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echo and narcissus (2011)
tensegrity sculpture and water reflection, project documentation

'echo and narcissus'

with iannis zannos and jeremy sarchet, we present our collaborative project: echo and narcissus. today we submit it to isea 2012, for installation in sep. 2012 in santa fe or albuquerque, nm.

update: the piece was accepted, but without any isea funding support, we regretfully decided to cancel our participation, and selected another venues for the piece: through the roadblocks at the evagoras lanitis centre, Limassol (cyprus).

'echo and narcissus' is a high, standing tensegrity sculpture swinging lightly in the breeze. it reflects in a pool, and these reflections sounds like surrounding, swift chirping swallows.

we will offer here links to relevant documents about 'echo and narcissus', the sculpture, the breeze, the reflection, the swallows, the process. they will reveal the principles and the poetry of the piece.

naturally this documentation will evolve as it relates to a work in progress while a venue is not fully known yet. we will post videos with qualified sound tracks as a demo of the performance to be expected, as well as of our progress.

current in-progress statement for echo and narcissus: the installation echo and narcissus is based on the graceful movement of a tensegrity structure, made of rods mutually supporting each other in suspension through interconnecting strings. the tensegrity is a light but resilient structure, and can be moved easily by the wind or by touching it. it can be likened to a bending flower, but also to a tower circled by swallows, as narcissus was circled by echo in ovid's poem. the installation uses the movement of the tower as reflected on water to create a soundscape of swallows flying around the tower. the swallow sounds stem from recordings made during the summer months from the last floor of an apartment building in corfu town during 2006 to 2011. thousands of swallows nest in corfu town during the summer. the relatively small number of cars, the narrow streets and numerous old buildings with tiled roofs present ideal conditions for the summer breeding period of these migratory birds. the piece invites the visitors to reflect on the fragility of the environment. it seeks to evoke multiple associations between forms and objects, that dissolve the boundaries between urban and natural, technological and poetical.

images of 'echo and narcissus' as work-in-progress in the design and prototyping phase

video of 'echo and narcissus' as work-in-progress in the design and prototyping phase: reflection in a pool, tensegrity sculpture and water in light breeze.