SOBREPOSIÇÃO12

What are all the words and thoughts, in total, which have already been thought of and spoken in a language? This is the language’s territory.
And what is the territory of all thoughts and the sum of all the words that were never thought in this language?
Untranslatability is one of the great poetic truths, the way in which some spaces of a language will never be superposed with no other language.

This project started as a command for the Lobby of Swissnex Brazil and the Swiss Embassy in Rio de Janeiro 2016- focusing on immigration as a source of cultural exchange between Swiss and Brazilians.
The installation explores human relationships through the geographic distance between these two countries and the influence of communication media technologies.
Using language as a medium, it brings forth an intercultural dialogue amongst personalities with roots in the two countries while creating a connection between the soundscape of a language and the geographical context where it is spoken.
A specially developed algorithm acquires the specific sound qualities of the two countries’ main languages,
looking for aesthetic qualities and sound values that create identity and distinctively distinguish their sound character, in order to create a generative visual representation of the soundscape of each language and accent.