Kuulumia

Kuulumia – Artist statement

In my own work I have tried to study how different images and metaphors of space, movement and mise-en-scène have affected the way we listen.

I am interested in how metaphors born out of music and  sound technology modify and even bias the way we understand and make sense of sounds in general and sound art in particular: How apparent movement of sound and an actual displacement of sound source relate to each other? What happens when the horizontal plane of stereo or multichannel sound is turned 90°? Can the situations of everyday listening be reinvented?

With my installations I have tried to change the circumstances of hearing and listening and in so doing open up a space or a clearing for meta-listening. I have tried to create conditions where listening could be heard.

At Kluuvi gallery I have built a two part sound installation Kuulumia. It is based on two previous installations, Encounters – Kohtaamisia and Collection d´hiver – Talvimallisto.

Encounters – Kohtaamisia is a study of a meeting of water and sand on a tidal beach when waves move grains of sand and pebbles up and down. Sounds for this installation have been recorded in Rottnest Island, West Australia, East River and Coney Island , New York and in Hamningberg, North Norway. Different experimental hydrophones were used in recordings. Sounds are reproduced by 5.1 surround system. They were mixed and distributed over the 6 channels in different combinations from simple stereo mixes to the utilization of all 6 loudspeakers.

Sounds of water and sand move up and down the loudspeaker columns while subbass loudspeakers make them sway slowly. A smaller demo-version was presented in Location One gallery in New York in the resident artists exhibition in the summer of 2006.

Collection d´hiver – Talvimallisto is based on recordings of water, ice and animal sounds. Sounds have been recorded with different types of hydrophones. I started testing my new hydrophones on autumn of  2002 when Aura river suddenly froze. In recordings I tried to find a way to capture how sounds emerge and also move on a thin ice when it expands and contracts.

The seminal idea of the installation was to turn ordinary stereo pair by 90°.  The horizontal basic metaphor of home sound system stands now proudly in a vertical position. Different sized loudspeakers give installation a conical shape that slightly resembles a melting icicle.  Loudspeaker woollens, the winter collection, was designed and realized by artisan Päivi Aaltonen.

The sound material of the installation changes ever so slightly while it is played through different loudspeakers.

I am intersted in acoustical phenomena that are difficult to record and reproduce. Sound processes like, wind moving in a pine forest or on the needles of saguaro cacti or pebbles and water moving up and down a shallow beach or movement of sound on large plane of  thin ice, interst me.  Kuulumia brings together two of these projects.

While I was working with it I remembered a passage in Michel Chion´s book Audio-Vision that might have some bearing to what I have been trying to do.

” In considering the realist function and narrative function of diegetic sounds we must distinguish between the notions of rendering and reproduction. The film spectator recognizes the sounds to be truthful, effective and fitting not so much if they reproduce what would be heard in the same situation in reality, but if they render (convey, express) the feelings associated with the sitution. ”

Chion is not too clear what he means by rendering but what I gather is that in a film or an audiovisual text sound is used to convey many extra-auditive sensory qualities. According to Chion sound is used in cinema to express weight, tactility, touch, air movement, violence, pain, temperature.

Obviously sound installations and cinema have a little in common. But I think that it is important to remember that when artists try to evocate sense modalities that are outside the scope the medium in question, what cannot be reproduced might still be possible to render.