alchemical sound installation
2016 (world premiere), 2018 (revision)
DESCRIPTION
Aquaphoneia is an alchemical installation centred around the poiesis of time and transmutation of voice into matter.
A large horn floating mid space echoes the ghosts of Edison, Bell, and Berliner’s machines. But unlike early recording, herding sound energy to etch pressure patterns in solid matter, this odd assemblage transmutes voice into water and water into air.
Disembodied voices abandon their sources to cross the event horizon of the horn. Estranged, the schizo-phone falls into the narrow depths of the bell, squeezed into spatiotemporal infinity, calcinated, liquified and released…
The aqueous voice then flows into three alchemical chambers where inner time is surrendered to the tempi of matter: unbound, yet lucid and sound.
In one corner, voices bubbling inside a sphere of fire are brought to entropy and transmuted into a timeless concentration of spectral mist and phonetic vapour.
Another module (drip) separates speech into vital elements a drop at a time: words into phonemes, into phono particles, and the invisible quanta of silence.
An ouroboros chamber twists fermented vowels into distilled consonants to release a thin blade of prosody. This viscous alchemical matter lowers itself to the terra beneath where matter dances to its own affective tonality.
COLLABORATIONS
NAVID NAVAB art direction, concept, design, composition, sound design, programming, behavior design
MICHAEL MONTANARO art direction, visual concept and design
PETER VAN HAAFTEN electronics, programming/sound
NIMA NAVAB embedded lighting design
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research collaboration: Topological Media Lab
creation support: Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC)
touring support: Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ)
INTERVIEWS, PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWS - selected
“Kettled In: Sound Art & Deep Listening”, Colm McAuliffe, The Quietus, 02.2020
“Science as Art”, Navab and Murray-Brown in conversation with journalist Colm McAuliffe, Sonica Talks & Cryptic Conversations, 2019
Video documentary, Galerija Kapelica, 2018
“La biennale Némo, quelle actualité pour les arts numériques?”, Antoinin Gratien, VIRTUTE, 2018
Video Interview, ELEKTRA, 2018
“This Liquid Dream”: An Interview with Aquaphoneia Composer Navid Navab, SoundingOut!, Esther Bourdages, Souning Out!, 2017
“Aquaphoneia: Alchemy of Sound and Matter”, Miguel Isaza, Sonic Field, 11.2016
[experimental documentary / interview], “RADICAL ATOMS and the alchemists of our time / EN”, Ars Electronica, 2016
Watch here, min 22 >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjMdtWfCjuQ
Quebec Culture Brochure 57th edition, Quebec Government Office in London, 2019
PRESS
Aquaphoneia is a rich sound art piece – a manifesto by itself about innovation and inventiveness. Navab and Montanaro are not afraid to experiment and engage with the material, which results in an interlacing of forms, a mixture of historic references, and an interesting fusion of “low” and “high” technology… fusing different backgrounds in convergence on the marriage of art and science.
E. Bourdages, Sounding Out!, 2017
The trick is to speak into the horn in order for your vocal to be thermodynamically processed through fire, vapour, and water. There is a Duchamp-like flippancy to the entire operation; but people are eager and odd enough to love the strange and revealing intersections of art and sound which are not clouded by didactism and nostalgia and living unequivocally in the moment: this is about as contemporary as it gets.
C. McAuliffe, The Quietus, 2020
[in Aquaphoneia] matter and sound come to share a series of interesting cosmological issues... resonance and materiality configure universes, which no longer have to choose between fixed states, but rather stay open to processes that arise in-between, as a poetic interstice of sonic existence… drawn between aesthetic and mechanical forms, under a single principle of oscillation, continuous, interdependent, as an ouroboros.
M. Isaza, Sonic Field, 2016
VIDEOS
Kapelica Gallery, 2019
Ars Electronica, 2016
EXHIBITIONS
KIKK Festival, Le Delta Museum, Namur, Belgium, Oct 26-29 2023
Mois Multi Festival, Espace400e, Québec City, Canada, Feb 6-20, 2023
Prototipoak Festival, Azkuna, Bilbao, Spain, May 27-30, 2020 [canceled due to covid]
Eufònic Festival, exhibition at Arts Santa Mònica, Barcelona, Spain, Feb 1-29, 2020
Sonica Festival, The Lighthouse: Scotland's centre for design and architecture, Glasgow, Scotland, Oct 31, 2019 - Jan 6, 2020
Château de Lunéville, exhibition “Experientia!” curated by Charles Carcopino, Lunéville, France, June 28-Oct 21, 2019
Galerija Kapelica / Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Feb 22-March 29, 2019; [solo exhibition]
NEMO Biennale, CENTQUATRE, l'exposition “Les faits du hasard”, Paris, France, Dec 9, 2017-March 3, 2018 [revision]
Ars Electronica Festival, Post City, “Alchemists of Our Time” exhibit, Linz, Austria, Sep 8-12, 2016; [world premiere]
