Project
Murmurations - New Public Sound Installation
OCTOBER 17-18 & 24-25, 2020
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY 10 AM - 6 PM
FREE ADMISSION
THE INSTALLATION CAN BE EXPERIENCED WITH SAFETY MEASURES AND SOCIAL DISTANCING
MASKS ARE REQUIRED FROM ALL PARTICIPANTS
SUBJECT TO WEATHER
MURMURATIONS is a newly commissioned public sound installation by MARK NISKANEN and JANI-MATTI SALO. The work, created in collaboration with cultural anthropologist INKERI AULA, evokes cultural memory and aesthetics of the past while attempting to expose translocal truths of the present. Murmurations creates a visceral sense of physical proximity in a time when distancing and division are the forced norm.
The title of the work, Murmurations, refers to a flock, an ever-changing, cloud-like organism–a system that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a metaphor of collective listening, sensing, and awareness of the surrounding environment and its movement. On the other hand, a murmuration is a voice that is barely heard, a private mumble.
The work is based on anonymous, fragmentary passages of sensory observations collected during sensobiographic walks. These walks, conducted near bodies of water in the United States and Europe, are multisensory, transgenerational investigations, producing new understandings of the changes in people’s sensory environmental relationships. In Murmurations, these observations are divided into three parts – the no longer, the now, and the not yet.
The installation creates an experience of oscillation between the private and the public through the use of psychoacoustics and hyperrealism in sound. A visitor experiences the whispered sentiments alone, while being physically surrounded by others. The situation forms an opportune moment for a sudden, momentary introspection and subjective contemplation in a public space.
Murmurations is commissioned by Finnish Cultural Institute in New York and realized in collaboration with SENSOTRA research project. Murmurations is kindly supported by AVEK – The Promotion Center for Audiovisual Culture, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, and Panphonics.
Mark Niskanen and Jani-Matti Salo create multidisciplinary installations that weave together everyday phenomena and technologies. Their work draws on their respective backgrounds in music, lens-based media, audiovisual research and scenography. The duo’s recent works have delved into the world of the senses, human interactions, memories, experiences of solitude and togetherness, and their associations with global themes. Their work takes the form of site-sensitive situations of a personal, amorphous and ephemeral nature. www.niskanensalo.com
Inkeri Aula is a cultural anthropologist from the University of Eastern Finland who studies changing environmental relationships and shared sensory experiences across generations. Aula’s diverse research themes include translocal communality, sensory relationships with the environment, social imagination, Brazilian research, and multisensory ethnography.