Threshold

JOHANSSON PROJECTS, OAKLAND, CA | 2013

"... Tamara Albaitis' interactive sound drawings invite the viewer to navigate through an artery of aural jungles. As a lo-fi contrast to O'Brien and Benson, Albaitis appropriates audio cable that crawl up the walls, budding clusters of speakers that saturate the atmosphere with sounds of a more tangible world." - Kimberly Johansson

SOUND: Electro-magnetic sounds coming from in and around the building, laced within the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Inspiration | Concept: The space was long and skinny. Further emphasizing this long, skinny characteristic of the space was a wall, bifurcating the space with 5 walk-through arches carved out of it. I took electro-magnetic recordings from around the building and fashioned the sound to the beat of a heartbeat. When contemplating the piece, I would oscillate through the little archways, weaving back and forth then looping back, like an extended figure-8. I thought of walking meditations... and the way we weave through extremes, back and forth... with the goal of equilibrium in sight. I decided that the "heart" of the space would logically exist in the very middle of the space, so the 3rd archway.

I’m fascinated by the concept of a thresholds, leading from one place to the next - holding in on one side, keeping out on the other. Further, I romanticize the inevitability that life can’t live without moving through thresholds - from one place to another - So is anything really separate? My instincts plainly say no, but we need these distinctions between this (place) and that (place) - it gives meaning and coherence. It gives the interconnectedness definition. Strange. Beautiful.

White huddles and gathers towards the black, the black collects and clings to the white. They need each other and the heartbeat continues.