All Signs Point to You is a multimedia installation focused on the individual differences in perception we each experience; the various elements in the work (light reflections, sound, and audience movement) are combined to emphasize this uniqueness of individual human experience. The work takes place in a darkened room, featuring a shallow pool across which reflections from small lanterns are viewed by the audience. Special laser-like audio speakers direct sound towards specific points in the room, designed to augment the visual experience.
The work was inspired by a personal eureka moment I had while spending time alongside the bayou in New Orleans at night. As I walked along the banks, I noticed that the lines of light reflection from the lampposts across the water all pointed directly to my own eyes, and followed me as I walked. When I sat down, the effect continued as I turned my head. What I experienced was a cone shaped array of reflections from all angles, all pointing directly towards me. This simple moment elucidated a fundamental element of reality, that everything I see (and hear) whether day or night, comes only from those light and sound waves that directly make contact with my own ears and eyes. And even though those sharing an experience generally see and hear the same things, no one is ever experiencing the exact same version of reality in terms of the stimuli they receive. The light and sound waveforms hit us at different times, having been through separate modulations from the environment, making each of our experiences slightly different.
In All Signs Point to You, this effect is presented in an ideal environment – a black bottom pool inside a dark room creates a perfect environment for experiencing the effect of reflections pointing directly towards one’s individual eyes. Custom ultrasonic speakers, which emit sound in a direct line like a laser, direct sound to specific locations alongside the pool inside of special walled-in viewing areas. When a viewer is outside the line of the “sound-laser” they hear nothing; when they walk into its path they suddenly hear the intended audio, coming directly from the same location where the lanterns are. It amplifies the visual experience that I’m intending to demonstrate, of each of the light sources casting a reflection line directly to one’s exact point in space. All viewers begin their experience in the controlled semi-enclosed areas after which they’re free to walk around the pool unguided, but now with a new perspective for experiencing the light reflections and sound in the room, which they now know is all their own.
BELOW IS A BASIC MOCKUP OF THE INSTALLATION