SpamScape (2005)

SpamScape is based on the proliferation of words commonly used in the electronic mails spams. The spams are these advertising messages, not solicited and sent massively via emails. Their number is huge and they would now represent 80 % of the electronic communications. A Spam is sent on average to a million recipients. Filters anti-Spam are setup to detect and block instantaneously these identical messages. In reaction, the spams now contain all kinds of tricks like the inclusion of random texts, the combination of small the and capital characters, the permutation of letters or the use of graphically similar signs.

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Beyond the contents of these advertising messages, it is the combination of massive proliferation and use of random letters which interest Pascal Dombis. In SpamScape, he facilitates the proliferation of words including in these spams, until saturating completely the screen. It is the "black out" obtained by the accumulation of the same word which ends up the proliferation and starts another sequence instantaneously using a different word. Each sequence has its own rhythm and movement. Pascal Dombis' visual forms emerge out of the enforcement of autonomous and simple rules. They are not intentionally programmed.

SpamScape functions like a pulsation of video sequences. The words get de-structured and trigger new moving graphic images, from the viewer. In front of the screen, there are some sensors that detect the viewer's presence. When he gets closer to the screen to have a more detailed view of the image, the viewer triggers off the increase of the video rhythm as well as the sound volume. Spamscape plays with the forward/backward movement which finally tempts viewers to try and dive into it. The more he gets closer, the more the video speeds up until it becomes very difficult to look at it (black & white flicker effect, ghost images …). Visualizing such images is based on a principle which is at odds with what happens in the spectacle of a classical picture

SpamScape soundtrack was composed by Thanos Chrysakis, a London-based musician of Greek origin. Without seeking to illustrate the video, he has composed a sound structure according to the rhythmical pace and textures of the moving images. He combined Electronic generated microsonorities, piano and low-pitched string sounds. Thanos Chrysakis approached the phenomenon of Synchresis, by creating a mental fusion of visual and audio, in order to reinforce the feeling of immersion and confrontation to the screen created by the video.

SpamScape is a work on legibility. What can one read and decode from an excessive process, whether it is an abusive use of email system or a graphic proliferation of messages? But where the spam's goals are to make the reader confuse the advertising message with the one usually exchanged, Pascal Dombis and Thanos Chrysakis try to reveal different sensational environments (vertigo, serenity, vortex, spell, curse, alacrity, infinitude, dejà vu experiences of non structuring structures) which are not solely caused by optical or audio illusions or - paradoxically - by purely technological artefacts

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