THE MACHINE TO SHARE SECRETS

The machine of sharing secrets is a participative and collaborative project which consists on the development of small flying electroacoustic transducers, mainly using waste material, which will be built as a communication system to share secrets in the public space.

An electroacoustic transducer is a mechanism which transforms electricity into sound or sound into electricity. Using loudspeakers, microphones and helium balloons, we develop a system which participants can use to send and receive messages. The message´s audio signal will travel through a cable attached to a microphone on one end and a loudspeaker on the other one. This loudspeaker will hang from a balloon which will be suspended two or three meters from the ground. A similar system but the other way round (loudspeaker closer to ground, microphone closer to balloon) will be set up so that another user can receive that message. That means, when a balloon gets closer to another one, the message sent from one end will be received on the other one. The wind or airflow will add a random factor to the system.

These gadgets will be build as an extension or prosthesis to the human body, especifically to the auditory and vocal systems.

The project La máquina de compartir secretos will be developed in two parts. In both of them, the integration between participants, developers and collaborators will be very important.

The first part will be a workshop, open to the public, in which participants will think and develop proposals around two topics:

1. Use of public space exposed to social control systems.
2. Human body transmutation in the techno-society. Gadget, prosthesis and body extensions which mediate human communication.

During the workshop, the following questions will be considered: Are we free to express ourselves and share information in the public space? Are the new information and communication technologies secure and guarantee privacy to the users? From there we will think together how our secrets sharing machine will be.

Based on these questions the workshop participants will learn basic electronics through the use of home-made and waste materials to build small electroacoustic transducers.

The second part of the project will start once the machine is ready. At this point we will choose a place in the city which we may consider interesting as a social centre to perform an art intervention using the gadgets developed during the workshop.

The machine of sharing secrets is an art action and a poetic reinterpretation about new control technologies and the mediation of social communication.