Voice amplitude directly controls the scale of the projected figure.
Interactive video installation · 2006
Authority
An interactive video installation in which the volume of a visitor’s voice alters the projected scale of a confrontational police officer.
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Project typeArtwork · Installation / environment
ThemesEmbodied & haptic interaction · Speculative & critical design
FormInteractive video installation
Developed2006
InteractionVoice amplitude / projected scale
ContextPower, authority and language
01 · Proposition
Power changes scale when the visitor speaks
Inside a small dark room, the visitor confronts a life-size police officer whose apparent authority expands through silence and contracts through response.
The projected figure addresses the visitor with insistent questions. If the visitor remains silent, the officer grows larger. When the visitor begins to answer, the volume of their voice reduces his scale in real time.
Authority turns an abstract relation of power into a spatial and bodily negotiation. Voice is not treated as dialogue alone: it becomes a measurable force that reorganises the image and the visitor’s position within the encounter.
02 · Experience
Silence enlarges; voice resizes
- 01
Confront
The visitor enters alone and meets a police officer projected at human scale.
- 02
Be addressed
The officer speaks in an invented language and grows while the visitor remains silent.
- 03
Respond
A microphone measures vocal intensity; speaking reduces the officer’s projected size.
03 · Reflection
Authority is produced within a relation
The installation does not represent power as something permanently owned by one figure. It stages power as unstable, circulating and responsive.
The work emerged from an encounter at a European immigration office in which incomprehension and raised voices abruptly changed the balance between an officer and a visitor. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s account of dispersed power, Authority transforms that experience into an interaction where scale, language and vocal presence continually renegotiate who appears to hold control.
An invented, Dadaist-inflected language prevents the officer from belonging to one country.
Presented in Austria, Germany, Spain and Serbia during 2007.
Credits & archive
Project record
- Concept, interaction and direction
- Ricardo O’Nascimento
- Performance
- Manuel Klein
- Filming support
- Jona Hoier and Andreas Zingerle
- Technical support
- Andreas Weixler
- Make-up
- Fabiana Shizue
- Development context
- Interface Culture, Kunstuniversität Linz
References
Documentation from the project archive.
