We’ve featured some works of Marco Canevacci and Marco Barotti last January: Sound of Light. With Breathing Volume, they continue making immersive environments. Where Sound of Light sonified the weather by looking at the sky and the sunlight, Breathing Volume plays with the notion of space in an audio-visual context. For five minutes, the public is embraced between breathing walls, constantly changing their physical volume. This creates the perception of being inside a living organism.
Four ventilators make the lungs breathe in the same way humans do, and subwoofers transform the pulsing bass frequencies into the soul of the organism. Breathing Volume unexpectedly steers the focus from what surrounds us, to what is immediate, here and now, offering a distorted reflection on our relationship with space, its distance and extension. Again, as with Sound of Light, it reminds me of Space Odyssey, this time very obviously, als because of the black speaker-monolith at the end of the space.