1. Introduction
What does the viewer’s physical interaction reveal about the relationship between privilege and access to mobility? Can cyclical, non-resolutive aesthetics mirror systemic violence without reducing trauma to spectacle? And how can translating biopolitical borders into material and luminous gestures challenge the limitations of critical theory as a purely discursive framework?
These are the central research questions that guide Border, an audiovisual installation that explores how access to perception—what one is able to see, hear, and comprehend—is not evenly distributed, but shaped by spatial, technological, and political conditions. Rather than illustrating borders as thematic content, Border constructs a perceptual system in which exclusion is enacted through controlled thresholds of visibility, audibility, and legibility.
The work reframes the border not as a legal or territorial boundary, but as a sensory interface: a fluctuating threshold that regulates what can be perceived based on spatial position and bodily movement. It investigates how perception itself can be governed—allocated, denied, or distorted—through infrastructure. This concern aligns with the broader field of perceptual governance, wherein access to meaning is neither neutral nor guaranteed.
To test these ideas, I developed two configurations of the installation: one silent and one using directional sound. Both were designed to make clarity a scarce, contingent experience. Visitors were not passive observers; they had to navigate spatial uncertainty, often discovering that accessing meaning came at the cost of blocking or being blocked by others. Participant feedback was collected to examine not interpretation, but the affective impact of navigating exclusion as a perceptual condition.
This paper is organized into five sections. Section 2 outlines the theoretical foundations, engaging with critical sound studies, affect theory, and spatial politics. Section 3 presents the technical and material configuration of the work. Section 4 reports on public experiments and participant responses, while Section 5 positions Border within a lineage of installation practices.
My practice as an artist is rooted in constructing transdisciplinary environments that challenge perception through sensory architecture. In Border, I draw from prior work using interactive light, fog, and fragmentation to question access and power. The installation builds on this trajectory by treating light as both a tool of surveillance and resistance, and sound as an acoustic barrier—materializing borders not as symbols, but as infrastructures that sort, filter, and divide.
2. Theoretical Framework
The thinkers explored here—Steve Goodman, Juliette Volcler, and Brandon LaBelle—help articulate how sensory experience becomes a terrain where inclusion, exclusion, and epistemic inequality are enacted.
2.1 Goodman: Sonic Thresholds and Affective Governance
In Sonic Warfare (2009), Steve Goodman explores how sound can operate beneath cognition, as an “affective force” that structures attention, spatial orientation, and social behavior. He introduces the concept of “unsound”—vibrational phenomena that are felt more than heard—as a modality of ambient control.
Applied to Border, Goodman’s insights help illuminate the use of directional sound not as a communication tool, but as a means of regulating access. The installation’s hyper-narrow acoustic field—achieved through ultrasonic speakers—renders sound ephemeral and positional. To hear the message, the visitor must align precisely with an invisible beam; any deviation results in heavily phasing. Sound is thus not distributed democratically—it is rationed.
This transforms listening into a spatial negotiation, an embodied act tied to one’s physical placement. The voice that emerges is not explanatory, but ruptural and accusatory—an affective disturbance rather than a discursive explanation. In Goodman’s terms, the sonic field becomes a system of “affective governance,” in which perception is modulated by architecture and design rather than content.
2.2 Volcler: Sonic Weaponry and the Infrastructures of Exclusion
Juliette Volcler’s Extremely Loud (2013) traces how sound has been historically mobilized as a weapon—from military experiments to crowd control. She argues that sonic technologies such as LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Devices) are not neutral amplifiers but tools of spatial domination, capable of dispersing gatherings, inducing panic, and enforcing submission without physical contact.
This framework resonates acutely in the context of the March 2025 student protests in Belgrade, where demonstrators reported experiencing a sudden, high-pitched noise described as a “whiz” or “swoosh,” followed by symptoms of disorientation, nausea, and panic. These symptoms matched known LRAD effects. Serbian authorities initially denied the deployment but later confirmed possession of such devices, while maintaining they were not used. Human rights groups have called for independent investigation, citing journalistic reports from Reuters and AP News that detail the incident and its aftereffects.
