sound invades all
Volcanic Pulse
Former Königstadt Brewery, Berlin 2019
5 sound channels and lights.
The volcano pushes material and air,
glowing atmosphere.
The underground cavities reverberate. Virtual sonic rooms fade into this real room, filled by the spirit of a volcano. Vibration of the earth is collected from the ground and erupts inside the vault. The rumbling air is the skin between surfaceworld and underground world. The volcano is the membrane between these worlds.
Kesselrausch
Former Braustolz Brewery, Begehungen Chemnitz 2019
8 channels: 2 loudspeakers inside the tanks, 2 transducers, 2 subwoofers, 2 monitors, 2 found metal plates, 8 channel player.
Kesselrausch is a site-specific sonic intervention in a former boiler-room of a brewery. Three 100.000 l tanks were used to store beer and have still an impressive visual presence. Now, these become resonant bodies. Loudspeakers inside the cavities of the metallic storage tanks are echoing by low frequent and metallic sonic events, recorded inside the brewery. Turbines of airplanes are intertwined with these local sounds. The room becomes a roaring, vibrating and stormy sonic field. This agitated sea of sounds honors the remains of the former brewery. Transducers attached to metallic surfaces transmit vibrations making these resonate. The architectonic body and its organs, the machinery of the brewery, vibrate, dance, sing. The anatomy of the building, its objects, its limbs, and skeleton, become living bodies. Resonance phenomena arise, connecting various oscillating systems. This combination of objects and their environment; of sound, material, body, and air, is like the experience of intoxication or ecstasy, in which the separation between us and our environment is abolished. The visitor’s body composes its personal acoustic-spatial experience through movement in space, experiencing various acoustic effects since as many different listening positions as possible are created by the sound sources placed throughout the room.
View in a palace of the ruined area in Paduli
Void
Function.Anomy residency exhibition in Palazzo Ducale, Paduli, Italy, 2019
3 sound channels: loudspeakers and subwoofer, closed room and surrounding areas around the closed space, 20 min loop.
Void is an architectonic sonic cube. Sounds emanate from closed doors creating a sense of mystery. Inspired by the ruined old center of Paduli, a space was created which was not accessible for visitors. A room is used as a resonant body, becoming a sonic sculpture enclosed by walls. Taking ideas of memory and future as not accessible places which are in constant rearrangement, and time as a cyclically changing matter, the sonic composition shifts between construction and destruction. Visitors orbit around the architecture of the palazzo floating in a state of mystery. The composition was made by abstracted recordings from found metallic objects in the ruins.
photocredit: Virginia de Diaz
Roomination
Lite-Haus Galerie Berlin, 2019
5 sound channels: loudspeakers and transducers, neon tubes, 12 min loop, interactive, project together with Shahed A. Naji (light).
Roomination is an interactive sound and light installation. Visitors become the performers in this piece. Inspired by ritualistic meditation, “Roomination” which is a mixture of “room” and “introspection” invites viewers to understand the repercussions of their actions in a space and time frame. On a material level, sound interacts with the room making the floor vibrate, inviting visitors -which are asked to take off their shoes before entering the installation- to lay down and feel the sound with their whole body. Small bells, located on a speaker facing upwards, resonate from the sonic vibrations of the speaker, producing a new layer of their own sounds.
Acoustic Ruin / Bruchstücke
Function.Anomy, Rathaus Galerie Reinickendorf, Berlin 2019
4 sound channels: transducers, sound loop.
Acoustic Ruin is a site-specific sound installation which erases the barrier between inside and outside of the architectonic space at the entry area of the city hall Reinickendorf through sound. The border between institutional and public space disappears sonically. Transducers make the glass of the windows vibrate, distributing sound in both directions of the walls, the windows speak. Spaces which otherwise are disconnected, connect via sound. The composition of this piece originates from fieldrecordings of the surrounding area and the inside of this building, which become an abstracted and atemporal texture changing the atmosphere and perception of the place.
Roomination
Tanzhalle, Wiesenburg Berlin, 2019
7 sound channels: subwoofers, bass shaker, loudspeakers; neon tubes, 12 min loop, interactive, project together with Shahed A. Naji (light).
