Artist Statement

Let me walk in your shoes for a day, while you walk in mine. I can hear all of your conversations, intimate and banal; I hear your silences, while simultaneously, you listen to mine. I know where you travel; I listen to your friends, your family, and those who meet you for the first time. We exchange our lives aurally and experience each others’ realities while remaining fixed in our own physical existence. The ability to understand another’s location begins through direct immersion into a new environment. To create meaning, one must be able to experience empathy, an exchange or sensitivity that could be lost in this world of strangers and friends.

In this artwork, pairs of visitors are equipped with mobile telephony garments that remotely transmit their own auditory environments to each other. Through this interactive audio exchange, which oscillates between disorientation, intimate surveillance and a new form of communication, the artwork questions our relationship to space and place, sound and technology.

Collaborating with the Mixed Reality Lab.

• Kelly Jaclynn Andres (Canada) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores issues surrounding technology, portability and location.     kellyandres.com    For an ISEA2008 interview with the artist see:  isea2008.wordpress.com/tag/kelly-andres

The artist would like to thank the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and SingTel.