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In a vernacular sense, we may think of simplicity as minimalism or straightforwardness or easiness or ordinariness. Only a few years ago Edward de Bono launched a treatise on simplicity in which he claimed that simplicity is not only obvious in retrospect but that arriving at simplicity requires a great deal of creative thinking. In other words, simplicity is not as straightforward as it may seem or we may expect. Fundamentally, he argues, simplicity is very difficult to design.1 In Trish Adams’ application of the ‘kymograph’ in her interactive, multimedia installation, Temporal Intervals, elements of machinic and narrative simplicity are illusorily evident.
The kymograph was invented in 1846 by Carlo Matteucci and, according to Adams, used for measuring ‘oscillations and other small temporal intervals’. When measured against our current technological countenance, the kymograph is rather a simple machine—described in the catalogue essay as the ‘most basic mark-making device’—which Adams used to trigger a web of interactions between people and parts. The interactive and informational mode of the work is ostensibly simple, charting singular cause-and-effect movements through which data is input and recorded, or rather, bodily force is machinically mediated or translated into a mark on a scroll of paper. This mark is conjoined with marks left by other users in a seemingly continuous jagged line of encounter and interaction. The concurrence of mediation and translation is one of the more engaging tensions presented in Temporal Intervals through the collage of old and new technologies and data tropes.
Located in a stairwell and a foyer space of the Brisbane Powerhouse, the installation features a projected video which references themes of biotechnology, biology and the genetic ‘production line’. A web-cam beams