Saturday 25th November 2007.
I pay the 20zl entrance fee and a somewhat comforting wave washes over me. Knowing that the majority of the audience are, like me, willing to part with their hard earned Zlotys to experience various sound art exhibits and experiments gives me great hopes for the evening. D'ArS Ensemble's 'Accion Sonora', an improvisational performance combining sax and electronics is a truly remarkable start. I sit and watch with glee as the rather large and balding electronics conductor waves his palms over a series of wires and plastic tubes, dancing to the twisted jive of his sax accompaniment. The frivolous and incubated performance lasts only for twenty minutes, and is followed by an hour of whirring and buzzing from sound artists across the globe. The tired, bloated and disappointing sounds they manage to produce however are nothing original and it is not until the final performance that the smile returns to my chops.
Olga Magiers and Martin Klapper from Copenhagen take to the stage and conduct a truly mind blowing performance comprising of improvised piano, toys and electrics. Their jazzy and sinister classical manipulations astound me. It seems that in order to accomplish something original, baked and unspoiled, it is time to revert back to a generation past and forget the modern traits of Logic Pro and Reaktor. Blowing a plastic horn through a crackly radio and looping the feedback through an old synthesizer to the poisoned pitch of a drunken piano proves far more exiting than haggard soundscapes of fuzz and samples of slamming doors in a dark room. I leave after forty minutes and get myself a falafal.
Sunday 26th November 2007.
The large pair of headphones I wear on my head as I patrol Krakow amplify the silent sounds of the city enormously. The bleeping, blurring and buzzing I pick up from the security gates of shops, cash machines and tram lines is fascinating. The one hour walk has been composed by Christina Kubisch and it guides me through an entirely new dimension of the city previously non-existent. The experience is free and like no other I have ever had. The map provides instructions such as 'Enter BPH Bank and listen to the internal and other screens', 'Stand still in front of the Hotel and listen to the Wi-Fi systems' and 'Take a tram and have an electromagnetic ride'. The electronic fields that the headphones pick up allow for an insight into an other wise invisible city, which is more unique and dynamic than I ever could have imagined it to be.
'ELECTRICAL WALKS
The magnetic headphones with their built-in coils respond to electrical fields in the environment. At first I tried to filter the soft hum of the electrical wires out of the headphones. Then, in 2003, the constant increase and spread of "unwanted" electrically-produced sounds triggered a new cycle of works: Electrical Walks. With special, sensitive headphones, the acoustic perceptibility of aboveground and underground electrical currents is thereby not suppressed, but rather amplified.
The palette of these noises, their timbre and volume vary from site to site and from country to country. They have one thing in common: they are ubiquitous, even where one would not expect them. Light systems, transformers, anti-theft security devices, surveillance cameras, cell phones, computers, elevators, streetcar cables, antennae, navigation systmes, automated teller machines, neon advertising, electric devices, etc. create electrical fields that are as if hidden under cloaks of invisibility, but of incredible presence.
ELECTRICAL WALKS is an invitation to a very special kind of stroll in cities (or elsewhere) With a special magnetic headphone and a map of the environs, upon which the possible routes and especially interesting electrical fields are marked, the visitor can set off on his own or in a group. The perception of everyday reality changes when one listens to the electrical fields; what is accustomed appears in a different context. Nothing looks the way it sounds. And nothing sounds the way it looks.' - Christina Kubisch
Copyright Daniel Emmerson 2007 All Rights Reserved