Strange Attractor explores the tensional field which cleaves together and apart binaries such as analog and digital, inside and outside, order and chaos. As a large-scale interactive installation, it relies for its actualization on the physical presence and participation of its audience. Donning yellow overboots, participants enter a wall-to-wall, shallow pool containing 48 float-operated micro-switches arranged in a grid at three-foot intervals. The meandering of participants within the pool creates ripples on its surface which briefly activate the micro-switches. The result is a series and/or group of tones with each switch triggering a unique sound within a system comprised of computer, synthesizer, amplifier and speakers. The end result is an intriguing mix of cacophonous and harmonious washes of sound alternately experienced as a chance-activated or pre-determined musical composition. It is up to the listener to determine the difference between the two and thus the nature of pattern itself. At another level of interpretation participants witness and contribute to the conversion of analog phenomena (rippling water) into digital impulses (computer/synthesizer) and back to analog outputs (sound waves). This is precisely what happens with hearing and speaking and thus can be thought of as an insertion of the individual into the physiological feedback loop that makes possible verbal and aural communication, albeit at a different scale. The effect for the participant is one of walking through a large-scale model of the ear with the switches corresponding to the cilia that line the cochleae, with the participant’s own role corresponding to that of an external stimulus. Insides are thus folded into outsides and vice versa with the immateriality of the distinction becoming another experiential dimension of the piece.
