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2011 _ 004 Urban Songline (A Vesper Songline) Latitude: 52.358054° N - 52.358134° N / Longitude: 4.879876° E - 4.879939° E - Hear It!, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL
The tradition of the Songlines, a system for navigation and caretaking of their land among Aboriginal Australians, translated to mapping urban space by creating music from its topography, discussing how we use and experience the public domain and to what degree we can claim ownership over it.
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For Hear It! Allard van Hoorn presents his new work A Vesper Songline which is an ode to the work 'Vespers' by Alvin Lucier. "Vespers was composed in 1968 and is performed in darkness. Each performer is supplied with a Sondol (sonar-dolphin), a hand-held echolocation device which emits a fast, sharp, narrow-beamed click whose repetition rate can be varied manually, and is given the task of orienting himself in the dark by means of scanning the environment and monitoring the relationship between the outgoing and returning pulses. When the pulse repetition rate is adjusted so that the returning echo is half-way between the outgoing pulses, an object appears to emit sound, the quality of which depends upon the material of the object itself. Moving from place to place the performer discovers clear pathways, avoids obstacles and takes slow sound photographs of his surroundings. (1)"
For Hear It! Allard van Hoorn will record these 'sound photographs' produced by the audience and electronically translate them into music. The resulting music functions as a Songline for the space in the tradition of the Aboriginal Australians who sing the topography of their environment as a form of navigation, spiritual embodiment and care-taking of the land they live in.
The created musical composition will be left behind in the room it was derived from as a musical portrait or music-map that can be listened to whenever the room is to be heard again as opposed to be seen...
(1) Source: The Sonic Arts Union via UbuWeb
A Vesper Songline was realized with generous support from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.
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. SONDOL's (Sonar Dolphin echolocation devices) imitating sounds of bats to be able to navigate a space by listening to sound reflections (after 'Vespers' by Alvin Lucier (1968)). <br><br>Photo credit / ©: Ernst van Deursen // Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. &file=a_vesper_songline_4_web.jpg)
. Audience volunteers navigating the Stedelijk Museum's auditorium using SONDOL's (Sonar Dolphin echolocation devices) creating sound-input for an Urban Songline. <br><br>Photo credit / ©: Ernst van Deursen // Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. &file=a_vesper_songline_3_web.jpg)
. Audience volunteers navigating the Stedelijk Museum's auditorium using SONDOL's (Sonar Dolphin echolocation devices) creating sound-input for an Urban Songline. <br><br>Photo credit / ©: Ernst van Deursen // Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. &file=a_vesper_songline_1_web.jpg)
. Recording the sounds created by the volunteers in the audience in the auditorium of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam using SONDOL's (Sonar Dolphin echolocation devices) creating sound-input for an Urban Songline. <br><br>Photo credit / ©: Maarten Jüngen // Hearitliveblog // http://weblogs.vpro.nl/dorst/hearit/ &file=a_vesper_songline_2_web.jpg)
. Transforming the sounds created by the volunteers in the audience in the auditorium of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam using SONDOL's (Sonar Dolphin echolocation devices) creating an Urban Songline for the space. <br><br>Photo credit / ©: Ernst van Deursen // Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. &file=a_vesper_songline_5_web.jpg)
