Digital technologies are increasingly permeating all aspects of our lives. Self-learning programs based on algorithms not only influence our behavior but are also increasingly granted authority to make decisions that have far reaching consequences, not only for our individual lives but for society as a whole. How objective are these programs really, what laws do they follow, and who profits from them? In order to create rules for how to implement new technologies, we need a kind of knowledge that goes beyond how these technologies are used. The works by Katrin Hochschuh and Adam Donovan invite to deeply engage with these technologies in an aesthetic and sensual way.
Psychophysics Machines uses a number of robotic sound generating apparatus where the audio perceptual engine is questioned and also crumbled into a heightened otherness where our natural state of hearing is thrown out the window. It is in essence about creating a transformative experience only occurring within the here and now.
The robots evoke an otherness or unworldliness by using and enhancing certain acoustic physical effects that either don't exist in nature or are momentary.
The piece combines aspects of psychology and physics as concepts and mediums. The work is meant to be somehow impossible, unreproducible, un-recordable and transcendent to our everyday perception.
The apparatus used in Psychophysics Machines are DR. DOPPLERS MACHINE, CURIOUS TAUTOPHONE and MULTIPLEXING TAUTOPHONE.