Polarchitecture 10

Jan 10, 2023, 08:59 PM

"I work with chance operations/indeterminacy (among other things), so I asked to get assigned a random sound clip (which I hadn’t heard in advance) to work with. My aim then was to build a sonic architecture out of this sound, but without pre-shaping/pre-conceiving this architecture, working with the sound clip as a sculptor-architect would with clay, wood, stone or some other material. I edited the given sound clip using various audio effects, exploring its noise content and its melodic and rhythmic potential, without trying to pre-define/imagine the outcome.

"I audio-edited each new iteration of this (edited) sound, combining the edited versions together, then editing these combinations, cutting them into different-sized pieces. I combined these pieces at random into a sonic architecture, aiming to let it follow its own rules/structure as it emerged. Even though the sound clip I got assigned may not be audible in its original form, it is there, preserved for eternity, molded into a sonic architecture made entirely out of this sound only. It can be looped for as long as the listener wants to."

Blue whale reimagined by Jelena Perišić.

Part of the Polar Sounds project, a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Explore the project in full at http://citiesandmemory.com/polar-sounds