symbiosis

A four channel interactive audio installation and performance in the botanical garde n of GUM Ghent. The work features recordings from the Peruvian rainforest to the mountains of the Caucasus, combined with sythesized birds and manipulated field recordings, questioning the reality of the sonic landscape. An unexpected live ensemble of frogs during the night emphasised this contrast even further. The audience was able to interact with the soundwork by touching alien spheres placed in the botanical garden and plants to activate the installation.

lands beyond

A collaboration between man and machine. This series of works consist of a selection of endless variations of computer-generated landscapes. The images are generated using artificial intelligence, a computer model that was trained on a database that consists of a personal archive, including photos taken in remote mountainous regions and past work. The process is also called machine learning, or deep learning. After travelling to a new location, the computer model is updated with new photos. The model is able to generate new images based on its updates and generates an ever further compressing memory of the mountains. The collaboration raises questions regarding imagination and observation, and provides a glimpse of possibilities in regards to unexplored landscapes we might encounter, wherever the future may take us.

მთის ხმა

What lies hidden in these mountains, underneath their green, velvet mantle? How can I get them to speak to me? მთის ხმა (mtis khma; Georgian, the sound of the mountain) is a work that concludes a research into the audification of mountains ranges, aiming to to uncover what lies hidden in the mountains. For the work, the mountains of the Greater Caucasus in the Tusheti region in Georgia are given a voice by taking the outline of the mountain range and converting this line into an audible waveform. The sound is then compressed and expanded, simulating the movements of the mountains in its million year formation, generating a vast sonic landscape. The original sound is then reinserted into the sonic landscape, symbolising the rugged peaks of the original landscape. The title of the work refers to the book The Sound of the Mountain (1953) by Yasunari Kawabata. In the book, Kawabata describes the sound of the mountain as “it was like wind, far away, but with a depth like a rumbling of the earth”. The quote, translated to Georgian, can be heard alongside the coordinates where the source material was collected. The accompanying graphic sees photos taken during the creation of the work in Tusheti slowly fading into abstraction, outlined by the original soundwave. 

Voice work by ელენე კობიძე

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video

urban oscillations

What is there to listen to, beyond the capability of our human ears? What lies hidden in our surroundings? Urban Oscillations explores exposing sounds out of reach of our perception, by using data captured by a seismograph, a device that captures the movement of the earth, and translating this data into sound. These sounds were then used to compose a soundwork, exposing hidden soundscapes of the city. This composition is then played on a steel plate, on which a graphic of the corresponding seismic activity is engraved. 

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