Executive Shore

Unawatuna, Sri Lanka - the village wakes up, recorded by Stéphane Marin, reimagined by Michael Trommer. 

"This piece is intended as a commentary on the tourist industry’s marketing of ‘exotic’ foreign destinations, specifically, its tendency to reduce the historical, geographical, economic and social complexities of developing-world travel destinations to a series of Instagrammable photo-ops.

The composition strips away much of the background ambience of the source sound – that of the morning chorus in the Unawatuna resort area in Sri Lanka – in order to foreground the biophony of the location. The digital ‘silencing’ process, however, lends an eerie and unnatural aura to the soundscape, one that is meant to reflect the socio-economic disjuncture of the site."

Image by Stephane Marin.