Photophonia is an installation inspired by an invention by Alexander Graham Bell (1880) using light as a sound transmission channel. Rid of the decorum and the discourse on innovation, Photophonia leads back to a raw and crude idea of technology, which can be seized and transformed into a poetic and political gesture. 

The project in brief:

The installation uses the movement of two flashing lights as sound transmitters. The circular movement of the mirrors around the bulbs produces a hypnotic sound vibration. The reception, made possible by small solar panels connected to an amplifier, produces a noisy, raw and yet fascinating result. This protocol offers a potential of construction and propagation of small networks whose manufacture is accessible to everyone. The question of the codification of information underlies this creation, notably by articulating the politics of data and the plasticity of light, its universality and its ephemeral beauty…