AN EXAMPLE HANDSHAKE
collaboration with ECKS-EN-IS by Anne de Boer
2016

Created for the exhibition
​Liquid Love
curated by PANDO collective
EnclaveLab, London
August 2016

randomised digital audio
played via two channel speakers
for 3.5 min each time

'An Example Handshake' breaks down various pop songs and computer sounds including those of old modems, that make use of the telephone dial sound to initiate a conversation or 'handshake' with each other in order to establish an internet connection. This are then given to Anne de Boer's bot ECKS-EN-IS to control. Two separate audio folders are randomised and played by the system in real time throughout an evening, every time lasting the length of a commercial song. 

Alluding to the backdrop of a machine being operated, sounds which wouldn't normally be heard by a system that tries to run smoothly and without being noticed for what it is but what is wants to achieve are exposed and interfered. The 3.5min song is no longer a vehicle for manipulation, for persuasion to consume, dance, drink, buy, relax, cry, forget, but is broken down into the fragments of its own making, allowing for its attempts to connect to show. Cadences don't conclude, crescendos don't hit their climaxes and sentences don't have an end. Between broken beats words start to emerge, asking the listener to hear, to stay, to tune the body and perform the words of the faceless system greeting him. 

PANDO is a curatorial collective investigating proxy politics as an artistic counter strategy. A proxy is defined as a decentralised and immaterial object; an agent of withdrawal that allows for anonymous re-entry. 











































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