Doorway effect

Feb 26, 2020, 03:53 PM

Episode image
Piece created in response to a photography, as part of the Sound Photography project, by David de la Haye. For more information about the project, visit https://citiesandmemory.com/sound-photography

"The longer I stare at this door, the more I beg for someone to open it.

Using the main materials present in the photograph as a starting point (wood, arid grass and the background hum of power lines) this is partly a surreal exploration of location-based recording and partly a technical exercise in using ambisonic microphones. The ‘doorway effect’ is a term used to describe the experience of memory being negatively affected by walking through a door. Here, doorways serve as portals to sonic memories and acoustic panoramas.

The longer I stare at this door, the more I beg for someone to open it. Maybe they’ve lost their way. Tom Waits asked “What’s he building in there?”. Here, it’s maybe more a question of “What’s he remembering in there?”.

The work is rendered as binaural audio, so is best listened on headphones."