Roomination is an interactive sound and light installation. The visitor interacts through his movement in space with the room, reshaping its appearance by his presence. The atmospheric sound environment invites to ruminate on how our (here) physical actions influence environments.
Nest
Tsung Yeh AIR Cultural Center, Tainan (Taiwan) 2018
Bamboo structure covered by concrete and plants, diameter: 3m, 2 sound channels: 2 loudspeakers + amp, continuous loop. Project together with Georgi Georgiev.
Nest is a site-specific environmental artistic project realized in the Madou District of Tainan City, Taiwan. The result of our research during the residency lead to this site-specific sonic sculpture.The former factory complex, in which the piece is situated, is a monument to and an artifact of the industrialization process, which contributed to the current aural state of the Tainan area.The construction methods used to realize the structure mimic the architectural techniques unique to the area, providing a positive viewpoint to industrialization, reminding us that it could be a tool used towards a harmonious and environmentally beneficial outcome which respects nature.
In cities, the deep background frequencies of nature are overlayed by many layers of high frequencies of electronic devices. Researches lead to the result that deep frequencies support plants growth, attract birds and are able to re-establich the human connection to nature. With our project we aim to give a possibility to restore the connection to our natural environment on a visual, sonic and environmental level.
The sculpture was inspired by the architectonic shape of a church’s dome, giving it unique acoustic properties. A deep frequent drone creates a constant hum, in which abstracted sounds of recordings of a big traditional taiwanese temple drum are interwoven.The site-specific project reminds people that positive environmental change is still possible and the only favorable development for our future would be to abandon our ignorant and disrespectful attitude towards nature. This sculpture will be covered by plants, whose growing process is enhaced by the sound frequencies used and also the tactile vibrations on the surface of the sculpture, on which the plants grow.
The artwork is a testament to the negative impact of rapid urbanization and allows visitors to visualize in an immediate way the influence civilization has on nature. The selected medium of work allows for an intuitive attainment of a large body of information, spanning several centuries, all synthesized to allow the easy transmission of these messages. It raises questions of humanity’s future. What would our planet look and sound like if we continue down the same road? This sculpture could be seen as an enduring monument, serving as a reminder to the visitors, of the impact and cost of civilizational advancement, proposing a positive outlook of sonic and environmental architecture which embraces nature.
Audioexcerpt of the installation (to be played over a system with subwoofer):
Video: https://vimeo.com/308662558
catalogs
Dystopic Mirage
Meinblau, Dystopia Sound Art Festival, Berlin 2018
Collaboration with Peter Cusack. 6 sound channels: 5 loudspeakers + Subwoofer, 20 min loop.
Ani—the ancient city of 1001 churches—is located in Eastern Turkey on a plateau above the Akhurian river, the closed border between Turkey and Armenia. It is a site that looks back to the past and also refers to the impasse of Turkish and Armenian views of their shared history. Ani’s dramatic and violent history of success, decline and then destruction by bloody invasion and catastrophic earthquake seems to exemplify ideas of Dystopia. After its depopulation around 1600, neglected ruins remain in the empty mountain landscape. Today’s national flags flutter on opposite sides of the river ravine.
Such places invite reflections on the administration of space and the creation of territory. Do ideas of Dystopia help to understand real places or are they a distraction from other, more necessary insights? Perhaps they should only be applied generally. Ruins offer both a utopic and a dystopic vision of a past culture. Societies oscillate between utopic and dystopic states: remembering and imagining, progress and regress, construction and destruction. Our reflections were exposed in 2 texts which were exposed at the installation. My reflection concerned borders, territories and some abstract concepts which seemed related to dystopian realities for me. Thinking about Dystopia and relating it to our current world, I came to the conclusion that in real life we find no pure forms of Utopias or Dystopias, but mixed forms or Dysutopias. The installation was a composition of the sounds of the Turkish flag waving at the hilltop of the Ani citadel. Sounds from within its metal tube and atmospheric sounds outside, mixed with wind, were the most present sounds. The composition had more abstract and more realistic parts of sound, fading from one into the other using the spatial setup of sound sources in the room. At one point the sound arrives from a dislocated point above our heads.
At the installation were placed two texts as handouts, one written by me and one by Peter Cusack, this is my version of the text in Pdf dystopia_handout
Audio excerpt of the installation:
