Myths of Echo

Myths of Echo (2014)

Room installation / 6 channel sound composition (4 standard loudspeakers, 2 ultra- directional loudspeakers), two rotating reflector screens.

Working with voice, narration and precise sound spatiality, the installation composition ‘Myths of Echo’ was one outcome of the one-year Elsa Neumann Scholarship of Berlin for Artistic Development (Nachwuchsförderung) awarded 201 3-201 4. Extensive research into the forms and practices of researchers in the emerging field of archaeoacoustics or sound archaeology, the installation utilized common practices of information presentation to bring into question academic paradigms of truth construction.

A specially written narrative, arranged in the spatial confines of the installation space focuses on the various myths of echo found in ethnographic research, contrasting these with echo’s scientific physical explanation. The visitor is simultaneously emerged in digitally manipulated echoing voices, as well as being virtually transported via impulse responses to different acoustic spaces and being semantically surrounded by multiple recounted echo myths. To the casual listener, the academic tone of the installation’s presentation arouses little suspicion, yet a careful bending of truth and reality sees the project constructing its own politically grounded set of myths.