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An interactive sound installation, Jana Dabac’s Echoes of Space takes the form of a stylized map of the town of Korčula. It contains twelve sound recordings, playback of which is triggered by the interaction of visitors (users, researchers) with the town map.
Through this work Dabac uses the medium of sound to explore the spatial zones we carry around with ourselves, and the spaces we enter into. The project was initiated during the artist’s residency in Korčula in 2020 when Dabac researched the phenomenon of sound in space and the ways in which it passes through the zones with which we surround ourselves. She made studio photographic and audio recordings at twelve locations around the town. The artist understands sound "as a medium that can make our air 'tangible’". At each of the twelve locations, she quoted excerpts from Edward T. Hall's texts on the theory of proxemics, in English.

It was in 1966 that cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall published his study on the use of space, and the effect of population density on human behavior, communication, and social interaction, thereby laying the foundations of the proxemic theory. Hall’s concept of proxemics considers the human use of space in the context of culture. For Hall, this leads to a new understanding of intercultural communication processes and the shaping of built environments. The study of proxemics is important not only because of the way people communicate with each other in everyday life, but also because of the way they organize space, in their houses and buildings, and, ultimately, the way they organize their cities. Proxemics make up the hidden component in interpersonal communication.

As the artist herself explains, "perhaps because of the study of architecture, I have always been interested in the relationship between human beings and space, the way people occupy a certain space, how they behave and feel while using it and how they communicate with each other. Contrary to the way space is formed in architecture, in this project I want to define space only as the air around me, not as the distance between walls or some other solid barriers. Although sound uses barriers, bounces off them, absorbs and transmits information about materials, and the size or shape of a particular space, it primarily describes — through its volume (and in this case, content) — the distances around us, which exist regardless of walls and firm boundaries.

The distance surrounding a person forms space. The space that surrounds us is divided into several zones. The zones we occupy are public and social spaces, and the personal and intimate zone, together with the territory of our own body, are the spaces we carry with us wherever we go. These are the most inviolable forms of territory. The radius of a particular zone depends on circumstances and cultural factors. When we use public space, we bring our personal and private space into that public space, just as public space itself sometimes enters our private zone, our home, via social networks and long-distance communication devices. With this map, the audience can explore the town through the way it sounds (or resonates), and remind themselves of the importance of the personal and intimate zones around us, even when we are in public space, and become aware of the correlations between them."

 

Darko Fritz