HoboEye Art:
Mariana Manhães, Brazil

Artist Statement: My work is an intersection of artistical and technological experimentation that takes form in different types of media. My formal interest in movement, materials, behaviour, language and imagination is coupled with an intuitive way of inventing intricated systems that can lead to the production of drawings, technical sketches, manipulated photographs and organic machines with traces of human/animal behaviour.

My process consists on the appropriation of my everyday visual life images, like antique teapots, my studio doors, clouds in the sky or anything that I intuitively associate with conceivable language patterns. If the project leads to the construction of a machine, I capture images with a video camera, making them move by pulling strings while recording. During the editing process, I transform movements into gestures and give my voice to the objects which therefore talk in an invented dialect.

The videos are connected to devices controlled by the animation’s sounds and/or movements. Electronic circuits attached to the videos perceive such stimuli and make the body of the work react to them. Some machines can also behave associated to others, symbiotically, connected by cables, exchanging commands with one another.

As works are not interactive, the viewer is disturbed by their autistic behaviour and can initially feel like an intruder in a world where things happen even if he is not watching. By psychologically entering the piece, he tries to decipher its irregular movements, make sense of its complexity and precariousness which reminds him the imperfections of language and communication.

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