Sonotopija | Amos Peled in Lawrence McGuire: HRČKI / HAMSTERS
As part of a short artistic residency at Atelje Azil, authors Amos Peled and Lawrence McGuire will present a multimedia art piece titled Hamsters at Osmo/za. The work uses 50 talking and moving toy hamsters to explore how information and knowledge are shared among individuals and communities, as well as how these exchanges feed back into the system.
Each toy has five interactive functions: recording, manipulating and playing back sound, detecting volume, and movement. These functions serve as metaphors for the fundamental principles of communication.
In addition to the toys’ basic capabilities, Peled and McGuire developed an advanced control system that allows for the precise activation and deactivation of individual hamsters. This enables the shaping of communication scenarios and dynamics within the hamster community. Some hamsters act as carriers of ideas, while others function as responders that distort messages, creating complex interactions and leading to a complete transformation of the original content.
The work draws inspiration from the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) of French philosopher, sociologist, and anthropologist Bruno Latour, emphasizing how communication flows between subjects shape the social dynamics of a community. It highlights the idea that complex phenomena emerge from a tangle of both sociological and technological elements. Furthermore, the project references the fields of cybernetics, social sciences, and chaos theory.
Much like social networks, the hamsters’ communication system follows a rhizomatic structure—information and ideas spread, mutate, and become distorted exponentially, especially under extreme interpretations of current events.
Amos Peled
Amos Peled (1997, Netherlands) is a multidisciplinary artist working in experimental music and technology, audiovisual installations, theater, and performance. After studying film and new media, he moved to The Hague, where he completed his master’s in ArtScience in 2022. In his work, Peled explores doubt as an artistic and conceptual tool. His recent projects focus on medical technologies, sound installations, and the human body as an artistic medium. He frequently employs defamiliarization strategies to challenge conventional norms and stimulate reflection on the everyday.
Lawrence McGuire
Lawrence McGuire (1997, Ireland) is a composer, curator, and artistic developer living between The Hague and Brussels. After studying physics and engineering at Ghent University (2015–2019), he began a bachelor’s in music at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague in 2020. Both fields—science and art—are central to his practice, which includes physical computing and experimental vocal techniques. His solo and collaborative works have been shown in Belgium (Atelier Claus, Buda, 2022), the Netherlands (Institute of Sonology, Default, 2021–2022), and the Czech Republic (Bucena). Under the alias hogobogobogo, he creates mixed media projects for platforms like Edited Arts, WORM Rotterdam, and In Unison. Key collaborators include Victor Gybels, Amarante Nat, Amos Peled, and Kazumichi Komatsu.
