Light and Sound: Julia Puzara
For this piece I wanted to use a combination of light and sound to create an experience reminiscent of transendence. I chose to instal my sound piece in a small alcove beside the front entrance of the visual arts building, this space has no perceivable purpose, however, the geometry of the space itself is almost Baroque(and thus perfect for the level of drama I wanted to achieve). I began by determining the time of day at which the most sun light traveled through the window of the space. I noticed between 4:00 and 4:30 the position of the sun in combination with the light reflecting from the snow outside, created a impactful light. For the sound element of the piece I chose to record the sounds of the space itself. This was carried out over about a week, each day I would visit the space and place a sound recorder in the space and areas surrounding it. I began to experiment with placing the recorder at different heights in the room in attempt to understand the physicality of the space by the way sound waves bounced off its walls. It wasn’t until post-production I noticed that certain places in the room produced an almost musical resonance of the ambient sounds in the space.To retain the feeling of the space so I chose not to use electronic sounding filters (which I felt might alter the viewers perception of the space) but, focused on controlling the tempo and pitch of the sounds. The resulting piece is three minutes long, I consider it a song and thus would not play it on a loop, instead I think the piece would work best as a mp3 with instructions that it should be played by placing an ipone or other portable audio devices in the space and letting the space ampllify and project the sound, between the hours of 4:00 and 4:30 p.m. By altering the sounds of the space and controlling the addition of light I see the piece as existing as reminiscent of something inherently in the space but also going beyond the normal physical experience of the space to suggest something more.
Installation Location: Main Lobby VAC
materials: sounds of the space: heating/ventilation system , a person ascending a metal staircase, a person descending a metal staircase, an elevator and motion activated lights turning off.
<click to play/pause audio, best listened to via headphones
