WIRELESS, 2023
Rodrigo Toro Madrid's practice involves the recovery of broken or obsolete technological objects, to which the artist gives a second life – sometimes far from their original function – in a skilful game of mechanical diversion.
For Plattform23, the artist presents an installation based on his most recent research on the properties of sound and light. At the centre of the installation stands a record player specially designed to transmit sound modulations via a light signal. Imitating the circular movement of the turntable, the light sweeps 360 degrees through the room, allowing only fragments of the record being played as it crosses the sensors on the speakers, which temporarily translate the light signal into sound. The voices that can be heard between the lines come from a recording made by the artist from language courses, as if the room was learning to communicate with us. The sound, which is literally placed in the light and spreads out into the space, circulates from one speaker to another in the inquisitive rhythm of the omnidirectional light that seems to scan the space while the positioning of the visitors threatens to disrupt the signal. Both gripping and elusive, this unusual synesthetic experience shows that the ways in which memory is recorded remain inevitably deficient.
Immersed in a semi-darkness, disturbed by intermittent light and sound presences, the room is inhabited by zombie media. The occult mechanisms of this lo-fi hacking generate a poetic fascination that subverts the functionality of the machines.
Colin Raynal (translation P23)
Intervened turntable, light beacon, diverse amplifiers, light sensors, handmade records
Photo credits: Margot Sparkes