O.R.B, an orbiting spherical celestial body, is a multi-disciplinary piece concerned with its traveling within its own time and space, in this case that of the exhibition space. It also suggests the possibilities of movement and mobility within other spaces, where it may be relocated; its existence is not restricted to the art environment.
A camera concealed in a Zeppelin-like balloon captures the movements of whatever is in its range, and transforms this data into a dynamic line drawing, which is then projected on a two-way screen in the entrance to the space. Light beams emanating from moving floodlights installed on the floor search for the Zeppelin, and additional cameras attached to those lights document the various movements which are registered throughout the space. All this, including the movement of light beams and of the Zeppelin, is transmitted as data to a pair of printers, which print it in parallel on a long paper loop. During the exhibition’s run, a dense stratified drawing – an addition of all recorded occurrences – is created on the paper loop, until the entire paper turns black and the data eliminates its own meaning.
The different elements of the piece capture, conceptualize, and visually interpret the current moment, and at the same time interpret and distort any documentary “truth” through temporal gaps and overlaid information. The two-way screen welcoming the viewers at the entrance interprets the totality of movements at a given moment, and accumulates these possibilities in its memory reservoir. This “black box”, a data base, of accumulating but uninterpreted information, places the viewer in a kind of laboratory, equipped with surveillance cameras and satellites. Is this environment a reference to a world filled with means of control, a world in which information is gathered constantly and everywhere, and whose population is subject to the watchful eye of the “big brother”? Or perhaps a comment on the incommensurability of information in this age, and the impossibility to arrange big data into meaningful data? O.R.B. introduces a powerful, self-sufficient existence, while playfully alluding to what is out of human control.
