OctoTale explores participants’ willingness to engage with a work, even when that work has an unpleasant or uncomfortable aura. The use of touch and the necessity to move closer, in order to hear the audio, forces an intimacy that not everyone will find desirable, but which is rewarded with revelations that only such engagement will unlock. The unknown potential of multi-arm activation rewards curiosity and ingenuity — do you really care to know more?

Elements of OctoTale are based on dark and demanding experiences with dissociation and act as points of exploration into elements of my psyche which are not always at the fore or not always in control.

=== SPOILER === materials & process === SPOILER ===

This piece consists of an eight ‘armed’ apparatus, and at the end of each arm there is a hand written postcard with keys, dentata, and bloodied fingerprints — each signed with a traditionally female name. Touching of the cards activates sound to be played from within the center hub — each arm triggers random, but different sounds from one another. The audio is of female voices speaking, some hurried and nervous, others terrified, some merely confused and curious. Activation of more than one card at a time can trigger entirely unique audio responses.

I wrote a series of stories of 9 individuals, one happens to be familiar with all the others while none of the others know each other. The story of the individual who binds the stories is that of a serial archivist (murderer?). Every story represents an element of my psyche across a temporal and physical nexus.

For each of the eight individual stories, I recorded elements, crafted the archived card to include signatures, blood samples, teeth (these are stones I collected), and observations, with a capacitive touch strip down the side, all overlaid with velum to reflect the nature of the archivist in this detail-oriented collection.

I designed the audio to play through a conductive speaker (it can be placed on a jawbone or a metal rod for example) that reflects the acoustic qualities of the material it uses to conduct. The visual display for this speaker includes a cloche, another reference to collections and power, while also requiring a close proximity in order to be heard clearly — an intimacy that may be uncomfortable for some.

The installation uses visual storytelling elements to convey hints about the personality as well as the mood and motivation of the ‘owner’ of this collection and surrounding items, seemingly arranged on their table, at home or perhaps in a secluded working-room. Such items include the table, books, writing material, and fencing equipment, as well as shells and bones.

I am fascinated by the efforts or lack thereof people are willing to experience in order to learn of stories, true or fictional, of lives, of fear, of otherness and whether the potential to ameliorate increases the personal suffering one will endure in this venture. Will you draw others in? Will you come together with friends? Will you somehow contort yourself? All in the name of revelation or is the disquiet, the distastefulness too much to burden oneself with, let alone others?