_traces_

Streets, avenues, crossroads and markets are urban spaces used by people to go from one place to another. In these locations people meet, communicate and leave little marks of their passage. The street is a voluntary and involuntary forum of communication, filled with a massive amount of languages, expressions and signs.

Graffiti is a very direct and clear way of communicating anger, poetry or frustration. But dirt, traces of blood, pieces of an accident, and a lot more can also be considered as signals, more or less noble, of communication present in the streets.

_traces_ invites the visitor of our installation to participate in an interactive walk through a series of signs, words or traces of communication, photographically collected in the streets of the neighbourhood or town where the installation is being presented.

Trough several set-ups in different countries we made grow our archive of pictures with traces from cities all over the world. We would like to develop a second version of the installation in which the visitor himself can connect between all the traces found in each city. It could be a way to keep our archive never ending.

History

• In October 2005 _traces_ was shown for the first time in the Maison des Arts of the Brussels neighbourhood Schaarbeek.
• In April 2006  _traces_ was shown in the Amsterdam based Brakke Grond, during the festival ‘Victorian Circus’.
• In June 2006 _traces_ was shown at the Alkantara festival in Lisbon, Portugal.

Tech Set Up

1. During long walks in the city we take a series of 3 pictures of every trace we find.
2. The picture series are stocked on a computer and a video rapidly projects them on a screen.
3. When the visitor of the installation approaches the screen the rapid switch slows down.
4. By moving back and forwards in front of the screen the visitor can discover the details of every picture.

Visuals

Here’s some example of the photo series that were projected at Alkantara in Lisbon.