MAIN TAKEAWAYS
- The power of audio
- Embodiment can create intimacy
- Abstraction leaves space for the imagination
Counter Consideration is a playful hybrid experience created in collaboration with South African cultural producer Faye Kabali-Kagwa and commissioned by STRP.
Counter Consideration presents the work of African artists Xabiso Vili (South Africa), Hakeem Adam (Ghana), Lo-Def Film Factory (South Africa), KMRU (Kenya) and Aluta Null (South Africa).
Invoking the spirit of the transistor radio, audiences are invited to physically move between multiple audio channels while dropping into various sonic realities ranging from flash fiction, vibrant soundscapes, intimate conversations and tales of techno culture.
Counter Consideration was born out of a curiosity for alternative narratives about our relationship with technology. Countering more dominant Western narratives of excess and techno surplus, we consider the radical creativity of African artists and the importance of the oral tradition.
“Nice to see the avatar moving along through the story as I would have been doing if I was exploring physically”
– online participant Counter Consideration.
This work was presented as a hybrid experience at STRP Scenario #19 on April 10 2022 in Eindhoven as well as online.
Read more about the work here.
“It was really a nice experience to walk around not looking at the map or the signs but exploring the voices”
– an onsite participant
In Counter Consideration the physical location was present and important in the experience. In the onsite experience, the audience members walked around in the park and saw visual clues of location for the radio channels, where they could read up on the artist providing the radio channel. The channels were carefully places in the space which connected the story to the location. By navigating your body to tune into different channels created a new form of intimacy and relation to the story. Many participants walked a bit inside a radio channel area. Moving while listening is a form of finding a different form of concentration or relation to the story. We learned from the participants that all these acts of movement through the space added to the feeling of intimacy.
Credits
- Designed, produced and created by affect lab.
- Design and development of the online experience for Counter Consideration by Laura Seal and Aluta Null.
- Participating artists: Xabiso Vili (South Africa), Hakeem Adam (Ghana), Lo-Def Film Factory (South Africa), KMRU (Kenya) and Aluta Null (South Africa).