songlines I, II (2016-18)
Songlines are invisible pathways crossing all over the Australian continent, used to navigate distances of sometimes hundreds of kilometres by means of song. While moving, songs sung in certain sequence describe locations of (former) landmarks or natural phenomena, providing bearing to the singing traveler.
"Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the totemic being who wandered over the continent, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path - birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes - and so singing the world into existence."
- Bruce Chatwin
This installation consists of pairs of speaker drivers installed opposite of each other. Each pair bridges a dimension within the space and quietly emits an electronic sine tone that closely corresponds to a prominent acoustical resonance caused by the distance the pair traverses. Matching the physical sizes of the space the static tones are naturally amplified by the architecture and so appear without clear directionality or shape. A constantly changing interval of two tones can be heard in the space.
Recorded voices occasionally tune with the tones, causing acoustic ripples and melodic resonances to appear. At moments of such tunings, the ‘dead’ electronic sine tones instantly obtain body and locality, and can be traced back moving across the invisibly connecting songlines between the speakers mounted in the space.
26:35 mins audio recording of Zone2Source's 'Resonant' exhibition (2018). Voice: Maria Antonia Company Morell.
still documentation of Songlines II, Zone2Source (Amsterdam), 'Resonant' exhibition, 18 March - 12 May 2018. Photography: Sagi Groner And Songlines I, Institute for Provocation (Beijing) exhibition, 22 - 29 October 2016.
