#Post

by Sarah Wöelker
20 April 2021

The smartphone-based soundscape #post is located in the virtual environment around the gallery feldfünf. It is part of the »queer AND BEYOND [choose category]« store-front exhibition taking place on April 11th - May 1st 2021.

The original on-site version is available at https://sonicmaps.xyz/player/?p=482 but you can use the previous embedded map to simulate the walk.

This exhibition combines post-digital art with queer positions. How can the entanglements of the digital and the physical be put into words and communicated? How can blank spaces in language relating to gender diversity be overcome with the means of the digitital? It presents works on contemporary digital forms of activism that, among other things, advocate for the preservation of queer safe spaces threatened by the pandemic.

sound zones heart beat

A number of geographically defined fields, each having an own character, materialize as sound bodies as we walk. They enter into dialogue with each other and their surroundings by contrasting different aesthetics of the digital as well as mechanical sounds with organic sounds. #post is an interactive transmedial soundscape turning the area around the feldfünf gallery into a playground.

The way players forge their own paths through the area shown in the digital interface and its related audio, highlights what a vital role players have within the experience, one that will inevitably affect results. The individual´s choice is critical to the outcomes as they move and negotiate between an established analogue world and the movable infinite digital one.

#post logo
meet the hyperreal @hashtagpost_hyperreal
Containing extracts of the sound pieces, and a location check-mark on the map to connect the digital to the analog location.

To talk about transit, postings, messages, the hybrid analog and digital movement the browser based geolocated tool Sonicmaps is providing the structure for a playful approach to sound, time and space as powerful game changers. Five (visible/+ ten invisible) fields of the soundscape are oscillating between being immersive and playful to generate new patterns. most important about the order of the fields, they are to be walked through without hierarchy! – Is the direction to perceive the environment clockwise? As the content of the pieces is designed in an order to receive best on your own intuition and movement patterns and to play without being influenced. Part of the queer and beyond exhibition is keeping it as hierarchy-less as possible. Keywords about directions can be shared in layers, shades and traces of you using communication structures such as hashtags or your choice (avatar…) to build up movement-, activity-, activism- or community- feeling…

hashtag window 1 gallery feldfünf plaza

Hashtags like in #post / #post_hyperreal and quotes on the windows are to connect to the virtual space and to open up your communication with and about the four fields + queerness: #if freedom is what queerness means to me #then #else #choose a hastag-hierarchy- or don’t.

humanoid, soundcollage, 1.40 min – about: #synchronisation #desynchronised #decolonized #movinganalogue #breathe #touch #hope #disgrace #love #intimacy #pride #shame #pain #pleasure #loveislove #talk #post #repost #post_hyperreal

chronoise, soundcollage, 1.28 min – about: #chronoise #entropy #patterns #vivavanitas #moving #movement #sensors #timeandspace #post #post_hyperreal time is fluctuating, flexible, expandable, solvent. Stillness and movement are timeless matters. how does time resist impositions of uniformity and coherence? The movement of you/the living clock will gyrate with momentum. From time to time a moment to experience silence…

HAL, concrète/postdigital- Soundcollage 1.44 – min about: fusion of my Krakow-City-Soundgraffito #nickasion (lovers at the station) with #pierreschaeffer #hal9000 #siri #signals #ai #voiceassistants #desynchronisation Bonustrack – bridge between plus & HAL –

Plus, + soundcollage/poem 2 min – about: #lgbtq+ #nature #freedom #liquid #nightswimming #water #existance #extensions #flesh #blood #skin #bacteria #fungus #downtoearth #makingkin #hierarchyless #conversation #post #post_hyperreal

POST DIGITAL

To me, the term post digital highlights the passing of time and shifting of perceptions since the beginnings of digitalisation. Space and time have now become a new order. Our world seems bigger but, at the same time, it becomes so much smaller with just the click of a button. We exchange information transculturally, limited to the boundaries of our four walls, with lightning speed this information and its connection travels, while we stay almost motionless. Without the actual movement between people and places our perception of time changes, the future begins to edit itself yet again. Experience and development slow down while automated, digital processes continue to optimize and quicken. Process becomes more efficient, dematerialized and new often unexpected surprises and consequences arise. Post digital art may solve the limitations created by the new order; chaos and desynchronization within our already oppressed archaic existing structures create new paths, that wrestle for a new freedom ever hopeful of amplifying feedback and continuing to keep (us) moving.

Sarah Wölker
Artist, Media-educator, Researcher and Scientific Associate
PKKB - Postdigitale Kunstpraktiken in der kulturellen Bildung / Postdigital Art Practices in Cultural Education
Fachhochschule Potsdam