Portable Sensors
An updated and portable version of “Sensors“, an interactive installation based on statistics of banned books in Malaysia.
The buzzwires — central to the 2007 series — are now housed in sleek black boxes and powered by batteries. Each is fully functional; comes with a high-pitched buzzer and bright signal light; and is designed to decorate your empty-by-government-sanction bookshelf.
Under the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984, the Malaysian government has consistently banned books every year since 1971. “Portable Sensors” is updated with the latest information (as of 2012) available on the Internal Security Ministry’s website. There are now 1515 banned titles.
I entered this complete list into a database and sorted them into five categories: religion, sex, counter culture, politics and race. The texts were categorised by identifying keys words in the titles. If I was unsure, I acted like a true censor would, and categorised them arbitrarily.
An engineer friend helped me analyse the data and create graphs. The works’ buzzwires follow the shape of these graphs.
