Sound Installations | Invisible Cities

[Christopher Murphy <chris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Phil/All,

With reference to sound installations, late last year we created 'Invisible
Cities' a sound installation for the 40th Anniversary Belfast Festival at
Queen's. We were commissioned by the Naughton Gallery at Queen's University
to create a gallery-based piece that explored sound and the city.

The piece we created - 'Invisible Cities' - offered the opportunity to
experience an intimate series of portraits of the world's cities painted
with sound.

Through the interface of a gallery wall, each city, represented by an audio
work of five minutes duration, was accessible through headphones.
Participants in the gallery could transcend distance - moving from Moscow to
Montreal, from Berlin to Beijing - in the time it took to plug a pair of
headphones into an alternative location.

Twenty artists were invited to contribute a five minute audio work inspired
by and utilising the sounds of the cities they cherished. The artists
included a number of members of the .microsound list: Taylor Deupree,
Richard Chartier, Stephan Mathieu, The Quiet American; as well as several
other artist we have collaborated with previously at Fallt: Massimo, Akira
Rabelais, Nosei Sakata (*0), Frans de Waard...

All twenty of the 'sound portraits' the artists created are available to
download in their entirety (for free) from the Fallt website.

<I'm specifically wondering how people dealt with the visual element or lack
thereof.>

I have a background in design, so the visual element was extremely important
to me, but I do think that a key issue in any type of sound installation is
getting the balance been audio and visual right. It's important that both
forms are handled in such a way that they don't overpower each other, but
rather prove complementary.

There are some images of 'Invisible Cities' uploaded here:

http://www.fallt.com/invisiblecities/images.html

<What were people's responses to the piece? How did you feel about the
effectiveness of the work?>

The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. I've actually been extremely
surprised at how popular it proved to be. I honestly thought it might
be seen as a little left-of-leftfield as some of the sound portraits are
quite the opposite of naturalistic (Massimo's work, for example), but the
the opposite was the case.

I think the way the sounds were presented gave the installation a certain
'fun factor' that - for want of a better way of putting it - seduced people
into listening to sounds that they might not otherwise have considered to be
'music' or 'sound art'.

If you take a look at the images above you'll see two children listening
intently, but at the other end of the spectrum we had old ladies in their
80s listening too. What I found interesting was that, almost without
exception, the act of listening provoked discussions about the different
pieces and encouraged a critical dialogue about sounds and its possible role
as an artform...

<I think I might be switching in this direction for my Master of Fine Arts
graduating project, but I'm originally a music major with little experience
in the visual arts.>

If I can be of any assistance, please don't hesitate to contact me offlist,
I'd be only too happy to offer advice/suggestions, etc.

Take care,

Christopher

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