Empty Spaces

This project started out as a search to understand silence and silence in sound. Inspired by sound artists such as John Cage.

I was allowed to record sound in cultural buildings in Tromsø early in the morning or at night when they were empty of people. This was the Polarmuseum, Tromsø Folkmuseum and the central cathedral. As I was wandering from room to room and into big halls I was thinking about silence, what we think of as silence and how we experience it differently. As silence would be the absence of sound, how can we hear it?

After realizing that the philosophical and technical aspect of the field recordings took different directions I went on to focus on the little disturbances of these sound of empty room experiences, as it became clear that outside noise and electric humming were making their presence known. I chose to focus on the electromagnetic recordings in the soundworks combined with pauses of the silence in the recordings to let you compare the contrasts yourself. As you came into the room there was a hammock to sit in and that was to be able to be encompassed in the sound space.

Installed in a room where the sound played from four speakers hanging from the ceiling, in each corner, and a hammock. The sound works lasts for 15 minutes on a loop. Shown at Tromsø Center for Contemporary Art.