260913 tine bech lecture

Today Tine Bech came to Ravensbourne to give us an inlook of her work. Tine Bech is an artist and researcher working with interactive sculpture and public art. She was born in Denmark and now lives and works in London, UK. Bech's practice is concerned with how we engage with our immediate environment and aims to create experiences of immersion and play. Projects have centred on the use of interactive electronics and location tracking technology, urban spaces and environmental elements such as gravity, water, sound and light.

Her public art is site-sensitive (often in unexpected places) and aims to challenge our common assumptions about public space and its use. The work questions public behaviour (don’t touch in galleries, don’t play/run in public spaces) and develop spaces where interaction, play and collaboration take place, whether between large groups or in intimate interactions between the viewer and the artwork. Bech also enjoys collaboration and has worked with engineers and scientists to explore new forms of expression, at the edge of the disciplines.

Today she talked about one of her work called 'Tracking You' that featured at The V&A Museum (22nd - 23rd Sept 2012), it was a digital design that was programmed by Tarim. It is a cape to make/generate sound and so it helps increase people to collaborate and join in. It was made possible thanks to FRID tags which is a chip that is also inside oyster cards we use everyday, Tine Bech attached the tag and something called UBI sense onto the shoulders. 

The exterior of cape used colour to reflect the type of sound e.g. black - dark and mysterious. She also used sound as a great factor to emit play and fun into her work by if the participants were chaotic and creating fast movements then the sound generated would be loud, same with slow movements that create slow sounds. Bech wanted the accessibility to be inviting for everyone to join in and participate and so she know the following list; -

• Made sure it was easy access to put on/off the cape
• One size fits all
• Different colours
• Entry was for free