Scatter Chatter:
The Becoming of the Sample
There are two distinct moments in the life cycle of the sample: one in which it is a slice of tissue, a material thing, something that must be handled with care; following protocols and procedures to prepare it for the imaging process. The other moment is when the sample becomes an image, a disembodied object in a space where undo and redo are an option, where it can be copied, scaled, transformed, translated, shared with others, examined by many different eyes at the very same time.
Scatter Chatter: The Becoming of the Sample invites audience members to look at tissue samples from multiple perspectives, by using their smartphone as a Petri dish. In this interactive performance, the audience will be connected together through a website to re-enact the choreography of samples. Following the guided narrative, they will travel through a series of careful gestures, multiple skilled hands, and various protocols and tools that move the tissues around the lab.
Scatter Chatter Network is an interactive setup that invites multiple scattered actors: an ecology of different codes, technological infrastructures, devices and device holders/device handlers responding together. We cannot possibly know all the actors involved (for example, various data provider, phone manufacturers, or even you), but we would like to present the ones we do:
Chatter is the web page accessible at
scatter-chatter.net —They chitchat with Scatter (the server, see below) exchanging messages and updates to know what to share with you.
Scatter is a small server that manages the communication between the different Chatters. Their main concern is to listen carefully to Chatters and answer them properly.
Both Chatter and Scatter are hosted in a cultural data center in Linz run by servus.at, a non-profit organization focused on the demysification of technology, both through cultural and technical processes.
