Releases/Never Look Up

Never Look Up (NLU) was originally created as a sound installation for Lopdell House Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand

3 sound sources played through 4 pairs of speakers in a wide corridor like space. Background work began with a piece in 1996, city-tape-transfer. Audio cassettes were sent to friends in distant cities, and dictaphones were used to map 6-hour blocks of continuous city sounds. On return the 4 sets of cassettes were replayed hanging above various public walkways. Berlin played back over a K'Rd footpath, Edinburgh outside the downtown P.O. A day was spent walking and bussing from one tape deck to the next, turning over and swapping cassettes. Other cities sounds mixed unnoticeably with Auckland city sounds. At 4 points in the mass mix that makes up our urban sound environment there was an accent, a microscopic pinpoint. Signalling place within the landscape.

"Discovering the work has nothing to do with listening to what the artist has composed or inserted into the landscape. Above all, it has to do with discovering our own ability to listen and be involved, to experience the sound and substance of this landscape, to measure the volume of our own place in it." Denys Zacharopulos on the work of Max Neuhaus.

Never Look Up 1998 sound installation-

Aims to examine a sound space and set in motion listening perception in this space. This perception is lifted up above the day to day visual/aural horizons and into the proposed sound space. Sounds move from beneath the listener - at floor level, to a position above the listener at ceiling level.

About the sounds: Domestic sounds are juxtaposed with similar sounds of nature. Day to day sounds are inverted spatially so as to occur up above their normal place on the sonic horizon. Nature sounds and field recordings are manipulated to accentuate movement upwards – into the sonic space above our visual horizon. Some sounds run only on the ceiling speakers, signalling us to recognise them by looking up. Sampled sounds integrate rhythm and movement. Each sample forms its own rhythm, which generates possibilities for spatial movement. The speakers in the centre of the installation offer a space for listeners to enter. Sounds of unseen space, radio space. Aural and visual space for humans occurs within defined parameters- electromagnetic space reaches far beyond what the eyes and ears can perceive.

Sampling is the major source of sound production for NLU. Original material was collected with a DAT recorder or dictaphone, and sections were manipulated primarily with loop, envelope and pitch altering functions of a Roland MKS-100/S-330. Occasional reverb/delay was used. An uncluttered balance between silent tracks and the different sound groups was important. 'SoundHack' was excellent for binaural spatialising of radio space sounds. Listeners could enter the space between 2 closely mounted horizontal speakers. Here was the pinpoint of the installation. Going inside gave an indication of a spectrum so wide it includes the rumble of the earth’s core to beyond the upper reaches of microwaves. The NLU CD is a studio based document of the sounds a listener may have heard. Attempts to document sounds within the space proved pointless. Emphasis had to move to the sounds, space itself obviously too complex for stereo containment. Mixing live, 2 CD players played the same source disc in shuffle mode, while a 3rd CD played sounds from radio space. This mixing created 120 minutes of footage. Editing and trimming it down to 30 minutes avoided repetitions and compacted the sound into 5 continuous segments. Some segments were reassembled in Sonic Studio to improve the flow, timing, fade and volume. Computer applications performed tasks (file processing/edits), and the sampler enabled real time performance. Keeping the process simple is important, as is keeping the tech simple. By using domestic technology, amplifiers found dumped, discarded speakers, made this project cost friendly.