Artistic Statement
The Imaginometric Society is proud to share with all PQ19’s participants and visitors its PRAGUE EXPERIMENT. By establishing a new scienze, Imaginometrics, our PRAGUE EXPERIMENT will be able to detect and measure visitor’s imagination. To fulfill this impossible task, we had to conceive a new scientific tool: the Imaginometer. In the core of our instrument we will share with our visitors the first principle of Imaginometrics: Imagination only exists trough relationship between human beings.
The Imaginometer
Our IMAGINOMETER will present itself as a Cleanroom space, partially translucent. It will generate various kinds of outputs, and there will be different ways to interact with it. Visitors will be able to observe Imaginometer’s functioning, contribute to shape it, or be fully engaged in our experiment, living a personalized experience. Visitors individual imagination will interact with the everchanging imagination of our performers, following the second principle of Imaginometrics: Imagination increases by reflecting itself.
Steps
We will run our PRAGUE EXPERIMENT, concentrating on a visitor at a time.
Step 1: Once admitted in the check-in area, a member of our team will help the visitor wear a series of biometric sensors, and then a 30 second measure will be recorded; at the end of the recording process, sensors will be removed, and the visitor will be provided with bone conduction headphones.
Step 2: Visitor will be admitted inside the core of our instrument, where he/she will share the space for two minutes with five performers, while a soundscape will be transmitted to the headphones.
Step 3: Visitor will proceed tothe check-out area, and will be monitored again.
Step 4: Once out of the Performative Machine, each visitor will be provided with an unique indentification numer.
After the Quadriennal, accessing our site www.imaginometricsociety.com and logging in with his personal number, the visitor will be able to hear a memory of the soundscape explored during the experiment. Condition will be different Imagination cannot be reproduced.
The Performative Machine
At the core of our instrument lays a performative machine, because it is impossible to detect imagination without creating imagination. This is the reason why we will put our five performers and the visitor in a similar condition, the unexpected. Just before the visitor’s entrance, we will communicate to the performers the “imaginative act” they should next perform; the list of acts is unknown to performers, and the choice is casual. This will make every act unique, different from all the others and not repeatable. Visitor will later be able to access a memory of the experiment, witnessing the third principle of Imaginometric: Imagination can only be recreated.
The Human Data Recorders
Our IMAGINOMETER will be connected to the overall creative energy produced by the Quadriennal, through a series of antennas, a group of five performers. These Human Data Recorders will record sound proofs in various spots of the Quadriennal, and will transmit them to our space. These sound proofs will constitute one of the layers of the sound map the visitor will explore through the bone conduction headphones, supplied fot the Experiment. A the same time, HDD will collect answers to our Five questions about Imagination. which we will store in our experiment’s database.
The Soundscape
Trough bone conductions headphones, each visitor will be able to explore a unique soundscape; sonification of biometric parameters will be conbined to sonification of the huge creative energy, produced by the Quadriennal.
The first layer will be composed with the sound materials collected by our Human Data Recorders and will be refreshed every day. It represents a measure of the “collective imagination”. The second layer will be personalized by applying a sonification process on the biometric parameters that have been measured in the CHECK-IN space; this layer will change every time a visitor begins the cycle and represents a measure of the “individual imagination”. Finally, the movement of the visitor inside the PERFORMATIVE MACHINE, will influence the rendering of the soundscape. The visitor will act as a performer; the more the visitor will move, the bigger will become the part of the soudscape he/she will be allowed to discover such as enlarging and exploring its own imagination. We will store all the soundscapes on our website, where they will be downloadable as a personal “sonic report” on the imagination experiment carried out in our stand once the Quadriennal has closed.
The Team
Our Imaginometric society in Prague will count: 5 performers, 3 controllers, 2 carers, 5 Human Data Recorders.
Every half hour, 2 carers will swap with 2 Performers. Every hour and a half, 5 performers will swap with 5 Human Data Detectors.