoor tracking system was ‘hacked’ and altered with permission.
The work Mememe was a collaboration between lead artist Tine Bech, technologist Sam Woolf and Dave Lawrence sound designer. Their work is characterized by a predilection for interactivity and for installations that explore the relationship between work and viewer- through a combination of sound and movement, robots and everyday materials, complex interactive technology and visual simplicity.
Tine Bech’s work Mememe proposes a phenomenological appreciation of art that activates the whole body and all the senses – where the artwork becomes something more than just a visual and intellectual experience.
In ‘Mememe’, it is the relationship between technical possibilities and man as a sensing creature that is examined. Mememe is an interactive work that invites the public to put on a special pair of high-tech shoes that responds with sound to the wearer’s movement. The work encourage collaborative play that can seem pushy in a world where machine have usurped many ordinary human tasks."
Interested in Tine's other work that uses tracking technology? Check out Tracking You!
In the encounter with Mememe you are not a distant observer, but an active participant, and noisy play, freedom and movement replace soundless, invisible surveillance. This constitutes a break with formalistic views of art, according to which the surroundings and the context are not especially important to the aesthetic and subjective appreciation of art. In the case of Mememe, it is precisely the performative relationship between work, viewer and space that seems to be the all-important starting point for the creation of meaning. It establishes a visual and auditive dialogue between work and audience, a dance between technology, art and man."
