Syntopic Fragments (2010)
The word Syntopic, which is originally used in the field of ecology, derives from the greek “topos”, “location” and describes here the coexistence of separate pieces of information linked to the same place on earth, regardless of their creation date. Since an increasing amount of communication data is stored online forever, the question of “when” becomes insignificant over time, but the question of “where” remains relavant as every location on earth will have an invisible archive of blog posts, images, messages, e-mails, videos and sounds, collected by individuals using different digital communication channels. “Syntopic Fragments” queries a stream of short text messages and extracts their geolocation. Each message is then associated with an image tagged with the same coordinates. The results are combinations of image and text from different authors, linked by a place on earth - fragments of a collective local memory.
the installation consists of a printed selection of fragments that have been collected over time and a realtime component showing the process in a projection.