nightscape

series of sound pieces/installations, binaural sound







installation view  ('Blind Date II. Sound & Vision in Private', Sportimonium, Hofstade (BE), 2010)



In general contrast to the visual, the auditory field is rather mental then physical, less restrained, and its contours are variable and uncertain. At night this contrast becomes even stronger. Within human perception, the night as a phenomenon seems to go with a different sort of time awareness. The night is more undefined, further away and more unlimited than the day. The night is a state of mind, its beginning and ending unclear.

'nightscape' is an ongoing series of nocturnal sonic landscapes. Each piece presents the aural experience of a landscape at night, consisting only of the specific, natural and genuine sound of that landscape. They are always presented in the context of a dark space: as a continuous installation one can walk freely in and out, in a 'screening' situation with a seated audience or with headphones for a personal listening session. One hears the monotonous, muted and repetitive sounds of night, as if being in front of a broad landscape. Nothing's visible.
In contrast to our strongly visual orientated society, the listener is dependent on his hearing only in this artificial nocturnal situation. Since every visual element is eliminated, the listener's auditive focus increases and stimulates his imagination. It has the effect similar to a true nocturnal environment. Through causal listening (identifying an invisible sound source by making logical connections or possessing any foreknowledge) he can gain a certain level of understanding and connote the sounds to images and meanings which can be mentally merged into a logical whole. Sound is absorbed trough the ears but perceived mainly through mental processing. Apart from their suggestive qualities, these sounds exist on itself as well, as abstractions of their source and its initial sound, detached from any connotation.

In a subtle way, through minimal and 'monochrome' nocturnal sound, every 'nightscape' sketches and bears a different nocturnal space, a sonic landscape. 'nightscape' is a formal abstraction of the night, embedding a latent narrative, exploring the qualities of nocturnal sound and causing mysterious perceptions of what seemed to be a familiar and apparent 'silence'. The visitor is liberated from vision and referred to an alternative mode of perception which leads him from a concrete, obvious, accustomed, trained experience to an imaginative and aesthetic aural experience. Due to the discrepancy between the suggested wide space, the limitation of the actual presentation space and even the mental space, the relationship between sound and space reaches a fascinating point.



nightscape (1)
nightscape (2)
nightscape (3)
nightscape (4)
nightscape (5)
nightscape (6)
nightscape (7)