A Collective Intake of Breath 2017
Abstract
A Collective Intake of Breathexplores the moment, inherently and intricately linked to space and time. where silence becomes sound and sound becomes silence focusing on the act of humming both individually and collectively. The paper speculates that before humming, which includes the drawing of breath, active listening creates the response to the moment, enhances the relationship with the space thus guiding the tone of the hum. Afterwards, a spontaneous silence occurs whilst the hum resonates pointing to an intense relationship to listening even when more than one person is humming with a naturally different duration. During a collective hum, it has been noted that there is a point where the hums transform themselves from an individual pursuit to a collective one and move towards a multi-dimensional tone.
This work takes an artist perspective and is the result of practice-led research that has taken place variously in a bunker on Mersea Island,a car, a deep hole in the ground in Canada andincludes investigations into the nature of sound and silence in an anechoic chamber where silence reveals itself as a notion that reflects the imperfect act of listening. These experiments contribute to my theoretical research. References are naturally made to Oliveros but also include Henri Lefebvre and notions of social space and Henri Bergson and la durée. Sound clips of the experiments undertaken will be included and there is a performative and participatory aspect that will be recorded.