Muhammad Hafiz | Designatum
Statement
Designatum is an interactive installation, using input from users to build random spatial networks out of its web-like internal structure. As a user enters a sentence (via the attached keyboard), a microcontroller processes their given information: breaking the sentence into its individual words. It then scatters the words within itself, creating a new and random pattern of electro-luminescent wires, connecting the LCDs displaying the words of their original sentence — the original context is discarded as obsolete. When idle, Designatum cycles automatically between a random flickering and a directed traversal of the electro-luminscent wires — creating a visual interest that attracts the users’ attention.
The linear narrative created by the user is deconstructed, it’s initial meaning and context withdrawn. Randomly generating a spatial syntax illuminated by the connectivity between the displayed words, Designatum illustrates a manifestation of cyberspace. As cyberspace draws symbolic patterns from random connections between the words and symbols we use in daily life, Designatum dares us to find new meanings in our deconstructed sentences.
Designatum shows us that meaning can exist in the arbitrary connections between our symbols, independent from their contextual arrangement. Our words are quantum symbols, signifiers, given meaning only when observed: creating concepts that only exist while pausing beside our physical reality.