Little Breeze (2002-2004)

An interactive installation that examines the presence of women spies during World War II, Little Breeze invites us to remember the experiences of women whose contributions to the war effort might seem inconsequential, rather than notorious female agents like Mata Hari or fictional James Bond femme fatales.

The work centers on one such spy, British agent Violette Szabo, code named “Louise” who at the age of 23 was sent into Occupied France for two missions, and was captured and executed just a few months before the end of the war.

Working with both WWII archival sources and popular film viewers are engaged in active remembrance and encouraged to become participants in the gathering of audio information and the decoding of video images. Through an intimate and tactile relationship with the technology, the viewer’s experience and imagination ultimately shapes the layers of imagery, language and metaphor in Little Breeze.

Suitcase Room
• Entering the gallery, visitors see a large video projection of a sequence of portraits of women made of ASCII code. A dozen vintage suitcases are huddled nearby.
  
• Picking up a suitcase triggers sound clips (from a feature film about Violette Szabo called “Carve Her Name with Pride”) to play through a small speaker near the handle.
  
• Opening a suitcase triggers the corresponding video clip to emerge from the ASCII code. Closing the suitcase causes the videos to morph into each other creating a 3-dimensional image that eventually reverts back to the portraits.
  
• Suitcases are left in the gallery wherever visitors are finished using them.

Audio Room
• Installed in a smaller room nearby is text that emulates teletype tape, punctuated by small photographs - short biographies of nine British agents who worked in Occupied France. Wall-mounted audio speakers emit a radio transmission of Morse code.
• A viewer’s movement in the room is sensed by a webcam and causes a the song “Louise” (sung by Maurice Chevalier) to emerge from the code.
• If a viewer stops moving in the room, the song disappears back into the Morse code soundtrack.

Technical Components:
• 16 vintage suitcases, 8 embedded with electronics
• Specially designed projection screen structure
• 8 x 6 video screen projection
• Video projector connected to an Apple G4 computer
• G4 computer running SoftVNS and MAX software
• Webcam, audio amplifier and speakers, G4 computer running MAX software

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