About the Work

PIANO is a three-part installation structured around sound as internal residue rather than event. A sculptural configuration of waxed cotton cord establishes a radial field held in tension, extending from a central point without hierarchy. The cords register accumulation, pressure, and directional pull, maintaining vibration as condition rather than image.

Exhibited as a pair of wall-based works hung back-to-back, the installation produces a spatial interval that is activated by movement. The sound component is encountered through headphones, requiring circulation around the suspended plane of the works in order to register shifting proximity and an implied surround field. Sound and sculpture remain adjacent systems, linked through duration and restraint rather than correspondence.

The sound work circulates independently and remains accessible online. Only one sculptural element from the installation remains extant.

TEXT FROM THE SOUND WORK

Under the category, subjective sound, belongs Tinnitus. An inner ring or buzz of the ear. A kind of psychedelic sound. There, shaped by presence. Categories, abstract, not only figuratively speaking, spines. Helps.

By giving the vertebrate shape. Only vertebrates can taste. E.g. Tolerance, as a category.  Category is backbone. An objective construction. The tolerance sits in the soundproof box, to hear if the body is alive. Inside the left ear, the sounds push forward to take over the body's attention. Blast its framework for normative monotony. It is neither melodic nor rhythmic. It is more experimental. Like being at a hearing test. At the otorhinolaryngologists. Pretty instrumental, except for the moments when it squeaks.

Hisses. Scratches. Screaming. Silence.

It experiments with the body's attention. The sound as an instrument of torture. Unpleasant.  Painful. Waiting for the breaks, a deserved rest. A space. Between two structures. A doorstep.  Until the cacophony, the `ugly 'mix of different elements, takes over again. A non-wonderful mix of different elements. Nevertheless.

A crescendo of differences. Like a Greek temple, maintained by pillars of all times. Axes.  Crisscrossing. The tolerance for sounds in the room is put to the test. In the left corner, in the room. It settles. Listening. The subjective sound screams, screams. Howls. Howls. Bites. If it had a rhythm.

If I foresaw the rhythm. Then maybe it would, not, suffocate me. Like listening to the second hand. Instead, the hairs carry the vibrations against the temple of interpretation, in the very innermost space. A place where the sounds are thrown around. One two Three. Of the architecture of the ears, just as in the lungs. A hairy, numbered, curve that can be found everywhere. If we listen. They Vibrate. Caressed by the air. Soft. Weak. Gently. Like listening to the plants, singing their vibrations. I see them rocking to the sound of your voice. He says it's the wind. I think that's thé sound. Your sound embraces the bodies from within. Spreads like rings in their inner garden of waters. On the walls, as shadows. The flowers open. Again.

© Camilla Howalt