Signal.Flow[ver. 2]

We dwell among signals — currents, data, temperatures and frequencies circulating silently through the seams of everyday life, yet always beneath the threshold of the senses. Signal·Flow [ver.2] turns toward a body that is closest to us yet least observed: a computer in operation. Its internal temperature rises and falls with the load of computation; its hard drive reads and writes like a pulse. These ever-shifting values are the machine's invisible vital signs.

The installation consists of 104 sound-and-light units: 104 speakers and 104 traditional tungsten filament bulbs, unfolding in space as a curved, enveloping matrix of points — a streamlined, three-dimensional membrane. Custom software captures the operating system's temperature fluctuations and hard-disk activity in real time, computing them into noise and quasi-biological sound. Within each unit, bulb and speaker are driven in synchrony: the brighter the light, the louder the sound. Light thus becomes the visible trace of sound, and sound the echo of light — while the tungsten filament, which emits light only by burning hot, mirrors the very heat produced by the machine's own computation.

This is a self-generating, organic system: it offers no point of entry for interaction and admits no human intervention. The machine listens to itself, translating its inner states, in real time, into light and sound in space. The 104 points of light flicker each on their own terms yet pull upon one another; sound disperses through three-dimensional space in flowing, spreading, organic movements — condensing at times into geometric volumes, at times breathing like a luminous living organism. The viewer, standing within, becomes a witness: to how the overlooked, latent, invisible signals of the everyday travel and flow, and how they touch and act upon one another across interfaces and space. And in that moment of sensory recalibration, our imagination of the unknown extends beyond the edge of the perceptible.

With the support of the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan.

我們棲居於訊號之中——電流、資料、溫度與頻率在日常的縫隙間無聲流轉，卻始終處於感官的閾值之外。訊號·流[版本 2] 將目光投向一具最貼近我們、卻最少被凝視的身體：一部運轉中的電腦。其內部溫度隨運算負載起伏，硬碟的讀寫如脈搏般跳動；這些持續變動的數值，是機器不可見的生命徵象。

裝置由 104 組聲光單元構成：104 顆喇叭與 104 顆傳統鎢絲燈泡，在空間中展開為一面弧形包覆的點狀矩陣，宛如一層流線形的立體皮膜。客製化程式即時擷取作業系統的溫度變化與硬碟活動資料，運算為噪音與擬生物聲響；每一單元的燈泡與喇叭同步驅動——光愈亮，聲愈強。光於是成為聲音的顯影，聲音成為光的迴響；而鎢絲以熾熱發光的物理本質，恰與機器運算生熱的狀態互為鏡像。

這是一套自我衍生的有機系統：不設互動的入口，亦不受人為介入——機器傾聽自身，將內在狀態即時翻譯為空間中的光與聲。104 個光點各自明滅、彼此牽引，聲響以流動、蔓延而有機的方式在三維空間中散布，時而凝聚為幾何的立體圖形，時而如一具呼吸明滅的發光生命體。觀者置身其中，成為見證者：見證那些被忽略、隱性而不可見的訊號如何傳遞與流動，如何在介面與空間之中彼此牽動、發生關係；並在感官重新校準的片刻，將我們對未知世界的想像，推向可感知的邊界之外。

本作品獲臺灣國家文化藝術基金會贊助。