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Entrainment (2023 – ongoing), by Shomit Barua
June 11 – June 14
Emerson Contemporary has joined hands with the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), one of the world’s largest and most prestigious gatherings of sound artists, electroacoustic composers, and music technologists from across the globe. As a part of the installation track of ICMC 2025, presenting Shomit Barua’s Entrainment – on display at Emerson Contemporary’s Media Art Gallery from June 11th – 14th.
Brooklyn, Budapest, Lisbon, Montreal, and Barcelona; 16min audio + 60min video cycle
Entrainment is part of a series of phenomenological experiments that explore the theme of spatial and temporal disorientation. Inspired by the passing landscape viewed from subways and trains, this audio-video installation employs several motion-based perceptual distortions: 1) the Doppler effect, 2) Moiré interference patterns, 3) skewed parallax (binocular disparity), and 4) the Wagon wheel effect. Entrainment refers to the synchronization of organisms to an external perceived rhythm.
This installation recreates the hypnotic and transcendental states that often emerge from the repetitious visual, auditory, and haptic polyrhythms experienced aboard a moving train. Original portrait-mode footage is “temporally collaged” and spatially arranged to reconstruct views from rail-based public transportation in Barcelona, Budapest, Lisbon, Montreal and New York.
Entrainment, originally entitled Entrainment718, was inspired by a hundred-foot stretch of the Brooklyn F train that connects the subterranean to the above-ground. On this transitional stretch, the visual interplay of regularly-spaced pylons against haphazardly strung high-intensity work lights causes a skewing of parallax— looking out the window, depth perception becomes distorted, as though suddenly careening through a starfield. Entrainment is an exploration of that sense of disorientation, and the hypnotic and transcendental states that often emerge from the repetitious visual, auditory, and haptic polyrhythms experienced aboard a moving train. This project continues to grow, include footage from rail-based public transportation from around the world.
Audio consists of a multi-channel sound system arranged linearly. The original musical composition (16mins) consists of several textural layers that are distributed spatially, running up and down the multi-channel array in gated sequences. The effect is that of a passing train, while also evoking the rhythmic quality of being on board the train. Each channel is synced with the video panel directly behind it and when that audio channel is active, a variety of visual effects is applied to the corresponding panel.
In this way, one can visually track the sonic placement of sound in space (source-bonding [1] à la Denis Smalley’s Spectromorphology). Additionally, a haptic channel plays infrasonic polyrhythmic patterns. The auditory (score length vs spatial distribution), visual (footage vs effects programming) and haptic layers are all cycles of different lengths.
As they loop, the layers stack in new combinations. This gestalt of sensory information that drift in and out of synchronization is an example of the nested or overlapping rhythms described in Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis [2], in which the body becomes a metronome that not only observes but feels—embodies—temporal perception.
Most notably, the panoramic is actually a single-channel portrait-mode video (60mins) shot on a camera-phone, repeated 14 times and mirrored vertically. Each column is an instance of the original footage offset by 23 frames; in essence, they are pulling from the “memory” of the video, and placed side by side, they become stitched together to form what appears to be a panoramic view. The perceived elongation of the image is achieved through a repeated temporal and spatial displacement.
Media Links:
– https://shomitbarua.com/entrainment718
– https://shomitbarua.com/
– IG@shomijah
Artist Statement
Shomit Barua is a Japanese-born, Desi-American intermedia artist specializing in
ecoacoustics, responsive environments, and emergent narratives. His work is rooted
in poetry and architecture, and reflects the shared tenets of contained space,
economy of materials, and movement that is both physical and emotional.
Combining everyday technologies with esoteric programming languages, he blurs
the line between installation and performance, weaving together object, sound and
image. Digital and analog techniques are fused to investigate his core subject:
corporeal presence in a physical space.
Having collaborated with sculptors, dancers, musicians, architects, and visual
artists, he believes that exploration of a motif is amplified – made “robust” and
“thick” – through dialogue between disciplines. He holds an MFA in Poetry from
Bennington College and teaches writing at Arizona State University while
completing his doctoral research at ASU’s School of Arts, Media, and Engineering.
Entrainment – on display at Emerson Contemporary’s Media Art Gallery from June 11th – 14th.
