top of page
Extinct Frequencies
Multimedia Installation
2017/2019
This multimedia installation consists of kinetic sculptures, soundscape, projection mapping, and virtual reality within a dystopian set design. It is a multi-sensory experience that attempts to speculate the future scenario where nature has deteriorated to a stage that all we are left with is artificial things. The idea comes from deforestation issue that caused by illegal slash-and-burn clearing activity which translated into fictional narrative of what might happen in the future according to what had happened in the past and in the present times.
The earlier version of the installation was in a smaller scale using only a single set of Arduino-based kinetic artificial plants in which the movements were visually being captured by a webcam and processed through MAX/MSP then displayed on a TV screen. Also, aurally captured by contact microphones and processed through some effects as seen in the picture below.
In the newer version, and I would like to expand and develop the previous version into a bigger scale with more relevant topic to these days, but still within the scope of environmental issue.
According to ourworldindata.org, the global forest cover has gradually depreciated over the last decades. Since the 1950s where there was still around 300 million hectares of forest across the globe and it has been deforested until it reaches 100 million hectares left in the 2010s. This means it is not impossible that in the next 30-50 years we have no more forest left on our planet. From this very global issue, I would like to respond by drawing from my personal experience where I used to hear the soundscape which created by the friction of the tree leaves when I was a kid in the neighborhood in my hometown. Within less than 15 years, I was scarcely listening to that particular soundscape (though it still happens only when it’s really quiet), it’s because my neighborhood used to be an empty land with couple of trees and then it became a school and medical building. I subsequently began to think, what if in the future I will not be able to live in the environment that has no natural quality in it? A place where almost everything is artificial. Are we going to live in that kind of era? Are we going to prevent that to happen, or just deal with it?
The newer version of Extinct Frequencies is an experience that tries to bring the audience to the speculative fictional scenario in the future through a real space in which all of its elements stimulate the senses through light, sound, haze, and tactile materials, as well as taking them back into the past and present through virtual reality environment. It aims to generate an awareness and provoke thoughts on what might or could happen to our environment if the natural resources have vanished and/or replaced by the artificial.
The earlier version of this installation was presented in Digital Design Weekend at Lawangwangi Creative Space, Bandung, Indonesia.
bottom of page