‘Untamed Choir’ alternates the cultivated enchanting
beauty of multi-layered chant with unpolished screaming and crying based on
human instincts of survival and fear. The work deals with the idea that every
human individual caries two different sharply separated identities. A highly
cultivated being next to its origin, the animal with it’s still existing
strong and unavoidable instincts. It seems that the first one is the result
of denial of the second. Garden opposed to wild nature, clothes opposed to
nakedness and stylized vocals opposed to the roaring scream.
This audio installation consists of 40 small speakers hanging from the
ceiling, playing 30 separate audio channels. Twenty of these speakers are
positioned into a circle, cones pointing inwards. The rest of them are
divided over the exhibition room. The human voice is used as the 'sound
basis'. We hear continual, gradual changes ranging between 'scream' and
'song' in various tonal pitches, using samples of existing vocal recordings
as well as well as purpose-made voice recordings.
Three different vocal parts in three different octaves are alternated and
connected to each other by a screaming voice. This screaming voice is
performed by the circle of 20 speakers. It moves around into this circle
which is located in the middle of the exhibition room.
During the vocal parts the 'soundscape' gradually changes as one moves
through the room. With every move the listener makes, a slight and subtle
change in the audio spectrum will present itself.
On one of the walls a running time-code is projected. During the
multi-channel chant , the background is black and the figures are white.
During shouting this image will transform into a negative picture, resulting
in black figures on a white background. This white background lightens up the
exhibition room.
