- Venue
- Beaconsfield Gallery
- Starts
- Wednesday, June 27, 2007
- Ends
- Sunday, July 20, 2008
- Address
- 22 Newport Street, Vauxhall, London, SE11 6AY
- Location
- London
Aura Satz's new commission explores acoustic illusions and plays on the vocal quality of non-human instruments. It merges the musical concept of ‘glissando’ (the gliding or sliding from one note to another), and the idea of ‘glossolalia’ (religious speaking in tongues, or fluent unintelligible utterances). The commission took form through a research and development period within the upper space of Beaconsfield Gallery, in response to the haunting resonance of the space. Over a six-week period of recording sessions and site-specific sound-editing, Aura Satz invited various musicians to respond in the manner of Chinese whispers to an initial composition based on the acoustic illusion of the Shepard scale, consisting of endlessly escalating or descending compositions. Developed in dialogue with musician Aleks Kolkowski, the score’s starting point is a series of vintage test-tone recordings, which are then layered with the various components: a musical saw (Aleks Kolkowski), a theremin (Lydia Kavina) and a female Barbershop Quartet (Hunky Dory). By drawing on such a range of sound sources, references to classic perceptual illusions degenerate into a more compositional image, from swirling rising tones to coiling disembodied voices and patterned harmonies.