Border draws on this history not to reproduce violence, but to reconfigure its logic. The installation’s use of directional sound does not command or repel—it withholds. Access is unstable, often arbitrary, and requires spatial labor. By echoing the aesthetic and technological mechanics of sonic control, Border reframes Volcler’s critique into an architecture of selective audibility. What is heard is not simply sound—it is power, made perceptible through its absence using the same acoustic principle of the LRAD system: ultrasonic speakers.
2.3 LaBelle: Acoustic Justice and the Spatial Politics of Listening
Brandon LaBelle, in both Acoustic Territories (2010) and Acoustic Justice (2018), foregrounds listening as a political act. He argues that sound is not universally available, but stratified by social, spatial, and infrastructural forces. Listening, in this sense, becomes a condition of privilege.
Within Border, LaBelle’s theory helps articulate how the installation stages an unequal distribution of sonic access. The sound field is not immersive; it is selective. The voice, when encountered, emerges fleetingly, contingent upon one’s bodily alignment. This spatialized listening echoes LaBelle’s proposition that acoustic space is a “conflict zone,” where access is granted to some and denied to others.
By configuring sound as a narrow, interruptive force, Border dramatizes what LaBelle might call the denial of acoustic justice. Participants do not merely hear or fail to hear—they are positioned in relation to a system that chooses who can access intelligibility. Listening thus becomes not an act of comprehension, but of struggle.
2.4 Perception as Infrastructure of Control
Together, Goodman, Volcler, and LaBelle form a theoretical triad that reconceptualizes perception as a function of governance. What is seen or heard is not an aesthetic outcome—it is the product of infrastructural control. In this light, Border is not a metaphor for exclusion—it is its operationalization.
Infrastructures—be they physical, digital, or sensory—mediate access at a structural level. They sort, filter, obstruct, and prioritize. The fog, light beams, and ultrasonic zones in Border do not just produce atmosphere—they simulate the stratified architectures of border regimes. What one perceives is no longer determined by curiosity or desire, but by spatial compliance, technical alignment, and systemic arbitrariness.
3. Material Configuration
The spatial and material configuration of Border is minimal yet effective. Rather than serving as a symbolic representation of exclusion, the installation functions as a perceptual apparatus that stages access and obstruction as lived, embodied conditions. It constructs a field of unstable legibility—visual and auditory—where visitors must negotiate their position not just to witness the work, but to enter into its system of selective intelligibility.
At the center of the installation stands a vertical wooden panel, raw and untreated, bisecting the space into two asymmetrical zones. This panel is perforated with an irregular pattern of holes, functioning as both visual filters and conduits for projection. These apertures do not frame meaning—they fragment it. A projector, positioned behind the panel, casts short textual fragments—politically charged and deliberately ambiguous—onto a fog-filled environment.
Artificial haze is used not only for aesthetic ambiance, but to destabilize spatial orientation. Light is refracted and diffused, distances become difficult to feel, and the projected text often appears warped, partial, or unreadable. Legibility is conditional, achievable only from specific angles and moments. In many cases, the visitor must block the projection with their body to read the text, becoming both barrier and translator in the process.
This spatial indeterminacy is try to reflects the operational logic of border infrastructures, which function through fragmentation, opacity, and delay. There is no fixed point of reception in Border; visitors must move and recalibrate. In this sense, the installation positions the body as both an obstacle and a gateway—reproducing the choreography of access and denial that defines contemporary border systems.
In its second configuration, a hyper-directional ultrasonic speaker is introduced, mounted along the same axis as the projection. Unlike conventional sound systems, this device emits a narrow beam of audio that is not clearly audible unless the body intersects it with near-perfect precision. The voice it carries—low, whispering, affectively charged—is not continuous, but appears in fragments, as fleeting intrusions.
