WORK DESCRIPTION
Title: A Line Made by Listening
Date: October 2001
Interactive installation, sound-driven painting, CD
Materials: loudspeakers, CD players, sounds on CDs, floor covering (paper or cardboard), colored markers taped to sticks
Wide-ranging ramblings in the nonetheless stimulating project report published by ArtForum online under the aegis of Gallery on the Move / see here). In a nutshell: speakers placed at sufficient distance from each other in a relative large space create a soundscape of different elements that can be heard more distinctly by moving towards the individual speakers. Near the entrance there are no speakers and the visitor is more or less at the same distance from all the sound sources. The instinctive movements to hear more closely or avoid hearing the individual sounds are recorded as lines… in the easy version, they are provided with sticks on which markers are taped, which they are instructed to drag behind them. A higher-tech version could involve real time video mapping of their movements, or a floor surface with a substrate that reacts to pressure to clearly show the patterns of movement.
The introduction to the show, while still outside and waiting to enter, is a recording of the song “I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash. The song is very witty, I think, because as the singer explains how and why he “walks the line,” namely sticking to the straight and narrow, never straying from proper conduct (basically not cheating on his girl), the tonal center of the music veers almost unpredictably from one key to another, an effect underlined by the singer by humming the tonic of each verse, as if to adapt to the shifting tonal center.
The title, as explained at length in the report, obviously refers to the famous work by Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking.
Produced only as a prototype in my studio, which in school led to the idea (and creation) of sound labyrinths (mazes where sounds are activated by pressure of footsteps on the floor, though otherwise there are no visual or physical barriers). In a way, the Line soundscape was also the start of my interest in which sounds people like and which sounds they hate.
