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werkplaats experimentele muziek en klankkunst
in residentie
18/07/2020 - 31/07/2020

Onze verontschuldigingen, dit bericht is alleen beschikbaar in Engels.

Sound as a by-product. Eat me.

 

‘Sound as a by-product. Eat me’ is a research for participatory sound installation where sonic
textures of packed food consumption will be intertwined with a concept of ‘industrial lunch
concert’. It is an attempt to created a non-scored performative sound environment which
allows a different haptic contact between the audience and the piece to happen.

 

About the project:
During the residency period in Q-O2 I am planning to work on a theoretical and material
research into the theme of “lunch concert”, largely known as a moment when an institution
opens its doors for a public musical performance during the lunch time with free admission
and no reservation policy. If you’ve ever found yourself in the Netherlands, outdoors or inside
a cinema or concert venue, in a not-so-formal setting around 12:00 or 12:30 you might have
been treated with tupperware popping noises, rustle of brown paper and aluminium foil
chirring. It always fascinated me: the combination of students’ musical improvisation,
orchestra rehearsal or film soundtrack with those discrete food consumption noises which
have an ability to spread through the public like circles on water.

In the project “Sound as a by-product. Eat me” I am looking into the sonic texture of food
consumption outside of a dining / restaurant setting. I want to explore participatory aspects of
eating typical packed lunch goods: biting on an apple, unwrapping cheese sandwiches,
crumbling plastic and aluminium foils from cereal bars. Instead of muting the public, I am
intrigued by idea of creating a live mix of those participatory interventions and ”basso
continuo” of pre-recorded spatial sound composition.

This is a new direction to explore for me as an artist working with public participation and
often employing physical modes of contact between sound elements, myself and the
participants (like in the performative installations ‘The Ear is a Muscle’ or ‘Take Me, Bring
Me’). The current situation of touch and physical proximity stigmatisation suspends the
familiar techniques of creating a kinetic, haptic and largely physical experience for the public
within the audio installation setup. If I desire to create work in public art and live performance
context I need to look into alternative modes of enabling multi-sensorial experiences.

Three years ago I did field recordings in a reformed church in Amsterdam which was being
transformed into a contemporary hotel. Pneumatic engines driving metal poles into the
underground belly of the church, the hiss of welding works, staccato of chisel hammers
working against the old tiles. My ears caught this concert while I was passing it by on a bike. I
have expressed my excitement to the workers when they had a short lunch break and
eventually managed to get a permission for the audio recordings. This was my starting point.
Since that time I dreamt of working with a setting of an industrial lunch concert. I acquired
several construction helmets for public, I experimented with placing small exciters into those
helmets, I imagined wrapped cheese sandwhiches and tiny waffles packages offered to the
public together with the helmets. Now I also would like to see if I can bring in the microphones
and create a non-directed choreography of eating movements and a non-scored framework
for sonic interventions. I would like to experiment with these elements in Q-O2 during the
residency period in July 2020. This project doesn’t require a final public presentation. But the
research will be carried on via sessions of one-on-one interaction with participants during the
course of the residency.

LUISTER
Sebastian Dingens - WALKS
Pavel Tchikov 29/11/23
Nika Son - Scatter


Q-O2 wordt gesteund door de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, de VGC en Creative Europe
Q-O2
Koolmijnenkaai 30-34
B-1080 Brussel
info@q-o2.be