credit:

Certain Small Observations

Published

Presented live and published to Vimeo. 22 October 2011.

Description

We live in a sea of invisible traceries – some cultural, some biotic, some technological – that bind us one to the other, creating a social milieu. We imagine our recording devices as passive receptors in the physical domain, transducing light and sound energy to electrical impulses. But cameras and microphones also create and output energy, contributing to the electromagnetic field in which we all swim. Like deep-sea fish we are blind to this interaction, as we are similarly unaware of our bodies’ roles as conduits and amplifiers for these ubiquitous fields.

But the birds know.

In this video the original acoustic audio track, in itself a vital record of suburban life, is punctuated by recordings of the electromagnetic field generated by the video camera and digital audio recorder. By shifting attention to that which is normally unheard, though always present, a new sonic geography is created.

See Also

The video plus some of the sonic material was used in a public performance. This is documented in a separate entry.