Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Improbable Monument Ideas

As we were talking in the hall the other day, my ideas for an improbable monument revolve around materials and locations.
I like the idea of a satelite that explores the outer reaches of space and a place, maybe a tv channel or web site, to tune in and watch...or a submarine that explores the mid Atlantic ridge. Both these ideas, I think are residue from the pioneer monument project I did; somehow commemorating the extending of the frontier. My third idea though, the idea I'm currently researching, revolves around a monument which uses sound.
I got interested in looking into a Swedish man by the name of Friedrich Jurgenson. He wrote some books and has an extensive library of recordings which he claims contain the voices of the dead on them. As some may imagine he received a lot of scrutiny throughout his life for this claim, but also a lot of support. There's a lot of research into EVP (electronic voice phenomena), from Cambridge University to Ghost Hunters. Although for myself, ghosts are not the first thing that jump into my mind when I hear things that I can't explain. I'm of the mind that I except that there are many things we don't know about the world around us, and seek to understand them anyhow, choosing the consensus of science over myth. But this has nothing to do with my project...except to spark ideas around what could be happening with these recorded voices and how to incorporate the sonic phenomena into an improbable monument...I don't mean a sonic medium booth, although I would check that out! I guess where I'm heading with this is uncertain, but am looking into many things, from frequencies not heard by the human ear, to healing cat purrs, throwing your voice and combined white noise effects, in the hope of making a monument that is more of a sound-scape enclosure....I'll post some more links on it...but check out the link on Friedrich Jurgenson if you're into ghosts and bizarre happenings. Awesome stuff, I love it...

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