Project result Rodrigo Garcia’s residence in the Sound LAB
A series of artistically intervened helmets are the vehicle for narration used by Rodrigo García for a piece where, as its title indicates and as usual in Rodrigo’s work, the authobiographical is used by the author to explore certain aspects of human condition.
The Spanish-Argentinean playwright and stage director has developed during his residency at LABoral a sound installation under the title Incomplete study on my own claustrophobia which started suddenly one night when I was 41 in a van in Seoul [Estudio incompleto acerca de mi propia claustrofobia que empezó de repente una noche a mis 41 años en una furgoneta en la ciudad de Seúl].
The installation presents seven reactive sound environments which, as a response to breathing and the sounds produced when the user wears the helmet, generate a story and textures that appear and disappear. Each helmet involves a particular setup and listening experience generated through a series of speakers and surface transducers. The techniques used in each case represent, altogether, a compilation of the various contemporary ways to work with sound, from binaural simulation to granular synthesis, including field recordings and also different models of audio analysis encompassed within the so-called machine listening.
“A motorbike helmet is an object which I do not specially like and, may be because of this, I chose it as the suitable micro-space to host the sound piece or pieces. Motorbike helmets that sound, each one with a different story, with its obsession, with a sound which, depending on the person receiving it, may end up being a torture, a game or a bedtime story. The audience or the receivers always stage the plays.
“I am a theater artist, secondly, says Rodrigo García. Firstly, I am a writer. I guess this installation shows where I come from, in the sense that these elements on space are similar to a stage design and the result is a dialogue of the deaf, a system of incommunication”.
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