Your Motion Says

“It’s just a matter of deciding where to begin” written in shorthand text is rendered in neon. Each sculpture corresponds to an instrumental line of a song and reacts to the motion of passers by. The viewer completes the work with their presence, activating sound and light

Humans are touching, vibrating, feeling, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, vestibular beings. Upon contact we create static, when excited or afraid our pupils dilate and our skin prickles, our bodies are active and reactive. Through our sensory system we feel meaning in our world. Unlike our respiratory system, which is essential to survival, our sensory system is essential to being. The sensory system is a transducer that filters and relays information from the world outside to the mind inside. It is a distributed notion of the brain, with nerves and receptors constantly receiving information, passing energetically along our neural pathways and into our sensory cortex, without our conscious awareness.

As a viewer moves through the gallery space their passage is measured by the sensorimotor, which gauges space in relation to the body’s movement. It is well understood in the field of embodied cognition that perception of space is very much dependant on its relation to the body. Danae Valenza’s neon and sound work echoes the visitor’s movement, like an externalised representation of the sensory systems. The work swells up to meet the viewer and diminishes as they pass.

Text: Emily Cormack, Primavera Catalogue, MCA