Statsraad Lehmkuhl, Bergen, Norway

Part of our Dada Sound project (February 2016) - see more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/dadasounds

By Ross Whyte. "The original field recording used in Hearts was made with binaural microphones next to the Statsraad Lehmkuhl in Bergen, Norway. On the recording can be heard the sound of a small ferry boat approaching from across the bay of For Hearts, I chose to incorporate the radio play of Orson Welles’ production of Heart of Darkness (public domain). Conceptually, the aim was to recontextualise the sound of a calm, commonplace ferry crossing alongside elements of the much darker tale of a journey along the Congo River. The work adopts three dada techniques: abstraction, collage and photomontage. Abstraction is applied most prominently to the original field recording, in its use of time- stretching specific sounds (e.g. a single percussive beat of the ferry) and exaggerating the ‘presence’ of the ferry with increasing reverb and resonators. Collage is specifically utilised forth across the harbour every ten minutes throughout the day and its distinctive, Vågen. The ferry travels back and percussive sound is a key part of Bergen’s soundscape.

with the recording of the radio play: short excerpts of dialogue, music, and radio static and interference are arbitrarily extracted from the recording, re-ordered and re-purposed. Finally, the overall tonal quality of the work is created through the use of (an interpreted version of) photomontage. To achieve this, three images were ‘sonified’ and superimposed on top of each other. These images were of a map of Bergen, a map of the Congo River, and a photo of an original page of manuscript from Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness, containing the famous line, “oh! The horror!”"