Apartment

2001

Martin Wattenberg (US)
Marek Walczak (US)
Jonathan Feinberg

Establishing an equivalence between language and space, "Apartment" connects the written word with different forms of spatial configurations. On blank screens, two viewers type in texts of their choice. Two-dimensional plans for an apartment, similar to blueprints, appear on each screen. The architecture is based on an analysis of the viewers' words, reorganizing them to reflect the underlying themes they express. On a middle screen a third, shared, apartment is built that represents the union of the words typed by both viewers.

In this way the viewers may have an unusual and inspiring conversation, interacting through both words and geometry. The final step in the piece is an animated three-dimensional version of the shared apartment, whose walls are created from images found on the internet.

"Apartment" is inspired by the idea of the memory palace. In a mnemonic technique from a pre-Post-It era. In the second century BC, the Roman orator Cicero imagined inscribing the themes of a speech on a suite of rooms in a villa, and then reciting that speech by mentally walking from space to space. Establishing an equivalence between language and space, "Apartment" connects the written word with different forms of spatial configurations.

Original commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence web site, with funds from the Jerome Foundation.