THE UNFAMILIAR IS FAMILIAR 2004
Audio Project for Artpool Art Research Center – Budapest Hungary
We have constructed the enclosed collaboration soundscape as outlined here in. The work is designed in four movements to address the theme of the fourth dimension:
<< A POINT OF REF(V)ERENCE >>
The beauty of nature is how dynamic its systems are. Encapsulated within every moment is an entire history of existence. Moment to moment, season to season, the system continues to (r)evolve.
Familiar to all, an “idealised” paradise where lives in the moment. It serves as a concrete framework to push outward from. A launching point, a point of reference/ reverence. Something that welcomes you to the “gate” of paradise – providing common c(l)ues of familiarity, soon to be transformed.
<< TRAVELLING WITHOUT MOVING >>
The landscape has been stripped away, and we’ve travelled inside the creatures themselves – compacting sounds further, morphing into elongated abstractions. Still recognisable, but not. We continue searching through familiar landscape, but something isn’t quite right. The path is the same, but the signposts and markers are more difficult to decipher.
<< PARADISE (LOST) IN TRANSLATION >>
A deep abstraction into sound. Manipulations shift from elongated textures of the creatures (almost static radio sound in their pulsing), to tonal clusters that shift – moving up and down, back and forth.
Highly abstract, a difficult navigation as the familiar clues of “paradise” are completely removed. One is searching, with haunting textures comforting/ repelling the listener/traveller.
<< RETURN TO SENDER (PARADISE FOUND) >>
From deep abstraction, to an almost spiritual journey back to the tranquil paradise we began with. One has returned to where we began, though having coming full circle one’s reading of paradise may not be quite the same.
Derek Michael Besant + Paul Connolly
Box 48081 Midlake RPO
40 Midlake Blvd SE
Calgary Alberta CANADA T2X 3CO
< besantd telus net >
THE UNFAMILIAR IS FAMILIAR 2004
AUDIO PROJECT FOR ARTPOOL ART RESEARCH CENTER/BUDAPEST HUNGARY
PREMISE: In the fourth dimension, we are able to actually look at what is always lurking inside out of the third dimension…
SCENARIO: In the Autumn, for instance; if we walk into a park, we might observe the migratory patterns of birds, or how wind moves through trees while the clouds gather in the sky. These simultaneous movements all happen at differing speeds; but in one continuum. The wind (invisible) is only evident because the leaves from the tree are moving. The birds might fly across the clouded sky or call out to one another near or far, allowing us the awareness of their relative physical presence by visual and audio evidence. These factors, along with real time, places us into the scene where we can locate ourselves by way of our relationships to these occurrences within the third dimension.
APPROACH: However, we have stretched out the time in the bird’s vocalization to seven times its original length. We have repeated one bird call frequency to form another kind of audio signal, like Morse code. We have reshaped the wind pattern as a voice, and it speaks a language that we start to understand… These recontextualizations of that which we? are <<familiar>> with, becomes alternative sensory stimuli? that we are now <<unfamiliar>> with; and so must re-evaluate much like a foreign language. The fourth dimension allows us to re-examine that which we consider to already comprehend. Sound is the fourth dimension’s hiding place.
We have collaborated on this audiowork in 4 movements (in a format that one would use to construct a piece of music) as an investigation towards the phenomenon of the comprehensible, by taking an analytical dissective approach to a walk in the park.
Derek Michael Besant + Paul Connolly
Box 48081 Midlake RPO
40 Midlake Blvd SE
Calgary Alberta CANADA T2X 3CO
besantd telus net