30.11.05 120 Thousand Ways to be Kept Awake.
The annoyance associated to an unavoidable noise (a dripping sink for example) has a continuous repercussion on our psyche, even if it overcomes our constant awareness. The artist Alexander Berman had in his rented house's bedroom a radiator which often emitted a clicking sound, heard in almost silence conditions, but mostly during the night, keeping him awake. After the landlord's refuse to repair the radiator, Berman has compiled an impressive report, digitally recording the emitted sounds during a period of 18 days, and then computing graphics plotted with a custom-built software. All the material, including a cd with many radiator's clicking audio samples has been sent to the landlord (no reply), but also showed as an installation at the Win-Win Gallery in Göteborg, entitled 120 Thousand Ways to be Kept Awake. The work shows the possibility of recording everyday life with unprecedented details, and then to exhibit it in public. This approach creates a sharing of a personal experience, that would have been hardly conceived in the past. The analysis and the documentation, in this case, exploit the technology to untangle a frustration, transforming it in a strong point. And this is obtained through the viewer's awareness that is empathetically abstracted.