The act of listening, then, becomes an exercise in spatial compliance. Slight deviations in posture can result in complete different sound. Sound is not broadcast—it is rationed. It does not envelop the visitor, but selects them. What one hears is not a message but a moment—ephemeral, unstable, and often accusatory.
Importantly, the visitor’s access to this auditory zone frequently requires obstructing the projection, creating a conflict between seeing and hearing. To hear the message, one might need to block someone else’s view, or sacrifice one’s own. This spatial antagonism mirrors real-world infrastructures in which access is not additive but competitive—gaining clarity often means denying it to others.
Each component—wood, fog, light, and sound—contributes to a structure in which perception becomes labor. The visitor is not asked to interpret a static artwork, but to navigate a terrain of sensory scarcity. Clarity is not offered; it must be chased. And even when achieved, it is fragmentary, contingent, and precarious.
In this sense, Border does not symbolize exclusion—it enacts it. The installation is not a container for content, but a medium that makes exclusion tactile, audible, and visible. It renders the politics of perception not as metaphor, but as infrastructure.
4. Experiments and Methodology
The public configurations of Border were not conceived as empirical experiments in a scientific sense, but as critical interventions in which exclusion and access could be explored as perceptual conditions. The objective was not to deliver a message, but to materialize the process by which meaning becomes accessible—or not.
Two configurations of the installation were presented in different venues. The first, a silent version, was exhibited at MUMUTH and relied exclusively on light, fog, and text projection. The second, presented at Institut 11 Atelier, incorporated a hyper-directional ultrasonic speaker to introduce a fragmented auditory dimension. In both iterations, participants were given no instructions or context beforehand. After moving through the installation freely, they were invited to complete a short questionnaire reflecting on their experience.
The collected feedback was analyzed qualitatively, not to extract interpretations, but to trace how visitors negotiated legibility, embodiment, and perceptual tension. Responses revealed how exclusion can be experienced not just as absence, but as disorientation, and conditional access.
4.1 Silent Configuration
In the silent configuration, visitors entered a fog-saturated environment disrupted by a central wooden panel punctured with small holes. Projected textual fragments became visible only when approached from precise angles. The fog diffused both light and distance, further destabilizing orientation.
Many participants described the act of seeking legibility as physically and cognitively demanding. One wrote:
“I had to stand in the way to understand anything.”
Others remarked on the sense of spatial disorientation and difficulty navigating the room:
“It was hard to know where to stand. The light kept changing"
These perceptual challenges led to ethically charged reflections on visibility and obstruction. Several visitors noted that in order to see, they had to block the projection—often at the expense of someone else’s view:
“I felt like I had to ‘take’ clarity away from someone else in order to get it for myself.”
This experience transformed reading into an act of interference. Clarity was never freely available; it had to be pursued, often by disrupting another’s access. This relational tension paralleled broader critiques of how access is distributed not as a shared right, but as a competitive privilege.
4.2 Sonified Configuration
The second configuration introduced sound via a directional ultrasonic speaker aligned with the projection. The acoustic beam was hyper-localized, perceptible clearly only to those who moved into its narrow path. For many, locating the voice required careful experimentation with posture and spatial position.
Some participants failed to access the sound at all. One wrote:
“I couldn’t hear anything. I thought I was doing something wrong.”
Others described the sound as sudden, intimate, and even invasive:
“I moved through silence and then suddenly, it whispered. It didn’t feel welcoming.”
“The sound found me. Not the other way around.”
Those who encountered the voice often experienced it as charged and accusatory—delivered not as an address, but as a provocation. Importantly, many noted that to hear, they had to position themselves in ways that obstructed the visual field—again producing a perceptual economy in which to gain access was to deny it to someone else.
This acoustic selectivity highlighted how access is not simply a technical feature but a political condition—distributed unevenly through alignment, luck, or proximity. As one participant noted:
“I didn’t feel like I earned the sound. It felt like power chose me.”
4.3 Methodological and Ethical Positioning
Rather than inviting interpretation, Border compels navigation. The installation creates a perceptual economy in which legibility is precarious, access is relational, and understanding is always contingent. Participants are not passive recipients, but active negotiators of a system that resists resolution.
