Vito Willems


Projects>

Escape From The Wheel
Time Vacuum III
Loud Silence
Contra Marītō
Time Vacuum II
Time Vacuum I
Resonance and Repetition
The Charge
Castle 6
Governors of the Æther
Fluxus Noesis
Membrane Series
Noema
Panoptic Emissions
Open Axis
Cube of Space
Glimpulse
Impossible Interaction

Collaborative Projects>

Passage I
Fragile Ecologies
Apophenia
Dharma Initiatives
Jaunu
Untitled
Disruptive Silence
_Interference_

Publications>


Decentralizing Authorship, Decentralizing the Self
Non-Hierarchical Modes of Listening
The Divinity of Art and the Destruction of Classification
Virtuality and the Superdynamical
Fluid Space & Transphysical Entities
Noema #1 | Noema #2
Signalement

© 2015-2022
Panoptic Emissions (2018)
Composition | Quadrophonic Sound


Location

28.03.2018 | De Koepel, Haarlem (NL)

Team

Concept and Execution - Vito Willems
Technical assistance - Jan-Pieter van Kesteren

Materials

4 Loudspeakers and Stands, 4 Hypercardioid Microphones and Stand, Audio Network Bridge, Audio Interface, Computer with Custom Software

Software

Sound Processing in Max/MSP, Dante

About

Haarlem, a city close to Amsterdam, is a town where I grew up and have been living the most time of my life. Since I was young I always have been fascinated by one of its most characteristic buildings: ‘De Koepel’. When i was 16 years old, i would see this impressive building daily from the studio where i was working for 12 years. The former prison has been built between 1899 and 1901 by architect Willem Metzelaar and is one of three panopticon-style buildings situated in the Netherlands. The dome-shaped construction contains four stacked cell-rings with 400 cells in total. After the prison’s closure (2016) the building was used to house asylum seekers. Since 2018 it is empty and open for guided tours, in preparation for new discussed functions.

The idea of ‘the Panopticon’ was coined by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham, late 18th century. The design allows that all prisoners of the institutional building can be observed by a single watchman. Although it is impossible to watch all the inmates’ cells at once, the fact that the prisoners can’t see the watchman motivates them to act as though they are being watched all the time. This is the reason the design of Bentham became an ultra-efficient structure that regulates the prisoners’ own behaviour. Later it became a metaphor for structures of power in current society, coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault.

The theory and philosophical perspectives which are hidden behind this panoptic architecture are interesting to me. Hence, in ‘Panoptic Emissions’ I wanted to simply explore how the human body reacts to this multimodal construction. I was very curious about how far I can go to transform the physiological relation between me and the architectural surrounding into abstract and gestural forms. By working with the captured spatial dimensions of the panopticon, re-interpret it into sonic materialities, reconstructed the space in a unique way. Embracing the complexities of the panoptic acoustics while exploring their boundaries became the starting point of this project.