Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Recorders

Next time you're in Sydney visit the Museum of Contemporary Art, you just may find that you become the art. Recorders is an exhibition of work by Mexican-Canadian electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, who uses cameras, microphones, heart-rate and proximity sensors, face-tracking software, tracking systems and other surveillance equipment to turn the viewer into the viewed.

As Lozano-Hemmer himself has explained, “Recorders are artworks that hear, see or feel the public and record and replay memories entirely obtained during the show. The pieces either depend on participation to exist or predatorily gather information on the public through surveillance and biometric technologies.”

In ‘Pulse Room’, for example, 100 incandescent light bulbs glow on and off in time with your heartbeat, while in ‘Please Empty Your Pockets’, the visitor’s objects are scanned and stored as projected images to be seen by future visitors.

Lozano-Hemmer is fully expecting to be panned by art critics, whom he expects will think of Recorders “as a set of Pavlovian tests, as a science museum, or as a populist exercise, lacking sophistication”. But he speaks compellingly of how the exhibition aligns with his objectives as an artist: to let the general public participate in art as a way of enhancing their contemplation of it. “Some museums, artists, curators and critics secretly (and sometimes openly) assert that most visitors are morons, that their contribution should be limited to the gift shop. In my experience, giving responsibilities to the public is always rewarding, it is great to be surprised by what they come up with.

“What you will gain is a sense of improvisation, or event, of projected absence, of art as process.

For more information visit MCA Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Recorders.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Pulse Room 2006 Incandescent light bulbs, digital voltage controllers, heart rate sensors, computer, metal stand, custom-made software © the artist. Photo: Alex Davies.