This approach enacts an ethics of perceptual asymmetry. Clarity is neither promised nor shared. Instead, the work imposes friction—forcing visitors to reckon with the conditions under which perception becomes possible. As one participant succinctly put it:
“I don’t think I understood the piece. But I understood what it means to not understand.”
Importantly, Border avoids representing exclusion as trauma or spectacle. There are no images of suffering, no explicit narrative. Instead, the installation simulates the epistemic architecture of exclusion—asking not what exclusion looks like, but what it feels like to navigate a space that withholds meaning by design.
5. Analysis of Results
The dual configurations of Border—silent and sonified—demonstrate how perceptual access is not a neutral given, but a spatially and technologically mediated experience. Visitors were not guided toward understanding, but confronted with systems in which meaning was conditional, fragmentary, and often out of reach. This section analyzes the embodied reactions to these conditions, foregrounding three intersecting themes: positional instability, epistemic inequality, and affective labor.
5.1 Positionality and Embodied Perception
Across both configurations, access to meaning was revealed to be contingent on spatial orientation and bodily movement. Participants in the silent installation often found themselves having to move, stretch, or obstruct light in order to decipher text. This transformed comprehension into an act of interference. In the sonified version, hearing the voice required entering a narrow acoustic corridor, achievable only through physical alignment.
These experiences point to a perceptual system in which the body is both agent and obstacle. Visitors were forced to embody the logic of the installation, becoming complicit in the same dynamics of exclusion it critiques. As one participant observed:
“To see, I had to stand in the way. To hear, I had to block the light. I wasn’t sure who I was excluding.”
This ambiguity mirrors real-world infrastructures of access, where visibility, voice, and recognition are often granted or denied based on positional advantage—social, spatial, or technological.
5.2 Epistemic Inequality as Structural Condition
The responses indicate that exclusion within Border was not experienced as the absence of content, but as the denial of stable conditions for comprehension. Participants described the space as “withholding,” “unstable,” or “designed to disorient.” The meaning of the installation emerged not from its components, but from the experience of being denied their coherence.
This reflects a form of epistemic inequality, wherein the right to know, to see, or to hear is distributed asymmetrically. The installation did not fail to communicate—it actively structured the terms of communication. Meaning was not a message to decode, but a terrain to navigate under precarious conditions.
Such a system parallels border infrastructures that operate not just by controlling movement, but by controlling intelligibility: bureaucratic opacity, linguistic gatekeeping, surveillance blind spots. In Border, these are rendered not through representation but through sensory structure.
5.3 Affective Labor and the Cost of Perception
A recurring theme in participant feedback was the emotional and cognitive labor required to engage with the installation. Words like “frustrating,” “haunting,” and “unfair” recurred frequently—not in response to the artwork’s content, but to its structure. The installation did not provide a message; it required visitors to work for the possibility of even encountering one.
“I was never sure if I was doing it right, or if it was designed to confuse me.”
This affective uncertainty is not incidental—it is constitutive. Border operates as a perceptual economy in which clarity is expensive, meaning is scarce, and access is a contested resource. This condition try to mirror the systemic friction that defines exclusionary infrastructures—where navigating a system is itself an exhausting process.
Importantly, some participants identified value in this friction. They did not interpret confusion as failure, but as revelation:
“The point wasn’t to understand, but to feel what it means to not be granted understanding.”
5.4 Repetition Without Resolution
A notable aspect of both configurations was the cyclical, unresolved nature of the installation’s text and sound. The projected phrases and whispered messages did not build toward a narrative arc or thematic resolution. Instead, they repeated, flickered, and disappeared—leaving fragments rather than conclusions.
This repetition without clarity try to simulate the recursive logic of border enforcement: checkpoint, denial, rerouting, silence. The work refuses catharsis. Instead, it frames clarity as a product of privilege—and its absence as a condition shared, even if temporarily, by those within the installation.
