KLANGINSTALLATIONEN SOUND INSTALLATIONS
SZELY
[AT]
In A Split Second 2015 8-channel sound composition Computer, audio card, amplifier, eight loudspeakers, cabels
The sound installation titled In A Split Second engages with the one moment that can change a life. We all live our daily lives, and we‘re often unaware that only the fraction of a second is enough to give our everyday lives a serious shaking up. A car crash, for example, or a demonstration that runs out of control; a shooting incident on the street, like the one recently in Vienna where a thirteen year old boy, an innocent passer-by, was shot; two people starting a fight, and we are right in the middle... Our everyday safety, the codes of social coexistence, all of that is on increasingly unsteady ground, and a small trigger is enough to bring us into situations where we don‘t know what to do or how to behave. These so-called “glitches” in our everyday lives form the starting point for the sound composition and sound installation. This is an attempt to project the dynamics of extreme situations into the space using an 8-channel sound structure. The visitors to and customers of the bookshop in the Vienna MuseumsQuartier are browsing and peering in books, looking for a particular publication, or are engrossed in catalogues and magazines. Suddenly—in a split second—the atmosphere in the space changes. A car crash is projected into the space on the loudspeakers; a demonstration moves through the room; shots are fired and a bank robbery is underway. It lasts 30, 60 or 90 seconds, and then everything returns to the way it was. But in these 30, 60 or 90 seconds the lives of all those present would have changed had that moment occurred in real life. Order and duration of the 18 sound miniatures: Lava stream 0’35’’ • dynamite detonation 0’10’’ • demonstration 1’30’’ • car explosion 0’31’’ • storm 1’23’’ • house collapse 0’06’’ • car crash 0’23’’ • reanimation 0’30’’ • tsunami alert 0’15’’ • urban warfare 1’17’’ • hail 1’38’’ • railway crash 0’58’’ • fire 0’41’’ • air crash 0’29’’ • gas explosion 0’40’’ • asystole 0’19’’ • car bomb 0’10’’ • icefall 0’37’’.
Supported through a stipend by the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna.
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