Tarek Atoui's Infinite Ear
2016-09-01 00:00:00 -0700
Infinite Ear at the Bergen Assembly
Tarek Atoui partnered with Council to create a masterful installation in the Sentral Badet community space of Bergen, Norway. My role was to set up the 0.9 instrument, calibrate it to the room, develop the software further with Tarek leading up to rehearsals, and train people on it through subsequent days of the exhibition prep. We worked with professional musicians and newcoming performers alike, many of them deaf persons. It was an eye opening experience to see the ways in which something of my own creation could be used to teach people how to create abstract music for the first time in their life. There were onsite interpreters to translate between sign and spoken language, and many interesting aspects of the space and partitions of the installation to explore and engage in as the time went by.
Some highlights:
- Tarek and I worked with the Bit20 Ensemble to aid them in particular pieces they would air on 9/2/2016 (the opening).
- Tarek and I worked with deaf performers to learn how to play the zeropointnine
- Grégory Castéra and Sandra Terdjman set up a museum of sonic artifacts around the interior of the space, which taught people about the ways in which sound has been interpreted and used throughout history
- There was a sound massage room where you could book an appointment for 1 hour increments
- Johannes Goebel installed his SubBassProtoTon, which is an acoustic bass generator room construction in which the occupant of the box can control a low tone with a sliding window in which air passes through and creates vibration
Themes
- Research
- Iteration
- Improvisation
- Collaboration