The Delme show was based on the idea to make the whole former
synagogue building as one installation by playing with its
interior and its architectural characteristics and adding
only very few visible elements. The atmosphere of the space
was entirely altered by covering all the windows of the building
with gelatin film coloring the white interior into deep red.
The effect of the red light was intensified with filling the
space with smoke by burning ammonium chloride every morning.
The smoke remained in the space all the day. The exhibition
closed in the evenings at about time of sunset so no other
artificial light except the flash was used.
The continuous background sound in the space was a me of
slowly shifting low frequency sine waves and various hardly
audible sound samples. The other stereo channel was playing
back a sine wave sweeping in 60 mins from 0 Hz to 400Hz and
the other channel In the reversed order. The spacial qualities
of the building were ultimately
defining the audible sound creating constantly moving resonance
spots in different corners of the house.
The on going atmosphere was randomly broken with a bright
white flash and simultaneous piercing sound. The flash was
generated with a powerful studio flash light and then reflected
to be dome of the synagogue with a large parabolic mirror.
This flash turned the whole interior white for an instant.
The sound was made with a sampler and both the flashlight
and the sampler were triggered with a self constructed random
controller. The intervals between the flashes were varying
from few seconds to several minutes.
The visitors could only enter the second floor of the Synagogue
to the gallery like balcony. From the balcony the visitor
could see downstairs the entire room which appeared to be
completely empty except for the flashlight and the mirror
underneath the dome. The sound system consisting of four active
monitors and four active subwoofers was hidden underneath
the balcony so that the equipment could not be seen from the
second floor.
