Draft translation. The original material is available above.
Installation presented as part of the exhibition “Podwórko na Pradze”, Sen Pszczoły, Warsaw, 3 Inżynierska Street
Exhibition curator — Włodzimierz Szymański
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The electroacoustic installation “odbiór” is a gigantic listening device, an object generating an acoustic environment live. Nine sound tracks gathered from the walls of the courtyard meet in a barrel, where they are additionally amplified live through a microphone, mixer and headphones. In this way we hear, for example, people’s conversations, birdsong, doors opening, the sewer system, music or rain — anything at all that makes a sound in the area being listened to. These sounds mingle, creating a polyphony, that is, a composition — musique concrète, ambient. Looking at the network of tubes stretching above the courtyard, the recipient sits or walks with headphones around the space marked out in this way.
Inspired by the children’s toy known as “głuchy telefon” (a cup-and-string telephone), made of cups and a piece of string, the installation refers to my childhood memories. The size of old tenement houses, their atmosphere and acoustics have always fascinated me. I wanted to gather the entire spectrum of sensations together so that it would be possible to achieve a state of closeness with this space, one that for me becomes intimately real through memories. I tried to create a channel for the recipient’s awareness through which they could tune in to the current vibration of the place.
To understand “podwórko na Pradze” well, one must hear it well. The listening to the space taking place in this form — a space that, being itself the subject of the action, was given a voice to tell its own story — turned out to be hyper-listening. Namely, it is possible for the person listening to the space in which they listen to hear themselves. This happens because the instrument also gathers sounds from the courtyard itself. Many windows, stories, dozens of reflections of the same place in dozens of forms. Differences accentuated by the simultaneity with which awareness receives the presence of their scale. What is received is contained so tightly within the receiver that one can speak here of an autonomous environment, responding vividly to even the recipient’s most hidden intentions.
This polyphony about the phenomena of time and attention, and the beauty of silence, looks like a blue tree with white branches growing into the walls of the tenement houses. It sounds like an echo heard at the bottom of a well, an echo with an admixture of sounds from behind walls. An action situated at the intersection of the visual and musical arts, so balanced that the literary side of interpretation seems to constitute an obvious equivalent of its internal harmony. An internally coherent monolith of the three basic media of art.
The question of whether “reception” is possible without our participation is the question of whether art exists without a viewer. What happens to time when space changes it? What is art for? Is proper reception not a condition of knowledge? This installation inspired similar questions while remaining an ordinary toy.
Inspired by the children’s toy known as “głuchy telefon” (a cup-and-string telephone), made of cups and a piece of string, the installation refers to my childhood memories. The size of old tenement houses, their atmosphere and acoustics have always fascinated me. I wanted to gather the entire spectrum of sensations together so that it would be possible to achieve a state of closeness with this space, one that for me becomes intimately real through memories. I tried to create a channel for the recipient’s awareness through which they could tune in to the current vibration of the place.
To understand “podwórko na Pradze” well, one must hear it well. The listening to the space taking place in this form — a space that, being itself the subject of the action, was given a voice to tell its own story — turned out to be hyper-listening. Namely, it is possible for the person listening to the space in which they listen to hear themselves. This happens because the instrument also gathers sounds from the courtyard itself. Many windows, stories, dozens of reflections of the same place in dozens of forms. Differences accentuated by the simultaneity with which awareness receives the presence of their scale. What is received is contained so tightly within the receiver that one can speak here of an autonomous environment, responding vividly to even the recipient’s most hidden intentions.
This polyphony about the phenomena of time and attention, and the beauty of silence, looks like a blue tree with white branches growing into the walls of the tenement houses. It sounds like an echo heard at the bottom of a well, an echo with an admixture of sounds from behind walls. An action situated at the intersection of the visual and musical arts, so balanced that the literary side of interpretation seems to constitute an obvious equivalent of its internal harmony. An internally coherent monolith of the three basic media of art.
The question of whether “reception” is possible without our participation is the question of whether art exists without a viewer. What happens to time when space changes it? What is art for? Is proper reception not a condition of knowledge? This installation inspired similar questions while remaining an ordinary toy.
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ten blog zamykam
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