The audio-sculptural installation, co-produced with sound artist Daniel Meir, focuses on city-center telephone exchange buildings. Due to technological changes, these former communication and intelligence hubs have become obsolete, sold by the privatized national telephone company, and are now empty, slated for demolition or adapted for alternative uses.
The installation spans five sculptures; abstract models of some of the dozens existing architectural building types, which received close architectural attention by the state′s architects, who refused to treat them as generic ′′buildings for machines,′′ and insisted that each will ′′derive′′ from its site. Ministry pressure eventually led to the adaption of duplicated models, a method which became dominant with the privatization of the services.
Cast in concrete but hollow, each of the sculptures emits a unique sound, based on original samples recorded in the respective building. Representing the different environments and unique reverberation of the individual empty halls, each track is repeated and duplicated several times to the point of tonal abstraction. The work manifests the negative space of these structures and traces absence. The tension between the sealed Pavilion and the hollow sculptures resonates with the fundamental difference between highly secured contemporary data centers, and soon-to-be-diminished telephone exchanges around the world.