« This work is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the ‘Zone of Alienation’ in Chernobyl, Ukraine, recorded in October 2005. Jacob Kirkegaard deliberately picked rooms that were once active meeting points for people. … By listening to the silence of the four radiating spaces he aims to unlock a fragment of the time existing inside the zone. …
…In each room he made a recording of 10 minutes and then played the recording back into the room, recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones. »
« This work is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the ‘Zone of Alienation’ in Chernobyl, Ukraine, recorded in October 2005. Jacob Kirkegaard deliberately picked rooms that were once active meeting points for people. … By listening to the silence of the four radiating spaces he aims to unlock a fragment of the time existing inside the zone. …
…In each room he made a recording of 10 minutes and then played the recording back into the room, recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones. »
[bandcamp width=100% height=42 album=811860632 size=small bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5]
https://touch333.bandcamp.com/album/4-rooms
Kirkegaard’s AION—“infinity” or “eternity” in ancient Greek—was inspired by the groundbreaking sound work I am sitting in a room (1969), by artist Alvin Lucier (American, born 1931), in which Lucier recorded himself saying, “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice.” He then played these phrases back and re-recorded them. He did this repeatedly until his words were unrecognizable, his voice smoothed into a warbly hum. Kirkegaard has taken Lucier’s action a step further, placing recording equipment in four abandoned spaces inside the exclusion area near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site (a swimming pool, a concert hall, a gymnasium, and a church), then re-recording the results. In the final recordings, each of these ostensibly silent, empty spaces takes on a very distinct resonance. In effect, Kirkegaard has recorded the voices of rooms.
https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2013/soundings/artists/6/works/
Image : Jacob Kirkegaard. AION. 2006. Photograph, Lambda print on dibond. Courtesy the artist
A I O N
Installation. 50-minute composition from field recordings & video footage, looped. Premiered at Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark
Released on CD, 4 Rooms by Touch, 2006, and on DVD by Fonik Works, 2011
Aion was recorded and filmed in October 2005 in four abandoned spaces inside the exclusion zone around the former nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
The layered sound recording of each space reveal its resonant frequencies and is accompanied by projections of layered video of the same space
http://fonik.dk/works/aion.html