resounding nonsites (2014)

This piece is a contribution to Nandita Kumar’s “Ecology of Invisible Cities” an App for a public sound installation within the Indian Art Fair 2014.

Listen to this environment, can you make out the natural and the man-made sounds? Are you certain that what you hear is there, an actual event? This sound map takes you to different spots, at different times, letting you hear the acoustic environment of these places. Not all of them are real, much like life in our digital society. Do these sounds tell you facts, can you believe that they are actually there? Our listening has changed, as have our sonic landscapes. The impact of digital culture replaces that of the industrial society, the sound spaces are altered by it. Can intense and focused listening change our reality?

The piece transports sonic events of human or natural origin, generated by machines and animals, by instruments and vehicles. This brief window opens onto a specific ‘point-of-listening’, a concrete perspective filled with sound signatures, acoustic markers, and auditory icons. The subjective assemblage of elements represents the PLACE and a specific SPAN of time.
The interdependence of the constructed with the captured, of the musical materials with the ‘photo’-realistic sound recordings hints at the duplicity of human presence in an urban, yet natural environment. However, the piece is not merely adhering to principles of acoustic ecology, the sonic affordances are much rather created by the shifts between the sonic terrains and musical strata. The co-existence of these domains in sound is rendered possible by fragmentation and layering. The chaotic arrangements of facets creates an analogy to our position in society, where ambiguities continuously trouble the waters. This juxtaposition of the familiar with the unidentifiable has the potential to represent our social realities.