nyu / interactivetelecommunicationprogram / softnessofthings / fall '06 /

instructor: despina papadopoulos

xin roman - mike bukhin - carolina pino

 

0. Religion is a network. It is a community and it is a connection to a higher power.

1. When people pray, they may be praying in proximity to others or alone.

 

2. When they wash their hands in ritual prayer, they may or not be alone.

Wudu prayer preparations (2:51 mins)
can be made once per day.

 

3. People praying can see the people next to them And they feel g-d. Muslims especially all pray at the same time, so there is some knowledge that there are others elsewhere.
 

4. Religion is about community. It is an invisible network.
 

 

 
5. We're interested in this network, this religion as community. We're interesting in giving it tangible visibility. Showing it to people who are a part of it. We want them to watch it ebb and flow. We want to show it to people who are outside of the network to give those individuals a glimpse of the network. Oftentimes we only see a single node and aren't aware of the network.

 

Proposals 6. Sound. Prayers involve sound. Chanting, singing, praying. We'd like to visualize the collective prayers from multiple mosques and visualize them external to a mosque. So as more people gather and pray, the visualization will show the critical mass of prayer. Even if the muslim population is small in an area, this external visualization will expose the whole network.

 

-references: "Invisible Geographies:
New Sound Art from Germany" - sound exhibition at the kitchen.

 

 

screening outside the mosque

with the visualization of the following data:

-number of mosques (in certain area)

-sound made by community when praying (to have a sense of number of people, same time..)

- time (same time per day when this community pray)

                         

 

   

7. Hand washing. Giant bowl which with show all the people washing hands before prayer. This could be built at a smaller scale.

...following the idea that when praying you are not alone, and thinking about the "magic" or mistery of this fact, we thought about having this huge cube (would represent the space that make this community apart) with washing sinks like bordering its whole perimeter (wudu). when 4 people, 1 per each side, get together in a sort of coincidence, a sign (light and/or sound) would come out the shape.

see sketches below:

-we talked about how interesting was that once per day muslims had to wash their forearms and hands. so we thought about water as an conductive element to use in a kind of installation/sculpture.
 
n -buckets or sinks like objects fill with water (sensors) would send voltage to a single other object that would (if people get together at the same time in this action) send a visual/sound signal for us to see.
 
-cube of large dimensions for people in each side, could not be able to see each other. When 4 people get together at the same time (randomly), they will be able to make the signal possible.