鈥淚t鈥檚 very dark, so please tread carefully,鈥� says the attendant at the opening of Slow Pixel. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want any casualties.鈥�
The floor of the gallery is covered with cling film and studded with a constellation of bright white lights. Here and there, irregular knee-high pyramids emit low groaning noises, punctuated by tiny screams. Each light turns out to be an LED attached to a snail: 176 of them in total, creeping through the crepuscular gloom as part of a .
The LEDs trigger photodiodes which dictate what the pyramids play and occasionally trigger projections on a hanging screen, alternating between monochrome train-track abstractions and extreme close-ups of snails鈥� stalky heads. No phones are allowed, partly to avoid futzing with the sound and partly to encourage the audience to slow down to, well, a snail鈥檚 pace.
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With no food or other incentives evident in the tennis-court-sized space, the snails鈥� motivations and destinations are mysterious, perhaps even to the snails themselves. A handful of the more intrepid are scaling the walls. One has made it behind the drop-down projection screen, the diffused star of its LED shining through like an unexpectedly durable lens flare.
In the centre of the room is a tightly-grouped minority sporting brightly coloured lights. On closer examination, they turn out to be engaged in an orgy. I wonder if the disco lights have got them in the mood 鈥� do snails even see in colour?
Joining the recorded soundtrack 鈥� which the programme helpfully explains comprises sounds from a slowed-down remix of Nirvana鈥檚 Smells Like Teen Spirit 鈥� are the subdued toots of a hunting horn and the soft twanging of an Indian tanpura. 鈥淲ho are you playing for 鈥� us or them?鈥� asks an audience member. 鈥淔or them,鈥� answers the horn player, Slow Pixel co-creator Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes. 鈥淔or love 鈥� like plants, they respond to the music.鈥�
Saint-Jalmes is a long-term snail collaborator: she previously experimented with feeding the snails coloured paper and sculpting with the spiral excrement that ensued. But the snails are not always co-operative. For this event, Saint-Jalmes had hoped they would gradually eat the cardboard speaker pyramids, but they have no appetite for them.
That鈥檚 a reversal of fortune: this species, Helix aspersa maxima, is better known to escargot enthusiasts as gros-gris and commonly in France. The vegetarian Saint-Jalmes and her partner Cyril Leclerc, however, have taken the molluscs to their hearts: having liberated them, they have elevated them to the level of performance artists. They diligently mist them with water and shepherd them carefully to maximise the effect.
All this care comes to naught when the inevitable happens: the droning is broken by a sudden crunch like an egg hitting a tile floor, followed a second later by a horrified collective intake of breath from the human audience. One of the players has made the ultimate sacrifice for hir art. The shamefaced assassin shuffles aside, hoping to avoid the crowd鈥檚 scrutiny.
There but the grace of God go I; earlier on I tipped a snail with the edge of my shoe. The martyred snail is the second to have given its all in the few hours the show has been open, a circumstance Saint-Jalmes blames on initial overcrowding. Now numbers have been restricted, so the queue outside is crawling. All very fitting: the slow-motion experience of Slow Pixel begins even before you get in.
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Slow Pixel appeared at Sonica, King鈥檚 Place, London, 20-21 April 2018
Sumit Paul-Choudhury is the strategy director of New 杏吧原创
