Haptisizer = haptic + synthesizer. For creating your own sounds in a collective experience.
Listen to the English (original) version:
How does it work?
Record your own sounds.
Step up to the microphone and touch the two metal plates that lay next to each other. Make sounds into the microphone – sing, whistle, speak. Then remove your hand from the plates.
Play music with your hands.
Keep one hand on the tape attached to the canvas, and with the other, freely touch the painting to explore how the sounds change.
Try playing with others.
See what happens when you hold hands and use the instrument together.
Note: People with a pacemaker should not use this installation directly.
This interactive installation combines a painting – a maze on canvas – with a sound synthesizer and microphone. To interact with it, you have to make any sound you want into the microphone, speak, sing, mutter, so that later, when you touch a line on the painting, you evoke these sounds, transformed and reinterpreted by the algorithm, thus creating your very own sound composition.
The painting was created jointly with Louis’s studio workshop participants and was made with conductive paint, so touching the lines allows you to send an electrical impulse to the synthesizer.
The painting’s starting point was the work of Polish artist Waclaw Szpakowski (1883-1973), who developed a series of drawings that he called “rhythmic lines” and described them as a kind of monophonic sound that, instead of being perceived by hearing, can be perceived visually.
In Louis’s work, the composition becomes polyphonic because it includes the voices of multiple contributors.
This work results from Louis’s practice of sharing original creative tools and making them available for broader use. The artist invites us to create together, leaving a wide field for our experimentation and creative expression, both earlier in the painting part and now in creating sounds and interacting with the installation.
The work was created under the supervision of Pawel Janicki and realized thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage as part of the Impulses program run by WRO Art Center.
Vitalina Louis Mahomedova is a young Ukrainian artist who has been a resident at WRO since 2022, where they specialize in creating interactive sound installations and lead Sunday workshops for children.
Louis is a versatile craftsperson with a formal education in the restoration of paintings. They work with various materials, including wood, metal, and clay ceramics. They are also a hairdresser and tattoo artist, and they are currently pursuing a jewelry creation course at SWRAiZ College in Wrocław.
At the WRO Art Center, Louis is developing their interests and skills in robotics, programming and designing interactive media installations under the guidance of Paweł Janicki. Their installations have been designed to captivate both children and adults, inviting audiences to reconnect with the sense of wonder and imagination often associated with childhood.
Through their work, Louis aims to remind people of the joy and meaning found in seemingly nonsensical things during childhood – elements we often overlook in adulthood. Their art practice emphasizes the importance of cooperation and interaction, encouraging individuals to come together to create or make something work as a community.
