continuing on from the idea of having a place to store memories i researched into storing sound memories (echoic memories). This is where your brain registers specific auditory information lasting between 2-4 seconds. I then listed sounds only I would recognise – My door bell, the doors slamming in my flat, the noise of someone closing a window, specific floor boards the creek ect. I listed sounds connected to my house to link it back to the idea of creating a memory place (a place I know very well). I like the idea that the sound relies on your understanding of what is is to exist and be understood and listening itself is driven by a desire to understand something/someone else. We slot or organise what we hear into a known category automatically without thinking.
I then went on to researching the work of Samson Young and Florian Hecker. Both artist use sounds and audio editing to make us question our understanding of our surroundings.
So I wanted to mimic this questioning of someone retelling a memory and questioning what parts are easy to understand and what parts and interrupted and unreliable. My plan was to play around with the sounds within my house to create this feeling of being shut out or unrecognisable. using sounds only I would recognise to create something non authentic and something other people couldn’t pick apart and couldn’t understand these nosies or where they might be from.
Link to audio: https://vimeo.com/user94451701/review/389491917/14cabc7b50
However i felt like this idea of the sounds within my house was moving away from the idea of memory so I instead recorded myself recalling a memory that happened in my house in the room i happened in then had someone open and close the door through my telling of events. The door opening and closing represents the coming and going of information and how you can let someone in on a memory and shut someone out. You also have the ability to not let anyone in at all – keep them behind the door. i wanted whoever was listening to get that feeling of being excluded from my memory or that feeling of being shut out. I also tried this using the 2 windows to the room but the audio from outside on the street i felt was too distracting. I liked the noise of the door itself as a door alone represents the coming and going of a person through to a different space – memories coming and going.
link to audio: https://vimeo.com/user94451701/review/389496827/bfee173d1b
I also took recordings of me just telling the memory with the door closed and open, with the audio recorder on both sides of the room, with the recorder cutting off at so points, all in an attempt to obscure the memory and make the audience question each part of what they are hearing. I liked this idea of them having to put the puzzle together themselves.
I then started playing with the idea of cutting up the audio and rearranging what part you would hear in each part of the room again making the audience work to collect and gather the full story rather than having me just tell them the memory straight.
Thinking about presentation i also considered having it be played in a small intimate room where there was a weighted door so the audience could decided what parts of the audio they where abele to hear and weather or not they wanted to come into my space and here me talk or simply would only open the door and listen for a moment.
FINAL OUTCOME
CHARLEY MILLAR ART 