AboutDevice for the Emancipation of the Landscape is an artist project intended for poetic aural intervention into sites that speak of land and place. The project situates itself between storytelling and disobedience, speaking about place, in its specific ecological makeup and social history, while pushing against the boundaries of what constitutes public space.
Each intervention uses sounds projected by a cannon to disrupt the acoustical space with field-recordings made in surrounding natural areas. The soundings intend to connect with the ecological aural memory of the region and provide expressive voices to engages us with a symbolic geography, ecology, and social narrative. The actions' resonance in the acoustic environment trace outcomes of our occupations and looks to a collective social re-imaging of our occupation of place. The cannon is capable of projecting sounds to distances of over 6.5 km which causes significant disruption to the auditory environment. The sounds projected respond to the shape and textures of each environment differently, reflecting and reverberating its occupation. The unique aural experience saturates the environment in a response to the aggressive nature of our contemporary aural ecology, reflecting the way we consider, claim, and dominate space. The project has performed interventions in four Canadian provinces. Interventions include: Canadian Museum of Human Rights, Winnipeg, MB; The Bow Building, Calgary, AB; and Site 'C' Dam site Hudson Hope, BC. Audio included is in relative long listening formats and is best suited for headphones or stereo play. |
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Special thanks to the following organizations for their support:
Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council, Hamilton Bi-centenial (1812), The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, The Works Festival, M:ST Performance Festival, The Macaulay Library (Cornell), Brock University Map Library, Hamilton Public Library, Lloyd Reeds Map Collection (Mcmaster University), The Galt Museum, Stoney Creek Readymix.
Audio engineering and compositions:
Matt Walker + Darren Wall
Field Recording:
Matt Walker + archival material from The Macaulay Library of Ornithology at Cornell University
special personal thanks in recognition of their efforts, time and support:
Brandi MacDonald, Darren Wall, Ashok Mathur, The Milk River Watershed Council, Eden Robinson, Peter and Teresa Von Tiesenhausen, Terrance Houle, Vern Houle, Maxine Weaselfat, The Heather Bennings, Andrea Pinheiro, Kierin Gorlitz, Gary Buttrum, Christie Sealey, Daina Warren, Jenna Swift, Chris Bose, Renato Vitic, Matt Gordon, Sean Burak, Sara French, Buttrum Family Farm, Mary Breton