Tanat Teeradakorn's RootTech, on show at Bangkok CityCity Gallery, is an exhibition about technology, culture, people and the transparent divide that separates them. The show is conceived based on two simple components: auditory and visual, with the latter presented as a product of the former.
Sound and sight are separated into two rooms here. Inside the main space is an empty dome-shaped greenhouse. Walking inside, visitors are bombarded with distorted reality and over a hundred different sounds. There are eight sensors in the greenhouse and an additional two outside that create a cacophony of noise -- symbolic of human interaction and the ways people are able to impact one another without ever meeting.
The visual -- or the "product" -- of the sound comes in the form of cracked glass panes, shown in a smaller, more vibrantly lit gallery space and set up in a way that's reminiscent of a television shop.
As minimalist and underwhelming as it may appear, the concept behind Tanat's project stems from a perplexing social commentary.
"The glass panes and the greenhouse, individually, have very little meaning," he said. "I wanted people to see that different elements of society on their own have no meaning. People put these pieces together and call it rules in the same way that people drew imaginary lines and called it countries. There are other transparent limitations that need to be broken through."
"I wanted to understand and create an understanding of today's social structure through modes of production. I broke down society into a disarray of fragments and tried to put them back together."
As he sees it, these fragments of society re-emerge in disparate forms, such as club culture, car modification culture, and Thai agronomy culture, and manifest themselves here through the audio, glass panes, and greenhouse.
Tanat offers many interpretations of his art. Some, purposefully, challenge each other directly.
"I wanted people to see the limitations in technology," he said while referencing his glass panes. "Nowadays, people often view the world through a camera lens or a screen of sorts. Although they feel they can access information and can see the world for what it truly is, they cannot. They are looking at the world through a transparent wall. Although you can see what is on the other side, you cannot go beyond it. Screens are limiting us from interacting with the physical environment: the world."
Then again, Tanat flips the coin and no longer paints technology as a limitation; instead, he argues it is breaking boundaries. For example, the sounds played within the greenhouse are meant to exemplify the intricacy of human interaction on the internet. They are information and history, both of which have the ability to transcend social boundaries and limitations -- characterised by the broken glass panes.
"The meaning of transparency is that one can see beyond it but cannot go through it," he said. "It is an invisible limitation. Technology and its interconnectedness can redefine these physical boundaries as well as social boundaries, such as laws and social divides, and help us overcome our limitations."
RootTech is on show at Bangkok CityCity Gallery, Sathorn 1, until Aug 28
