The Power of Silence, 2017

“We live in a society that values the sharing of all thoughts. As a result, we often do not stop to think about what we say. This lack of reflection may lead to a superficial connection with ourselves. It is through silence that we become aware of what we are and what we feel. But have we ever ventured beyond its literal meaning? When we relate to silence, it reveals itself in a thousand unfathomable forms. Thanks to the absence of words and sounds, silence transmits the deepest feelings, revealing our emotions, anxieties and states of the hidden mind “.

The Power of Silence is an interactive project whose work explores the connection between spirituality and contemporary art.

The Installation involves sculpture, audio and AV interaction and it is made of a piece of tissue of irregular and abstract shape hung 20 centimeters off the floor. Members of the public can get inside it and let themselves be transported by flow. It is supported by a cap that reads brain waves (Neurosky EEG headset) and is connected to a microphone and headphones so that the person inside it can hear his/her own breathing in total privacy.

The project, on which Catherine is still working, is the result of some recordings she did during a solo trip to India: every feeling and impression in the light of this experience led her to start a meditative retreat to focus on the relevance of silence and breathing awareness, primal instincts which we tend to underestimate.

Through the transmission of the power spectrum (waves and frequencies in the form of number codes) via Bluetooth from the cap to a computer, graphics in motion are projected on the sculpture, which thus reflects the level of concentration and meditation of the individual, and changes its shapes and colors from light yellow to dark orange.

Everything happens in real-time and what you see is exactly the graphic reflection of brain waves. Each individual lives it and perceives it differently. Each subjective experience creates a particular type of wave, which changes depending on how our own breathing affects our brain.