‘Thin Air’ is an immersive large-scale exhibition taking place at East London’s industrial venue ‘The Beams’ and features seven captivating audio-visual installations. Light, sound and space mutually interlaced – examining boundaries of these crucial subjects pulls the attention of visitor’s senses on their possibly introspective journeys whilst wandering through the maze of dark rooms. In this essay I will dedicate my attention to chosen installations ‘3.24’ by duo 404.zero, ‘LINES’ by international studio S E T U P and ‘Cleanse/Mantra (110Hz)’ by James Clar.
The first installation worth mentioning is James Clar’s ‘Cleanse/Mantra (110Hz)’. It is a silent laser installation of lasers in the entry corridor inviting visitors to the whole space. A frequency of 110 Hz is known as ‘human pitch’ stimulating right side of the brain where art, creativity, spirituality and emotion are centred. Buddhist and Hindu mantras are often chanted in the same frequency (Thin Air – The Beams, 2023). Although the mantra is visual it provides a certain synesthetic experience by visually expressing the sine wave of the frequency 110Hz. In spite of installation itself being sonically ‘silent’, the ominous bass drones from the impending installation ‘3.24’, already enter the sonic space of ‘Cleanse/Mantra’ and somehow become a part of it. It feels like Mantra of creativity is supposed to prepare you for the upcoming feeling of astonishment and immersion.
404.zero is a collaborative project of artists Kristina Karpysheva and Alexandr Letsius. They specialise in real-time, generative, and code-based art, which is presented in large-scale installations, performance and music. Through combining noise with randomised algorithms they question the power structures of the Anthropocene and global politics, revealing them as invisible yet impregnable environments of the contemporary condition (Thin Air – The Beams, 2023). ‘3.24’ wants to challenge visitors to delve deeper into their own perceptions and explore the depths of their personal experiences. The installation consists of carefully positioned lights flickering across the ceiling beams and pillars throughout the space. A dozen of sound systems are positioned across the humongous warehouse space on each side. The sound design is ominous and deep; light works in juxtaposition with the darkness of the vast fog encompassed space. The space is sparsely filled with people, which reminded me of entities of unknown origin slowly roaming and lost in the dark.
S E T U P is an international studio operating between multimedia art, lighting & stage design and performance programming. The studio was founded by Dmitry Znamensky, Stepan Novikov, Pavel Zmunchila and Anton Kochnev in 2018. The team explores expressive opportunities provided by the latest digital technologies. The group creates installations that challenge physical perception by working with light, programming and sculpture. They specialize in image and spatial distortion, and by using high-tech media, they transform the spaces they work in (Thin Air – The Beams, 2023). ‘LINES’ is situated in a warehouse smaller than the previous one. Initial impressions created by light systems and sound design seem to share similarities with ‘3.24’, however the space is equipped with beanbags, suggesting to visitors that this space may be suitable for relaxation. Three layers of LED lines are hanging from the ceiling which is spread across the warehouse.
Both installations, via their atmosphere and soundscapes, inevitably reminded me of the environment of techno clubs, however, deconstructed into its basic elements of immersiveness. The sound in the space varied from deep drones, electric current-like sounds, industrial metallic hits, and heavy bass rumble. The sound, together with the visuals, could be easily found within a variety of techno shows. The immersive aspect may result in the escapism similarly provided by techno clubs and raves. Many modern humans have an urge to escape the stress of the fast paced life in big cities and recover from such stress by enclosing themselves into post-modern cave environments of high-tech techno clubs or abandoned warehouses at underground raves in order to internally reunite with ‘..ritual-spiritual and meditative space [and] to think through affective citizenship of socio-sonic dance space along processes such as belonging/alienation, self/’ (Zebracki, 2016, p. 118). Often loud, hypnotic and heavily percussive electronic music combined with artificial smoke and darkness in juxtaposition with flashing lights may bring a feeling of relaxation or mental restart, via the human mind reaching ecstatic or even psychedelic states. However, soundscapes of installations alongside lights are here generated randomly by coded algorithms and create rather an ambience which encourages the visitor to (maybe) consciously contemple, rather than to an ecstatic dance.
In spite of the ambiguity and complicated definition of the concept of soundscape I have used this term in order to capture a representation of certain environment with its own sonic reality tied to the specific socio-cultural context (Bull and Cobussen, 2020, p. 37). How could the soundscape of post-modern, post-industrial society sound like and how it inspires and influences humans living in the big city constantly surrounded by technology? Does sounds of traffic, factories and computers in office spaces, all naturally occurring in the city landscape, create inspiration to purposely and with care fold them into patterns of compositions, thus creating industrial and techno music?
The important element in which both pieces of the exhibition differ from the club and party environment, is what I call “deconstruction of the urban techno soundscape”. The percussive element of electronic dance music played in night clubs derives a long-run inspiration and roots in percussive music from tribal traditions, e.g. West African drumming (Zebracki, 2016, p. 112) then reframed with the use of modern technologies in Detroit and Chicago. ‘…House music was created by Black men in the late 1970s in New York and most famously, Chicago, after the “death of disco”. Techno was born in Belleville, Detroit by young Black men mixing tracks together with drum machines, synthesizers and turntables. After the wall fell in Berlin in 1989, Techno music made its way to Germany as the sound of a new, inclusive future. Detroit and Berlin have since had a symbiotic relationship when it comes to techno…’ (Goodwin, 2023).
Both exhibitions, ‘3.14’ and ‘LINES’, are highly immersive experiences, and the sound design contains many elements of techno soundscapes, however, they are stripped of the repetitive rhythms and structures of dance music. If percussive moments appear, they are random and unstructured. There is no sense of evolvement, as for example in DJ sets. By stripping urban techno music of its repetitive percussion and compositional structure, yet retaining the elements of raw industrial/techno sound design, the sound installation still induces a similar transcendental effect on the human mind. It brings a different way of creating more clear consciousness in comparison to overly busy club and rave environments, where people may experience affective citizenship, feeling of belonging, and oneness on the dance floor especially with the context of the techno and rave culture.(Zebracki, 2016, p. 111) Here we are getting more into contemplation based on experience of solitude within the vast space (other visitors rarely interact and there is only handful of them as mentioned above).
Bibliography:
Boudreault-Fournier, Alexandrine. “Sonic Methodologies in Anthropology.” In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies, edited by Bull, M. and Cobussen, M. (2020). Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Goodwin, T. (2023) “A Brief History of EDM’s Black Roots,” iHeartRaves [Preprint]. Available at: https://www.iheartraves.com/en-gb/blogs/post/a-brief-history-of-edms-black-roots.
Thin Air – The Beams (2023). Available at: https://thebeamslondon.com/thin-air/
Zebracki, Martin (2016) “Embodied techno-space: An auto-ethnography on affective citizenship in the techno electronic dance music scene,” Emotion, Space and Society, 20, pp. 111–119. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2016.03.001.