Anna Sopova
5-channel sound installation
2023
sculptures, found objects, speakers
Information like a puzzle. It can be compiled in any way and any disparate data. Apophenia is not only building a pattern in a chaotic structure, but rather it is trying to find relationships between disparate events and things in such a way that it can be put into a message. Mirror, key, hook, tooth. Like phishing of data, apophenia collects any random information, symbols, things or data that can be turned into a hypothesis. There isn't random information for law enforcement agencies when collecting intelligence. For them, the whole world is a paranoid race to find the missing puzzle or missing piece that can explain a theory or hypothesis.
European Media Art Festival № 36, Osnabrück, Germany 2023
A sculptural 5-channel sound installation. From each channel, you can hear archival recordings, for example, records from the listening devices of the NKVD (the Soviet Union secret police), or sounds from a shortwave Russian security forces radio station which waves are sometimes transmitted coded voice messages. It is known where the tower transmitting such signals is located, but no one will ever know who is the addressee of such an encoded message. Since it is possible to listen to such a signal anywhere in the world using a radio operating on the kHz wave. Among the sounds of radio waves and listening devices, you can hear various noises of the life of the city, the recording of such sounds was also used in the past by various security forces to create an encryption code. The architecture of the installation and the sculptures included in it may also be reminiscent of the old methods of encryption letters when some messages were transmitted by "nodes".