Absences in the soundscape
A collaborative project with Michele Selvaggi
Support by Du Vert a L’infini Music Festival 2021
03:06, HD Video, 1920 x 1080, 2021
This audio-visual project explores the inevitable sonic changes that have occurred in various human-dominated soundscapes, previously governed by human specific noises, have lost most of their “social” character as less and less human interaction is possible within them. The usual vibrant atmospheres have now been replaced with ruins of isolation, stagnancy, and tales of loneliness.
Playing on the concept of “distance” and embracing the consequences/ artistic restrictions in place as a result of the pandemic, two artists gathered field recordings of sound and images from Ontario, Canada and Chicago, US separately.
Soundscapes ranging from those found in nature to those found in high activity city regions were taken and cleaned up to remove any intrusive sounds. Over the course of the work, ambiences derived from natural environments slowly progress into noises sourced from more industrial regions. Mirroring the progressions of sound, the landscape samples sourced from Chicago are cut and reshaped from graphics to stereoscopic ‘objects’. By using a strategy of disconnecting sourced moving images and animating them, the visual artist explores the idea about how environment as the main subject could reflect our living status. The efforts on creating spatial and isolated visuals intends for looks at the ‘time’ and the ‘space’ themselves.
