PROSTHESIS

You are Listening to TAPE 2 - Prosthesis.
This is Archipelago. No one is an Island. You are Archipelago as we are Archipelago.
Today let’s try something different.

It is the day before yesterday.
You’re in an airport terminal.
You feel that slight buzz of transit.
Of vertigo.
Time moving asynchronously with the rhythms of your body.

But you’re in the Gold Lounge now.
Lights dim, heavy carpeting.
You are resting in one of the 'sleep pods'.
An incased recliner comfortably leaning into a streamlined cocoon eggshell.
Insulated with sound absorbing material.
In here, you’re perfectly sheltered from the chaos of transfer and transit.
Your eyes closed.
Your focus inwards.
Your mind, your body, your temple.

And in this instant, you feel something that you haven’t felt for a very long time.
You feel unrestrained.
All tension lifts.
Like gusts of sand exiting your body.
The strain in your neck as you craned it, stiff and uncomfortable.
The waves of pain that normally washes through your body.
Hot like lead.
Vanishes.
That stab in your wrist.
Searing white burn.
Pangs that grit your teeth.
Gone.
Flaring streams of aching tension radiating from your vertebral column.
Swooning fatigue.
All the painful muscular evidence of your hard work and devotion.
Lifted.
Ahhh soft.
Ahhh warm.

Around your elbows and wrist, biomechatronic structures communicate with the connectors inserted in your peripheral nervous system.
Exoskeleton support structures that wrap around your chest and neck.
Supporting the inclination of your neck and head.
The reactive padding material of their inside gently massages your muscles.
Lubricated activation without strain.
Where the wire framing penetrates the skin, conduits of synth-organic material seals the openings.
The biotic polyethylene cabling inter-threading the myofibril strains of the muscle fibre.
Your fingers are resting comfortably in a webbing of automated features that work every joint smoothly.
Arthroplastic and exoskeletal support structures, guiding your fingers.
Flexion, extension, adduction, abduction.
All signalled from nano-hardware installed in the carpal tunnel.

For once your body follows suit.
For once it complies with your enthusiasm.
Your devotion.
Your commitment.

You are well at work now.
Blood sugar levels regulated, managed health stats.
The chemistry intravenously introduced into your bio system communicates seamlessly with the AI large-language-models augmenting your cerebral tasks.
Mnemonic proliferation through extremely sophisticated pattern matching.
An unrestrained stream of calculations, considerations and cool ideas.
The next executive order always effortlessly ready on your tongue.

It is immanent.

And when you’re ready.
Come out.

Sleep Pod
Sleep pod is a term that covers a variety of devices and pieces of furniture that enables an employee to nap or rest during the work day. They come in the form of smaller accessories which one wears as a garment that pulls up over ones head. Or as a chair-like contraption where the employees enter a sound and light-dimmed compartment in which the hectic office atmosphere can be kept at bay. The office sleep pod the CGI sequences of Oceanic Horror is shaped according to the Metronaps® sleep energypod design.

Pod
The sleep pod plays a crucial role in the tempor(e)ality of Oceanic Horror. It has an aesthetic role to play as a sculptural object. It was the intention from the outset of the work on Oceanic Horror that a real commercial sleep pod would be a part of both the filmed material and the physical installation. But early on it proved impossible to procure a physical model of the sleeping furniture. A long search ultimately lead nowhere. This particular sleep pod design never really creating that big a market, at least in Europe, and hence not able to provide a physical chair for a Nordic country. A quite central sculptural and narrative element suddenly completely missing from the project. In order to turn ‘defeat’ into opportunity, the role of the sleep pod was reconsidered. It would still exist in the visual work, but now in the form of a virtual representation. In its new digital reality the sleep pod is not only situated in the eerie non space of the stage lit 3D environment but also outside a certain real time. Now the trader resting inside the sleep pod can stay there for years; one consecutive circling camera movement comprising the complete decay of not only the flesh of the animated sleeper - skin and muscle tissue wasting away, eyelids dissolving to expose the eyeballs - but the very furniture as well; the mattress rotten and gnawed, the cocoon shell eroding in patches of rust. Its turns a nap into the complete consumption of a lifetime.

The sleep pod also forms a recurrent sphere inside the pervading rectangular framings of the projection screens, as well as the screen device outside the unfolding narrative. As the traders dwell within it, limps protruding from its gaping mouth, it becomes a devourer of bodies – or a body-enhancer, new cyborgian flesh hibernating in this market-agile target-consumer-tested cognition recharger. I’m not sure which one it is, I’m not sure if there’s really a difference. We somehow always wanted to become the stuff of horror movies. All the terrible scenarios conjured up in the horror fictions were always the wishing of something into being, on one side, and on the other, preparatory material for something destined to come.

The word ‘pod’ is often used to describe a container of knowledge, culture, speech, memories - plugged directly into the head through the earhole or strapped tight to the flexing muscles of the optimised body. The white plastic curvature of the sleep pod echoes the bulb design of the AirPods, connecting resting workers to the endless drone of motivational speeches.

As a virtual sculptural object, human body included/inserted, it shapes a weird invert to the dominating visibility of the upper half of the body of the cognitive worker, cut in half by office desks, video conference windows and tinder profile pictures. It’s as if the sleep pod offers a sacred time slot set aside for the torso-and-up to be alone – scheduled and regulated alone-time, of course. The head/body split that the spherical pericarp performs on its virtual habitants, echoes the head/body split of the trader ‘offing’ himself in front of the anticipating board.

Sleep
The function of the sleep pod was also carried on into the work, even without the physical sleep pod. The employees of the trading firm Archipelago still power-naps, occupying hallways and lobbies, creating a strange drowsy space in-between productive rebooting and complete bodily collapse. The sleeping serves as temporal figure. A layered temporality. It forms a regular pause from the erratic rhythm of the fictional environment pieced together around them. It is as if the on-screen characters gets a break here, in the margin of the plot. A space to reload/reboot/reconnect. But never load off/boot out/disconnect, since these moments of rest are always kept in a mode of restlessness, propelled by the simultaneous visuality of its two channel design. Another layer to this temporality is of a more technical note. The physical inaction of the sleeping trader renders the image almost still. This returning space of inaction was chosen to form a contrasting time image, to the effective pushing forward of both the gore genre and the realm of finance. Its inertia conceived of as confrontational.

Sleep Station
The inclusion of the physical sleep pod in the installation was intended to create a bodily situation in the exhibition space. A moment inside the installation where the act of sleeping would be bodily recognised, as a turning off; taking a break; escaping the productive mode of art consuming. When the sleep pod as ready-made object was no longer possible to include in the exhibition the role of this physical object was reconsidered. Instead, a series of ‘sleep stations’ was created. These makeshift sleep furnitures were assembled from bland nineties office furniture. Obtained from the office furniture storage of The University of Bergen, the furniture discloses the all-pervasive terrifying reality of office hell saturating any work space of the cognitive worker, be it the trading business, the art institution or the realm of academia. As sculptural sleep stations they are intended to trigger a bodily memory in the visitor, of piecing together such DIY sleep stations of ones own in airport terminals or office spaces, allowing for something near bearable rest.

Power Nap
The power nap enables the worker to perform with utmost intensity. The rest earned in the sleep pod is not a gift but a requirement. Another prosthesis to ensure the maximum exploitation of the workers time.

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