There is a light that (hopefully) never goes out

"I work with technology, because it's part of our society," says  Candian-Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. "It's the language of globalisation. Our environment, our politics, our culture, our economy are all interconnected through technology and it's impossible to pretend that we're outside of them."

For his exhibition Recorders, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney until February 12, Lozano-Hemmer has created 12 interactive artworks which are all completed by visitors to the gallery.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pulse Room (2006)

Working at what he calls "the intersection of performance art and architecture," Lozano-Hemmer creates environments in which visitors to his exhibitions can "take it over and re-interpret it, construct it, read it, criticise it."

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Microphones (2008)

Born in Mexico City, Lozano-Hemmer studied Physical Chemistry at Concordia University in Montréal. Using robotics, custom software, projections, internet links, sensors LEDs and tracking systems he creates truly interactive and collaborative artworks in which the final product is made by the people using them.

In 2008 he 'appropriated' the shadows of people caught on a screen in London's Trafalgar square, and projected video images into them. In 1999 he instigated the world's largest interactive artwork in his birthplace in which hundreds of participants used the internet to control and shine searchlights over Mexico City to celebrate the arrival of the new millennium. He repeated the work at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Vectorial Elevation, Relational Architecture 4 (2010), Vancouver, Canada. Photographed by Jon Rawlinson

Lozano-Hemmer, who was awarded two British Academy Award BAFTAs for interactive art in 2002 and 2005, has created two new works for the Sydney MCA show. Tape Recorders (2011) features motorised measuring tapes which detect the presence of visitors in front of them and telescope out according to how long the person stays watching (see the video below). At the end of each hour, the total number of visitors and their time spent with the piece is printed.

In the second of Lozano-Hemmer's new pieces, Voice Array (2011), visitors speak into an intercom. Their voice is automatically translated into flashes of light and the pattern stored in an LED until the next person speaks into the intercom. Each new recording is then pushed along the 288 LED long work and the sounds of the voices gradually accumulate. "In my work, the audience is always an integral part," Lozano-Hemmer says. "If no-one participates, there's nothing to see."

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Voice Array (2011)