Sound installation for five individual loudspeakers
The reality of acoustic actions is in itself a consciousness-dependent, subjective reality. This alone makes the use of a loudspeaker to reproduce a sound as ‘real’ as possible a paradoxical thing. When I use a loudspeaker, the sound is distorted several times by the media: by the builder, the electronics and the recipient. ‘I, Phon’ is a piece that is shaped by the individual sound interpretation of each loudspeaker (and amplifier). The loudspeakers used are analysed according to their sound characteristics and the musical content is composed according to these criteria. Every day we hear sounds, speech and music through loudspeakers: mobile phones, loudspeaker announcements at the station, iPhones, background music in department stores, etc. Some people listen to music through cheap earbuds, others buy expensive stereo systems and then turn up their subwoofers so that the technically linear frequency response that made the system so expensive resembles a mountain road. It is these differences in the design of the loudspeakers that make each model unique. While one normally ignores this interference in the sound quality of the playback and uses the loudspeaker to listen to one's favourite albums, I would like to focus the listener's attention precisely on the loudspeaker as a medium. Can you hear the differences between the various loudspeakers? Which one hums? Which one hisses? Which one is the ‘most beautiful’?
Press release (German) by curator Urs Küenzi on the exhibition at Transmediale 2010
Article (German) by Roland Fischer on the exhibition at Transmediale 2010 (Der Bund, 4 February 2010)
Photos © David Schwery, Timo Loosli and Tobias Reber
