A multichannel sonification installation by Dr Diana Chester and Alex Braidwood with live performance by Alex Braidwood. Installed at the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology 2023 conference at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
A collaboration between Dr Diana Chester & Alex Braidwood
Abstract:
What knowledge emerges if we understand sound and the knowledge held within sound to be both a medium of transmission and a vessel for the storage of non-human memories? Sub_Merge explores the theme of Listening Pasts through engagement with water’s sonic memories and Listening Futures through a speculative soundscape. We hypothesize that through recordings of water in its myriad forms, we can learn how to listen to stored memories. Sub_Merge will help the stories from within the water emerge.
This work takes as its starting point recorded sounds and measurements of water from North America, Australia, the Arctic, and Antarctica. Using field recordings, data measurements, and multiple temporalities as a factor for composition, we decode the recordings and measurements to make audible the various forms of ecological memory and story held within water. These include water quality data, sea-ice thickness, glacial weather data, and vibrational measurements from these locations.
Sub_Merge is a space and time for active listening consistent with a meditative practice, a mediation on the collective experiences possible within water. The embedded performance creates a boundary for a collective experience and contains real-time audio-reactive visuals, while the 8-channel installation is amorphous at a timescale for engaged listener participation.
Sub_Merge is a speculative soundscape for listeners to emerge with stories and new understandings of water in all its myriad forms. It creates a new collective listening experience built from an historical record of water’s Listening Pasts, and new knowledge for Listening Futures, from the memories held within water.
