The sound of snow falling is
the sole sound source for
the
installation, which is available to cross-country skiers in the
Bavarian Forest, Germany. WHITE SOUND DOWN is situated to engage the
open
mental state experienced when exercising in a whited-out environment,
which shares similarities with experiencing art in a gallery setting.
During a Bavarian snowfall I
was amazed at the complexity of the hushed sound events. The density of
the sound field was impressive, but the
three-dimensional, vector-like sense of the hundreds of thousands of
infinitesimally small sound trajectories was amazing. The recording I
made could not capture the experience of being in the all-over dense
field of sound, but it did capture its mass of amplitude and frequency
contents.
|
White Noise is the equal
probability of all sound
frequencies occurring at equal amplitude. This was a permeation of
downward motions, an immersive, cascading
White Sound both figuratively and literally.
Analysis of the snowfall
sounds identified primary
frequencies, much like an aural DNA of the event. WIth programmed
filtering
I freed those primary frequencies, amplifeid them and then created a
multi-channel sound field in the forest.
The installation aims at
the perception of a natural phenomenon, the sound of snow falling.
Incresaingly rare in the region, the lack of snowfall has effected the
people, the regional economy, and the sense of the place as it is known.
Many thanks
to
the people of Waldmünchen and Fürth im Wald.
|
