esclapse
Sleep experiment/ Sound piece transmitted over phone lines
Automated-calling system- Twilio
Call duration: 2’15”
2018
This project was created for the show apple in dream mode curated by John Xaviers at Mumbai Art Room. It is a sleep experiment only accessed by people visiting the gallery where they fill a Google form in a laptop. The form requires to fill-in their contact number, e-mail ID, sleep timings and other details related to their sleeping habits. They receive the sound work on their phone through an automated calling system, which calls them at their particular sleeping time filled in the form. Here, the sound becomes an artwork which the listener experiences in their personal space outside the boundaries of the art space.
The sound piece played in the automated call:
esclapse is a neological term defined as the transition from waking life to sleep stimulated by the use of phone while falling asleep. During the slow fall into sleep, there is a lapse in the consciousness that is neither completely awake, nor completely in dream state, it is lingering in-between, intermixed with the physical and virtual cohabitation.
Through the medium of automated-calling system to transmit esclapse, I’m questioning and pushing the thin line between art and life by interrupting the listener’s personal space of sleep and/or dream by calling them late into the night- the phone and the night-time being intimate temporal spaces. The sound, that is my voice recording simulated as an ASMR experience, attempts at producing fictional imaginations and visuals through words. The sound inhabits the esclapse, and lies floating within the lucid dreaming space. It allows for verbally constructed visuals, further aided by the phone-call, to affect the dreams of the listener; the threshold of waking life and sleep opens a narrow gap for the words to flow and seep into the consciousness of the listener.
esclapse led to the ongoing project —out-of-line— in 2019.
Selected call recordings:
