Die Schwelle

During a 2003 residency at Berlin‘s Podewil (now Tesla), media artist Chris Salter took the simple question of how to make a room breathe as the starting point for an exploration of the notion of thresholds in relation to the human body interacting with technological systems.

Calling the project simply “Schwelle” (Threshold), Salter created three different breathing rooms, or environments, which could be shown together on one evening.

Each would explore the idea of thresholds in different artistic formats: Part One as a film, Part Two as a live performance and Part Three as an interactive installation. Part Three of “Schwelle,” premiered in Berlin at the Transmediale Festival 2004, was designed for only five participants at a time. Each one was led and seated on the floor of a pitch-black tunnel-shaped room where they stayed for up to 15 minutes. They were instructed only to remain “mindful” of their breathing. During the period of their stay, a sensor system monitored the room’s CO2 levels, which increase and decrease measurably when someone is breathing in an enclosed space, and linked these to light and sound levels in the installation.

Starting at barely perceivable thresholds ...