Silent Room

IFFR en Art Rotterdam present the Silent Room by Simon Heijdens. A 12-metre long, matt-black building offers an immersive experience of silence and peace. An anechoic, soundproofed space, in which visitors spend a few moments walking up and down the walkway and experience silence. Originally commissioned by SXSW in Austin, Silent Room’s intention is to provide “a black hole in its environment” in which the visitor spends a moment alone, devoid of any visual or audible manifestation but the self – a rare, unmediated state.

Functionally the work is an anechoic chamber constructed in collaboration with the Acoustic Department of the University of Texas and specifically designed to cancel out, by absorption, all sound, either emanating from inside or outside the box. Additionally, alone inside the room, one is reduced to black and white as the narrow band lighting removes every colour leaving a completely monochromatic space. “The room is only as interesting as the person in it.”

IFFR: Thu 25 Jan to Sun 3 Feb, Art Rotterdam: Thu 8 to Sun 11 Feb, 11:00-20:00, Kruisplein, free admission