OffScreen Virtues

Technological progress has given us tools to become more and more efficient, ensuring that no time is wasted. So now, we use every moment we get between important tasks and appointments to read an e-mail, glance at the news, rate a purchase, like a photo. The installation ‘Offscreen Virtues’ celebrates the absence of duty. 

It invites people to pause. To play. To get curious by single musical tones. And then learn how to control the poetic interplay of light and sound to produce harmonic tunes. The instrument in the installation has been designed to be used with phones. But, in order to play, we have turnoff our screens. Eight light sensors wait for sunlight to be reflected off the shiny surface of our phones, triggering signals that are transformed into analogue sound. And while we play a song or two, the installation invites us to reflect on the non-digital virtues of our phones.