Offener Schaltkreis is a silent labyrinth created out of open copper trails on the floor and the walls of the gallery, carrying electrical signals of a multichannel sound repository. User can put wireless speaker on the copper trails to activate the sound, which changes in volume and melody as the speakers are moved around and put in different combination.
Within this installation OSK wanted to stress the simultaneity of different environments, just like resident and surroundings differ from place to place in a city. Therefore, Offener Schaltkreis is created as a model of a city. The experience of an urban environment is downscaled and transferred into a room. An experience depends on the activity of the visitor to explore the environment: if nothing is moved, the sounds stay calm and soft, but if cylinders are repositioned, the currently played sound material is modulated by increasing pitch and velocity. If nothing happens during a few minutes, the installation starts cooling down, back to the quietest, just like everything sleeps while nobody is there. Thus, they give the impression of a social structure: a sensitive, active and throbbing society.
Two year later, there is another sound installation similar to Offener Schaltkreis was created. It is a sound installation created by Zimoun called 25 woodworms in 2009. This sound installation is showing a small society of woodworms by using a microphone to enhance the sound of woodworms’ activity in a wood. To compare with Offener Schaltkreis, both of them have the time element, which gives the visitor the possibility to stay a longer time due possible curiosity over the development of sound. The difference between Offener Schaltkreis and 25 woodworms is that the first one use interactive art technology to represent the sound from human society by putting sound sources in different space points. Allowing the public to play and create new sound. Also the scale of the work is bigger. The later one is a sound installation based on live sounds of woodworms, and the scale is smaller.
Many visitor think that Offener Schaltkreis is a fun and interesting sound installation. It is an effective and attractive idea to creates a society by using sound to interact with people. Visitor become an author and constructs the sound with others to create new sound.
