MATILDE MEIRELES

For Campo Próximo, Sonic Lab, different sonic environments recorded throughout our time living in Belfast (as PhD students at SARC) were played back inside the Sonic Lab merging with its acoustic properties, thus generating new sonorities that form the basis of the musical improvisation. The performance was shaped by a set of relations that arises from this network of places.

Campo Próximo, Lisboa Soa

Lisboa Soa festival

40 mins., 4-channels audio, projected video

26 September 2020

Campo Próximo, Panteão Nacional was a co-production between OSSO and Sounds of Tourism research project (INET – FCSH Nova PTDC/ART-PER/21417/2017).

For Campo Próximo, Panteão Nacional, different sonic environments are played back inside the National Pantheon merging with its acoustic properties, thus generating new sonorities that form the basis of the musical construction. The concert took place on the outdoor terrace highlighting the acoustic contrast between its reverberant interior and the local sonic environment, where the audience could also glimpse the recorded locations.

Campo Próximo, Convento São Francisco

Convento São Francisco, Coimbra, Portugal

40-min 4-channel sound, projected photographs, light

Part of Invasor Abstracto #1 project by OSSO Colectivo

Nov 2019 – Mar 2020

For Campo Próximo, Convento São Francisco we drew a straight-line connecting São Gregório in Caldas da Rainha (where OSSO Colectivo is based), and Convento São Francisco in Coimbra. We explored various locations along this line, searching for their particular qualities and recorded them using sound and image

These materials were played back in the exhibition space, with a duration corresponding to the time it would take for sound to travel the same distance. Meanwhile, a microphone positioned in the centre of the room captures the sound recordings, and the result was played back alternately at each end of the room. This process was repeated several times, modulating the sound properties and merging the recordings with the acoustic signature of the presentation space, as in I am Sitting in a Room by Alvin Lucier (1969). The dialogue between the various field recordings and the room accelerated until complete convergence – when architecture and audience became protagonists of the listening process.

Campo Próximo, Escola das Gaivotas

Escola das Gaivotas, Lisbon, Portugal

48 mins., 4-channel audio, projected photograph, light

October 2015

For Campo Próximo, Escola das Gaivotas, we explored and captured different locations surrounding the venue. We started by conceiving a geometrical model to approach the selection of locations. The model consisted of randomly located concentric circles which determined places gradually closer to Escola das Gaivotas. While travelling along these circular lines for a few days, we searched and listened for places with a particular relevant character. The recordings we made were played back in the performance space and converged with the particular acoustics of the performance space following the following process:

1. The sounds are played in the dark. They are also recorded by a microphone placed in the centre of the room.

2. After a time delay the re-recorded sounds start to be superimposed to the original recordings, and the space is dimly lit. This time delay is proportional to the distance of the recorded site.

3. The original recording ends, and the process repeats (similarly to Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room) until the resonance of the room annuls any resemblance of the original sounds and any reference to the original place, and transports the listener to the present room. At this stage there is a visual superimposition – a projection of a photograph of the room and the performers, is projected over the room and the performers.

Research

Campo Próximo was included in the conference paper presentation Campo Próximo (Matilde Meireles and Diogo Alvim), NCMM Contemporary Music Conference, CESEM – Research Centre for the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music, FCSH-NOVA, Lisbon Portugal, July 2021