6. Positioning
Border situates itself within a lineage of critical installation practices that treat perception not as a given, but as a politically mediated field. It diverges from immersive or participatory models that aim to include the viewer through clarity, interaction, or sensory pleasure. Instead, it constructs a space of friction—one in which the visitor’s presence is not rewarded with access, but complicated by thresholds, occlusions, and selective resonance.
This strategy resonates with the work of Tania Bruguera, whose performative installations often constrain agency to dramatize structures of surveillance and vulnerability. In Tatlin’s Whisper #5, for example, visitors are subjected to the authority of mounted police—a direct confrontation with power. Border shares this impulse, though translated into the sensory realm: the architecture of control is not enacted through bodies, but through light and sound.
Aesthetically, Border draws from the atmospheric techniques of Yasuhiro Chida’s Brocken, which also uses fog, light, and perforated surfaces to destabilize visual perception. However, where Brocken evokes wonder and contemplation, Border redirects these same tools toward epistemic tension and structural critique. The sensory tools are similar—the politics they enact are not.
What distinguishes Border is its refusal of narrative resolution and audience empowerment. It does not offer interactive control, symbolic catharsis, or immersive embrace. Instead, it stages obstruction itself as the medium of encounter. The visitor’s struggle is not a side effect—it is the work.
By denying interpretive closure, Border resists the commodification of political critique. Its effects are not easily archived or displayed. It leaves behind no stable image or moral claim—only a memory of disorientation, friction, and unearned access. In doing so, it challenges the viewer not to decode a meaning, but to confront the systems that regulate who gets to perceive, and under what conditions.
7. Conclusion
Border represents an attempt to translate theoretical questions about exclusion, access, and infrastructure into a spatial and sensory experience. Rather than offering a resolved critique, the installation opens a space where visitors may encounter the uneven distribution of perceptual access—not as metaphor, but as environment. What emerged was not a unified message, but a field of tensions: between clarity and obstruction, participation and interference, presence and opacity.
The two configurations of the work—silent and sonified—produced distinct yet overlapping affective landscapes. Both versions relied on fragmentation and instability, asking the viewer to navigate rather than interpret. Feedback from participants suggested that this approach provoked not only confusion, but also critical self-reflection. Still, these responses remain anecdotal, and further iterations would benefit from more sustained, comparative, or interdisciplinary analysis.
This project remains a preliminary investigation. While it gestures toward a methodology of “perceptual critique,” many aspects remain unresolved. What role do embodiment, identity, or prior knowledge play in how exclusion is perceived? How might different spatial contexts or cultural frameworks alter the experience of the work? And how can such installations avoid reproducing the very asymmetries they seek to expose?
Rather than offering conclusions, Border invites continuation. It signals a direction—toward practices that frame theory not as discourse, but as condition. Toward artworks that do not simply represent political structures, but enact them at the level of experience. And toward methods that remain responsive to friction, uncertainty, and the ongoing labor of perception.
“Empires crumble, capitalism is not inevitable, gender is not biology, whiteness is not immutable, prisons are not inescapable, and borders are not natural law.”
— Harsha Walia
8. Bibliography
- Goodman, Steve. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. MIT Press, 2009.
- LaBelle, Brandon. Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life. Continuum, 2010.
- LaBelle, Brandon. Acoustic Justice. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
- Volcler, Juliette. Extremely Loud: Sound as a Weapon. The New Press, 2013.
- Chida, Yasuhiro. Brocken. (https://chidayasuhiro.com/en/brocken)
- Reuters. “Mystery sound at Serbia protest sparks sonic weapon allegations.” 2 April 2025. (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/mystery-sound-serbia-protest-sparks-sonic-weapon-allegations-2025-04-02/ )
- Associated Press (AP). “Like a sound from hell: Serbia and sonic weapons.” 26 March 2025. (https://apnews.com/article/214ff2630733b68dd2987e411b405197 )
- Walia, Harsha. Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism. Haymarket Books, 2021