is a sound installation edited in real time by a computer and the intervention of three musicians.
I see it as a meditation on the act of listening: being and moving in spaces with changing acoustics, sounds and atmospheres. There is no ideal place, the sound moves, as do our viewpoints and positions.
The sounds and voices you hear in this installation were all recorded in and around the city of Los Angeles in 2002. The voices are those of migrants who relate their experience of crossing borders, living in several cultures, languages and mind(state)s, of moving on shifting grounds, considering the fluctuating condition of their lives, and of life in general. I found it impossible to edit the interviews linearly, putting them into a pre-established and fixed order. I found a way of grouping them around different topics and sub-topics, leaving out bits that I judged too intimate to be made public. You encounter these topics written on the walls and inside the space. Fabrice found a way of programming the software, related to space and movement, so that the sounds are triggered and mixed in real time, and sent to a multichannel sound system that allows the voices of all these different people to ‚respond‘, contradict or simply coexist. My aim is to put the different voices in relation to each other, to create a space of dialogue where links and connections in between the sounds and thoughts are possible, leaving room for surprise. The speakers are organised in designated groups of diffusion that re-organise over time and are triggered by a dot in the program that enters and leaves specified ’sound zones‘.
how to share. truly. without restraint. how to be inside a space. a space of thought; one’s own and also someone else’s. entering the intimate space of a person, inside of an abstract space. no answers to be given, no solutions to be found. explore. (Christina Clar)
Since the movement of the migrants and the relationship with space was really important, I used a virtual tracer to trigger the sound affectation on the speakers and to activate different topics. The most important for me was to create different acoustic spaces to let you discover your own listening point of view.
• Upstairs…. A wide acoustic sitting and lying down space …. This is the dynamic speech triggering area. Let yourself be caught by a voice.
• Downstairs… Here, a realtime mixdown of all the speech’s topics from up-stairs. This space could be heard as a confusing acoustic space but it is more revealing of its own geometry and will change your awareness of the other acoustic spaces while passing through. (Fabrice Moinet)
This work is a further development of the installation Turning dreams and shifting Harbors, part of the project Kidnapping Europe.
Concept: Christina Clar and Fabrice Moinet
Prgramming and acoustic development: Fabrice Moinet
Performers: Julia Eckhardt (viola), Marianne Kirch (voice), Silvia Platzer (cello and voice)
Q-O2 werkplaats, Brussels, 2008
With the support of the Österreichisches Kulturforum.
Photos: Sophie Langohr
