Audio inside APHASIA

Audio inside APHASIA

You may recall from an earlier blog posting (The Door Installation) that to enter APHASIA, one must make the simple yet conscious action of opening, walking through, then closing a red door.  On the outside of that door is the gentle sound of greeting and preparation in the antechamber - a deconstructed and re-composed setting of Céad míle fáilte (an excerpt of that sound installation appears in the earlier blog entry).

Once inside APHASIA, though, the sound world is very different. Starker, stripped back, at times inaudible...

There are two main elements to the sound inside APHASIA:

• Quadraphonic sound installation
• Infrasonic installation

In this update, we are going to concentrate on the quadraphonic sound installation, leaving the infrasonic business for a little later...

Naturally, the quadraphonic set-up refers to the four speakers that surround the dominant space of APHASIA.  In the current gallery floor-plan, you can see how this operates, with X marking the spot for each speaker.

Entering from the doorway at the bottom, the spectator moves up and through the sculptural installation (details to follow in a grand update!) and into the larger space at the top of the floor plan. The four speakers spatialise sound for that section of the gallery.  You might also notice a subwoofer there - that is reserved for the infrasonic component...

The through-composed sound installation loops every 40'17" (the 359th prime: 2417"...with 359 also just short of a complete perfect circle [of 360 degrees] and itself a prime) with the principle materials being:

• recordings of Darragh's voice reading letters she has saved from years ago, retelling her dreams, whispering, speaking, declaiming
• the sounds of breathing
• percussion sounds (metals, skins, and prepared piano)
• sines and the products of their interaction

Together, these materials are presented in such a way that complete meaning and understanding is near, but always out of reach.  The use of text assists in this - with text clusters rendering most words indecipherable, but the occasional word recognisable. It is incomplete, with any attempt to render a coherent meaning ending in misinterpretation - a misunderstanding. 

Words colliding, merging, making fantastic and unreal meaning...the rendering of an aphasic experience.

You can hear some of these aspects in the example presented as part of this blog entry. The audio presented here is best experienced through headphones or dedicated speakers.

The use of four speakers to telegraph this experience is a choice made by Team D that permits low volume sound to envelope and immerse those who travel the installation. It also permits the demarcation of a sonic 'sweet-spot' in the installation, where the directionality of sound emanating from each speaker intersects, providing the ultimate APHASIA experience - the point where the sound language is complete (both the quadraphonic and infrasonic installations), and the visual language is complete (as one exits the sculptural installation and sees the video projection for the first time). 

It is the peak moment of APHASIA.  A complete dissociation. 

And as with all things dissociative, something that cannot be explained, only experienced...

D&D

Our Collaboration

Our collaboration

Thanks to everyone who has taken an interest in our work! It is really great to hear from and connect with you!

A few people have asked about how an Irish artist and an Australian artist managed to start working together, why we choose to work together, and what each brings to the table...well, here is the story...

We have been working together since meeting in the United Kingdom in early 2011, both realising the potential to expand our work through the exploration of common themes and different mediums. Over this time we have refined our language of collaboration through small test pieces exploring the potential of marrying our distinct areas of practice. We rather annoyingly refer to ourselves as Team D...

Through photo-media and durational performance, Darragh explores content that is intensely personal, dealing with relationships, experience and the home in a way that is a contestation of gender, politics and space. David's work originates in music composition (including commissions for Symphony Australia and the ABC), audio-visual collaborations and, most recently, composition outside of the audible spectrum as a counterpoint to visual and performance installation. Individually our work is anchored in personal experience; as a collaborative entity it transcends any individual perspective, amplifying the emotional import of a universal human condition. Our back catalogues – the ‘Nimbus Vice’ series, Pink Cock Room, Jackhammered, Mucker (Darragh); The Joy of Loss, Todesfuge, Die Eigenheit, Domino Theory (David) – are personal revelations filtered through metaphor. As a team, we strive to develop a new language of communication that embraces photo-media, installation, performance, music and sound. This powerful combination takes the expressive power of our work to a new, distinctly original and innovative level, informed as it is also by literature.

We undertook a residency at Bundanon in April 2012 where we scoped and framed the concepts and elements of APHASIA and undertook extensive field recordings. Our investigations of installation in terms of co-dependent, convergent and immersive media, materials, themes, structures and concepts have built on our individual languages and created a potent third entity: a stripped-back new language that communicates more directly, distinctly and with less artifice and obstruction in the exploration of emotion and meaning.

In interrogating each other’s practice and unspoken assumptions, we have developed the grammar and syntax of a shared language – a process that continues despite working from opposite ends of the world. The intensity of our collaborative process remains undiluted across this geographical distance, bringing together our shared themes of emotional conflation, psychological trauma, contested space and, ultimately, redemption.

D&D

IMAGES © Lucy Parakhina

Video: The Return of the Door

Video: The Return of the Door

The final point of the linear expression of APHASIA is a video projection in which the same door that greeted visitors to APHASIA is re-presented in a new environment. The video team (Darragh and cinematographer JJ Rolfe) shot the scene on location in Mucker, Ireland.

Here is Darragh's journal entry following the shoot:

Shooting the scene for the door.

Entering Cassidy's field I made my way to the Great Northern railway tracks to clear the pathway for the dolly tracks. In came JJ through the old metal gates and together we lay the tracks down one by one clearing any nettles and weeds in the way. Next came the red door. I threw it over the wall of my house, jumped over myself and carried the door through the field to reach the tracks. I had imagined it for a long time perched in the middle of the tracks, the red door alerting itself, calling for attention. Positioning it in the middle of the tracks it seems to look like it floated in the pathway. The sun beamed in, not usual for Ireland's weather, so several takes at the shoot occurred. I could see a cloud in the distance in the blue of the sky. As it slowly settled in, it dulled the whole scene and made just the right lighting for the shoot. A slow motion shot in towards the door and then back out again it had to be, just like the other takes. A little rabbit hopped across the back of the setting. I liked it. It gave a bit of character, reality, to the setting.  On two incoming and outgoings I felt like the piece was complete. I had got what I came for. 

And here are a few images images from the shoot: