Instrument of silence / SELINI
⎮sonorous sculpture / inter-media installation / an atmospheric-aqueous sensory instrument
Instrument of Silence / SELINI eavesdrops deeply into the primordial sonorities.
An immersive listener, who is simultaneously listened to.
Ears of water.
The skin of the earth.
The exhaled trace of wind.
An atmospheric–aqueous sensory interface.
On aqua-acoustics and atmospheric acousmatics.
A synchronizer of sonic molecules.
A trigger of aural processes. A multi-elemental field of sound..
An immersive listener, who is simultaneously listened to.
Ears of water.
The skin of the earth.
The exhaled trace of wind.
An atmospheric–aqueous sensory interface.
On aqua-acoustics and atmospheric acousmatics.
A synchronizer of sonic molecules.
A trigger of aural processes. A multi-elemental field of sound..
Sonority follows melting glaciers, the dripping of centuries-old layers of ice, volcanoes, magmatic soil, the remnants of fiery rivers, fragments of lava overgrown with lichen. Rivers of ice and fire, the temporal asynchrony of existence, the elemental nature of the changes of extreme bodies, their diverse rhythms. Sediments of territorial and chronological curves — below and beyond the threshold of human sensory perception.
The aural sculpture reflects on the aggregate states of water. It delves into elusive perceptual processes of aqua-acoustics and atmospheric acousmatics. The sound composition (in ambisonic, binaural, or multichannel format) includes glacial and volcanic field recordings, sound recordings of the Triglav and Skuta glaciers, sonic fragments of performative recordings of Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields (Campi Flegrei), as well as the performative sonification of lava, lichens, and volcanic soil, alongside analog synthesizers and geomantic instruments.
The core of the sonic sculpture is a hexagonal aquarium filled with water, glacial stone, a hydrophone, and headphones, surrounded by a on-site spatial multichannel sound environment. The signal is synchronously transmitted through air and water — into the atmosphere of the space and simultaneously as a vibration into the water. The hydrophone captures the signal and feeds it back into the headphones. The audience simultaneously perceives the spatial, acousmatic, and vibratory, material, aquatic sonority.
The escalation of extreme planetary phenomena — floods, seismic activity, melting glaciers, storms with exceptional electrical charge — is fundamentally driven by rapid and chaotic imbalances in the transformations of water’s aggregate states. Ice accumulates water; molecules form crystalline ordered structure over long distances. In liquid, they move freely in proximity. In a gaseous state (the atmosphere) they collide with one another. Plasma ionizes gas molecules (lightning). Ice melts exponentially. Water alternates only between two states — liquid and vapor. When waters recede, territories of silence remain: chaos, rupture, quiet apocalypse. Contemporary civilizations, through millennia of exploitation and pollution, inscribe their impact into the planetary rhythms of water’s transformations.
Instrument of Silence / SELINI, at the molecular structure, generates the sonority of water’s aggregate states according to the principle of a feedback–nonfeedback loop. The feedback loop is one of the central elements of autopoiesis.
Irreversibility opens a question: What within feedback is irreversible? What escapes?
The concept of the “irreversible” — in opposition to the feedback loop — is one of the fundamental methods of the artist’s creation with sound and a key constitutive element of the intermedia installation and performance — from the perspective of futurology, the feedback loop is impossible.