Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Visitors are welcomed to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s exhibition by a conveyor belt with a computerized scanner where they are invited to place all sorts of small objects that they can find in their pockets. Once these pass under the scanner, images of the items are then projected on the conveyor belt alongside objects of other participants. Please Empty Your Pockets, 2010, is one of the thirteen artworks in this first solo exhibition of Lozano-Hemmer in Australia, throughout which the artist uses records and repetition of data such as sound and images captured by means of advanced surveillance or biometric technologies.

Most of the pieces on view generate collective and poetic experiences; for example, Microphones, 2008, is an installation of vintage microphones modified to record the voice of a visitor and immediately play the previous person’s contribution, creating a sense of copresence. Lozano-Hemmer’s deployment of new media in this show creates striking forms of relation between art and audience. Pulse Index, 2010, is a particularly affecting installation that depicts an animated skin landscape of visitors’ fingerprints, which have been captured by a sensor equipped with a digital microscope and camera, then projected as a composite that pulses at the pace of participants’ heartbeats. Visitors become the artwork itself: They act as performers improvising sounds, jumping, or making funny movements with their bodies to activate the pieces. In effect, “Recorders” is a site full of technology that functions as the interface for the encounters of art, self, and the kinetic force of collective memory.