The audio-video installation “THE LIGHTNESS…” deals with the audio-visual and mechanical destruction of the recorded farewell message of a fictitious suicide assassin.
The installation consists of a mirror matrix fixed on coil springs, which is mounted on a flat loudspeaker. By playing back a fictitious farewell message of a suicide assassin and projecting it onto the reflection matrix, the image is mirrored in the same angle and projected onto a screen. The sound fed into the loudspeaker is the spoken video sound and the sound collage blended into this sound, designed to establish a link between image and sound levels. Due to the vibrations of the flat loudspeaker the mirror matrix oscillates and – depending on the sound – destroys the reflected video image in a purely mechanical manner so that it becomes impossible to clearly recognize the assassin suspect. Consequently, also at a metaphorical level, the ensuing attack is symbolized by the sound as the identity of the person disintegrates. Both the text and video, which shows a head-and-shoulders portrait of a woman, were produced especially for this concept and are projected as a closed loop.
