Troika’s ‘Electroprobe Installations’ is a series of site-specific installations which incorporate an assemblage of local electronic and electric objects alongside a magnetic microphone called the ‘Electroprobe.’ The microphone imbues the inanimate with life by ‘listening’ to the otherwise inaudible, internal sounds of its surrounding objects.
The ‘Electroprobe’ is a device for listening in on our electronic surroundings: electric murmurs, magnetic hums and inaudible whistles. Originally part of a group of objects termed the Subjective Tool Series, which began in 2003 with the ‘SMS Guerrilla Projector’, the ‘Electroprobe’ is an attempt to subvert the inherently rational, objective nature of tools and everyday commodities by affording them a seemingly emotional, autonomous life.
The fifth in the series, ‘Electroprobe Installation #5’ was installed in 2014 at Daelim Museum for Contemporary Art as part of Troika's solo exhibition ‘Persistent Illusions’. In a departure from the active participation of preceding ‘Electroprobe Installations’, this most recent iteration does not require the viewer to manually engage with the ‘Electroprobe’ through the use of headphones, but instead outwardly transmits sound. Fixed to a boom arm, the ‘Electroprobe’ hovers above the circular arrangement of electronic objects, transmitting their secret, inner workings.
The various objects manifest as an electronic ‘orchestra’ which the viewer is able to hear with the use of the ‘Electroprobe’. Creating an internal dialogue between objects, the ‘Electroprobe’ installations explore the relationship between the living and the inert, the boundaries between human and machine, invoking the question ‘what can give an object a soul?’