Inner, Outer, Other  

Klanglicht, Graz, Austria, 2022

Inner, Outer, Other is an immersive installation that invites you to step into an otherworldly experience. The work is designed to confront your sense of self and presence in space. It is an active vessel for repose, self-reflection and contemplation. The work is open for the audience to interpret its meaning relative to one’s self, i.e. ‘inner’-being, ‘outer’- projection and ‘other’, the ambiguous and illusive questions in life that cannot be easily answered.

The work explores the duality of experience, it is a place between hope and fear, freedom and inhibition, beauty and the sublime. In the installation the semiotics of the primal elements of light, water, sound are abstract cues for one’s imagination, evoking notions of time, birth, life’s journey and end, with an aim to spark an event or memory.

The installation is a form of heterotopia, illusive by design and of its identity. The environment is built upon multiple layers of subversion. A liquid mirror floods the space, warping the reflection and perception of the space. A bright circle of light emanates from its core, captured by a floating mirrored sphere above. As the sphere arcs, it collapses the entire perspective of the space within itself. As you walk on the water your presence disrupts its surface, warping your perception of the space and blurring the distinction between what is real and what is not. The work places the viewer at the centre of the experience, an ever-evolving space that straddles between sanctuary and plight.

In addition to the natural amplification of one’s movement on the water’s surface, an immersive sound score tuned to the resonance of the room further subverts the sphere’s materiality, movement and presence. Sound drifts in and out, migrating in the room along with one’s physical presence in the space.

Specification

Dimensions: 20m x 15m x 15m
Media: 5m⌀ mylar inflatable, tensile cabling, 3.5kw LED, transmission screen, wood, rubber, 540sqm water, 12.1 surround sound 

Credits

Commissioner: Klanglicht, Graz 
Curator: Birgit Lill
Photography: Sebastian Kite, Luke Goodlife, Tom-TomTV