La PARACANTORA
[2019]
Traveling sonic sculpture. Installed at CERN in the LHC ALICE Detector in Switzerland; the ALMA Observatory OSF, Atacama Desert, Chile; and Paranal Observatory ESO, Atacama Desert, Chile, 2019.
This sonic rite starts from the idea that there is no such thing as empty space. In places where the natural and technological collide there are particular disturbances and radiations that are transduced by La *PARACANTOORA, a sonic artifact that acts as a medium between worlds. La PARACANTORA becomes a (technological) parasite of the place. It is a transductive device that contains environmental sensors that are mapped in real-time into sounds (synthesizers, samples, textures, words, and other voices) to create a sonic imprint of that specific moment in space and time. This way, it offers a listening rite of the silenced voices that our (limited) perceptual apparatus forgot to listen. La PARACANTORA acts like a sonic note/sound-taking device and provides a way of approaching our performative reality from other sensitivities to access these places where the Earth becomes a sensor and nature and culture crash and collide.
Connect with your quark-gluon-plasma origins. Shake your material existence, and let this parasitic medium guide you through an exercise of listening to emerge together, stimulate perception, confuse reality, and resonate with the idea that we are as much part of nature as we are part of culture.
*PARACANTORA: Parasito Ambiental Ruidoso Amplificador Canalizador de Agentes Ninguneados Transducidos Ofreciendo Rituales Auditivos
This experimental performance took place in different parts of the world where the natural and technological collide, as part of the Simetría Residency (CERN, ALMA and ESO). Recordings and listening sessions were hosted at CERN in the LHC ALICE Detector in Switzerland, the ALMA Observatory OSF, in the Atacama Desert in Chile, and Paranal Observatory, ESO, in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
Sensors in the sculpture: Barometric pressure, altitude, temperature, accelerometer, electromagnetic fields, anemometer, wind turbine, light, proximity, and vibrations.
*PARACANTORA has six independent speakers that diffuse sound on-site, a recording system to document the performance of each place, and works during the performance/recording session with battery, allowing it to be an autonomous traveling sculpture that can visit extreme places.
