Chapel of Serralves Villa

Serralves Foundation Porto

02 JUN – 24 SEP 2023

This sound installation offers an auditory experience of spatial depth via distance. You see the height of the staircase and instantaneously understand that the noises and voices from the ground floor are reflected above its height and back down to the ground floor. In addition, new sounds are created along the way: artifacts, echoes, resonances and distortions. The proximity and immediacy of listening to this auditory scene via headphones makes comparability plausible: “Where is the location of the sound that I’m hearing? How close is it to me? How far apart are Original and Echo? How do my interpretations the sound? How many layers does one sound consist of? Is a sound essentially shaped by its surroundings? Does each listener construct their own acoustic space?”

The staircase of Serralves Chapel becomes an instrument that creates, filters and colors sound. The association with our ear canal is obvious, because depending on the incoming frequencies, it shapes acoustic signals and even produces them itself. Through listening we explore our surroundings as an ever permeable reality which we actively alter and perform.