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CATALYST 2

This project was a sequel of CATALYST and was created using found objects, internet video, wood, circuitry, and Max MSP.

The original CATALYST plinth was transported to the UK and reimagined for this particular work. We built a second wooden plinth to hold an old computer monitor and computer speakers that displayed a super-cut of famous YouTube apologies. The two plinths were positioned within a gallery space four feet apart, fostering a tension between physical presence and digital spectacle. Similarly to CATALYST, the knobs on the main plinth were wired to distort different aspects of the video and audio, presenting thousands of possible augmentations and subsequent distortions.

When participants entered the gallery they were invited into the performative world of online remorse and encouraged to adjust the knobs freely. What one participant did was left unchanged for the next participant and so on; connecting each past participant with each future participant in a timeline of potential rearrangement and chaos.

As an interactive audio/visual sculpture, CATALYST 2 interrogated the performative and often commodified space of public/influencer apologies. The project invited reflection upon our individual relationships with the internet and personality, inviting participants to examine their own complicity and engagement with the internet’s cycles of confession and consumption.

CATALYST 2 debuted at Serving the People Foundation’s inaugural London, UK exhibition, “A Body to Which We All Belong” in November 2024.

by Nano Clow and Factor Eight