Ekklesia (motherboard mass)
by Kari Watson and Emily Harter
Ekklesia (motherboard mass) is a collaborative sculptural and sound installation by Kari Watson and Emily Harter. The work consists of six handbuilt terracotta pots modeled from Ancient greek red vases, which were each then wired with infrared proximity sensors. When activated, such as with a hand waved over the opening of the vase, the sensors trigger playback of fixed electro-acoustic sounds through a Max patch that is connected to an Arduino that sends sensor data through a serial connection. This project was conceptualized as an interactive piece, inviting the viewer to play one or several of the pots; in this, the installation functions as an instrument.
The vase is often metonymic for the (specifically female) figure, and when painted in a traditional Greek Red Vase style, brings about a superposition of figure-on-figure. It is nearly iconographic for the art history-museum world. These vases are arranged with linked handles, and can be displayed either in a line or a circle, resembling a sort of community or ritual gathering. This construction denies a traditional museum-style display, forcing them to be viewed as a collective whole rather than as individual objects.
The introduction of digital elements into ancient, academic objects recontextualizes them in a modern age. The sonic component speaks to this time-crunch, recalling a synthesizer played in an empty church. Each sound was initially composed with recorded voice which was digitally altered, at which point the original voice element was removed from the recording. The idea of the present-yet-absent figure both echoes that introduced by the vases and speaks to those who have gone unrecognized in the referenced historical traditions.