Luci, sin nombre y sin memoria

José Manuel Berenguer (ES)

POSTCITY, Bunker, Säulenhalle/Paketspeicher

Luci reproduces the functioning of a self-organizing system inspired by the behavior of fireflies in south-east Asian mangrove swamps. It has been observed that when the male launches an intermittent signal the female responds with a similar signal. At first, the emissions tend towards similarity before finally matching entirely. This is just an example of what is a general characteristic of nature: the existence of coupled oscillators, systems that tend to stabilize in certain, periodic sequence states as long as fluctuations sufficiently powerful to interrupt the stability of these configurations are not produced.

Luci consists of 64 units, each composed of 5 transmitters, sensitive to light and sound whose rhythmic behavior configures innumerable, chaotic patterns that tend towards stability. The individual components lack information regarding the behavior of the whole and the behavior of Luci is manifestly more complex than that of its components. The alteration of the ambient luminosity produced by the intervention of the visitor stimulates the communication of the components, provoking a new coupled configuration. Although the polyrhythmic patterns of adaptation are not always equal, and despite the fact that the starting points and routes may be essentially different, they always end in the same place. Luci is a proof that the world is full of clocks that tend to coincide and whose heartbeats generate a sound of universal dimensions that give us an idea of the order that we believe we perceive in nature.

Luci is, in the final instance, an allusion to the irreversibility of nature and the absolute security of death.

 

Project Credits:

Biography:

José Manuel Berenguer (ES) (Barcelona, 1955) is the director of En Red O-Simposio of Música Electroacústica and co-director of Sonoscop – Orquestra del Caos, with headquarters in the CCCB. He is the president of the International Conference on Electro-acoustic Music and of CIM/UNESCO and is a member of the Académie International of Musique Electroacoustique/Bourges. As professor of Digital Sound he collaborates with diverse Universities and Institutions for artistic research.

Inter-media Artist, founder of Côclea and Orquestra del Caos, he was the designer and the person responsible for Laboratory of Sound and Music of the CIEJ of the Caixa Foundation.