Roc Parés, Mexico City, 1968.
Research artist in interactive communication. Doctor in Audiovisual Communication (UPF, 2001), Bachelor of Fine Arts (UB, 1992). Professor at Pompeu Fabra University and Member of the National System of Art Creators of Mexico. His artistic works have been presented in museums, art centers and festivals in Europe, America and Asia. He has published with British Computer Society, Academic Press, MIT Press, among others. Committed to an interdisciplinary culture, which he defends for its emancipatory potential, Parés has spent thirty years exploring the intersections between art, science, technology, thought and society.
Work at the collection: Doble Consciència
Doble Consciència, 2020
Doble Consciència is an interactive audiovisual installation, inspired by the stereoscope, invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone, during the first third of the 19th century. Paradoxically, while Wheatstone studied how binocular vision allows us to perceive two different images as a single “solid” object, Parés’s intention is to experiment with binocular rivalry as a way of deconstructing and questioning individual subjectivity: hacking into vision to hack into consciousness. Currently, stereoscopy is used in cartography, surgery, astronomy, microscopy and virtual reality, but the pairs of discrepant images, seen through conventional devices, always construct a unitary vision. According to his proposal, the discrepant vision of our two eyes can become the gateway to a splitting of conscious attention.
Technically, the installation is a Digital Haploscope. The images are presented on two side monitors, which are looked at through the two mirrors located in the center of the elevating table, in front of the eyes. Initially the pairs of images presented to the visitor form stereoscopic pairs that present three-dimensional images. Progressively, variations are introduced in the pairs of images, accentuating the difference between them, taking the discrepancy to the limit of binocular rivalry. Finally, the experience ends with pairs of images made expressly in order to overcome the binocular rivalry and to propitiate the hypothetical emergence of the Double Consciousness of each participant.
Doble Consciència was funded by a production and exhibition grant by Institut Ramon Llull, NewArtFoundation and Hangar for Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona 2020.
With the support of:
