North/South/East/West. Soundscapes for Sharjah

Overview

“You may not fear these silences, you may love them” John Cage

What you see and what you hear often differ a lot. You may walk through a beautiful forest and hear the drone of the highways or explore a historic building and be surrounded by the noise of the electric airconditioner. Mostly we can accommodate these unwelcome neighbours, because we are usedtothem–orwepretendnottohearthem.Sudden silence can be a shock because silence permits you to listen to unknown sounds, small sounds,fragile acoustic events that are usually hidden under the cloak of overall noise.

In the period of so-called Romanticism there are many paintings depicting solitary travellers gazing at the moon, sitting in the desert or contemplating the ocean.These visual paradises are easier to represent than the acoustic ones, at least in the Western tradition. Maybe many of these pictures are not very original, but they are easy to understand. Idyllic sonic landscapes are not so easy to imagine and much harder to build up from memory.

What do we remember of the sounds that could accompany a Romantic landscape? What do we hear when it is silent? Do we remember the reverberation of raindrops falling on a leaf or the early morning birdsong? Do we recall these sounds from our memory or do we remember them from the last movie we saw? Were they real or electronic sounds? Can we be sure? Does it matter? We do not question our acoustic memories, therefore it is easy to manipulate them.

In my artistic practice I like to play with the opposites of the true and the false. For example I use ultraviolet light or the high frequency sound of a tuning fork to create atmosphere, which seems artificial, but is based on natural phenomena. Familiar sounds give us security, daily protection from the unknown. But by implanting sounds out of context in a given situation a change of perception takes place. This is a chance to trigger a new relationship with what seemed familiar and which suddenly may become an unknown environment.


This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 8.