Péter Kiss
Detektor

Mechanical, electrical, chemical structure,
steel, copper, plastic, chemical constituents, 1995-1996




Detector is a mobile, electronic, interactive medium, which functions as a sensory organ.


Thin wires are suspended from the ceiling to form a square-ruled pattern. Close to the floor, various "signalling" devices are attached (radio, brush-paint, compass-magnet) to the end of the wires. Upon entering the room, we must cut through this dark, only partially lighted jungle of wires. By our motion, these pendulums are unavoidably moved and the suspended devices are put into action (the radio is turned on, the brush starts to paint, etc.). Our movement can be traced from outside the room on a map-like LED board: the lighting up of the LEDs, also arranged to form a square-ruled pattern, mark the movement of the person inside the room.


Like the device and the LED-board, the person himself becomes a detector. This three-fold relationship between detector and detected could be interpreted both as a physical and as a social model. "Both observation and description are limited in their fineness, and this sets a limit to the process of dekoding. We can liken this to the presence of a basic level of noise under the message. We ourselves provide a grosser element of random noise in practice by our experimental errors." (Jacob Bronowski, The Logic of Experiment, in: A Sense of the Future. Essays in Natural Philosophy, The MIT University Press, Cambridge, Massachussets and London, England, 1977, p.52)


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