13th December 2013, 7 pm

LAZNIA 1, UL. JASKÓŁCZA 1, GDAŃSK – LOWER TOWN

We invite all of you cordially to the concert and sound installation of Krzysztof „Arszyn” Topolski.

Guglielmo Marconi a pioneer on radio and wireless communication said at the end of his lifetime that sound never dies. 

In the Field: Suwałki Region | is a very sentimental project. I was born in Kalinowo, but I spend my childhood and youth in Suwałki.

Krzysztof Topolski „Arszyn”, curator of the Soundplay project, will play a concert and present his newest sound installation | In the Field : Suwałki Region | in Laznia CCA in the Lower Town, Gdańsk. The project is based on a series of field recordings gained in the Suwałki Region, presenting the acoustic diversity of chosen spots in the region. An important part of project will also be the reflection on vibration, resonance and the energy of sound in the air, water, bodies, rooms, architecture, voice.

In scope of the event in Laznia CCA I will present a electroacoustic performance and a sound installation, both under the common name Presence. The premiere of the piece took place on the 4th November 2013, during the New Music Collective concert at the Ohio State University School of Music, USA. The concert and the installation are based on field recordings collected in the Suwałki Region. Wandering through forests and fields and looking for sound, I return home, I touch the past and explore my memory. I return to places I know and discover new ones through listening (recording).

Part of the field recordings is presented in form of a collection of sound notes on the audio-blog:

https://soundcloud.com/suwalszczyzna

[…]Our present experience takes place against the backdrop of vast reservoir of memory, which, for the most part, remains unconscious. Yet a photograph, a song or a chance encounter can draw a portion of this reservoir to actuality temporarily illuminating it and offering a glimpse of the totality...

This reservoir of memory contains not only particular memories or experiences - traces of all the past events I have experienced - but everything to which those experiences and memories are connected - namely the entirety of the past. [...]

So, too what we call 'white noise' contains, in principle, all frequencies of sonic energy in a sort of dilated state such that no one element comes to the fore or draws out attention. In his book Sound Ideas Aden Evans reminds us that:

Vibration do not disappear, but dissipate, echoing all the while, for energy is conserved. Every vibration, every sound, hangs in the air, in the room, in bodies. Sounds spread out, they become less and less contracted, they fuse, but they still remain, their energy of vibration moving the air and the wall in the room, making a noise that still tickles the strings of a violin playing weeks later. Every sound masks an entire history of sound, a cacophony of silence.**

… we hear each of this sound waves - past and present - but we hear them confusedly. Indeed, like man who lives near a watermill, this sounds remains background to us and constitutes what we call 'silence. Only the singularity of signals - speech or music, for example - stands out against this background, contrasts of it, and renders sound clear and noticeable.[...]*

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* Christoph Cox 2009 "Sound art and the Sonic Unconscious" , "Organized Sound" Cambridge University Press 2009.

** Aden Evans 2005 "Sound Ideas: Music, Machines, and Experience". Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Realized in scope of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage scholarship.