Waiting for Bárðarbunga
Installation by François Quévillon explores the subject of monitoring in nature with technology, with a computer that monitors and displays looping videos of remote volcanic areas of Iceland:
Waiting for Bárðarbunga is made of hundreds of video sequences which are presented according to the evolution of a statistical model that integrates data about the state and activity of the computer that presents them : temperature of components, fan speed and energy consumption. The video database consists of stationary camera shots that last a few seconds each. Most of them can be seamlessly looped and sometimes evoke remote webcams watching isolated areas. The audiovisual sequences are interconnected one to the other inside a rhizomatic structure. They are grouped and linked according to formal, conceptual, location-based and event-based characteristics. Amongst others, they show rivers under surveillance, glaciers breaking into drifting icebergs, foggy landscapes, hissing steam vents, boiling mud and geothermal power plants. The non-linear audiovisual piece evolves based on a probabilistic system influenced by real-time information coming from the computer’s sensors. According to the amplitude of their variation and the correlations between the types of data, what the viewer experiences ranges from comtemplative spaces where time seems to be suspended to energy-charged audiovisual blasts.
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