SoundScape Park during Film at Art Basel in Miami Beach curated by David Gryn (from the 2013 screening of Mickalene Thomas, Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman: A Portrait of My Mother). Image: courtesy Art Basel
Mariele Neudecker – who is developing a permanent, commissioned artwork for the new Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital Arts Programme, curated and delivered by Futurecity – is creating a surround sound piece which will be played at the Art Basel in Miami Beach next week.
The Artists’ Surround Sound Project is curated by David Gryn, Founder of Daata Editions and Artprojx and will also feature the work of Sofie Alsbo, Alice Jacobs and Camille Norment. On each night of the fair, one artist will have their work played continuously between 6-8pm on a sound system made up of over 160 speakers in Miami’s Soundscape Park, part of Frank Gehry’s New World Symphony Centre. Mariele Neudecker’s work will be played on the 2nd December at 6-8pm. She will also be participating in the associated Salon talks panel on 5th December at 2-3pm.
Neudecker’s Figure of 8 aims to create a sound experience of a night in the jungle with a soundscape artificially collaged from 3-dimensional sound recordings taken from an Ecuadorian rainforest at the heights of 1.39m, 9.78m, 22.59m, 30.79m and 37.26m. Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Ecuador, where the sound recordings were captured, is one of the most bio-diverse forests in the world. Its sounds never stop. At the time of capture, the sound recordings observed and corresponded with the circadian rhythm of the rainforest. The sound implies a physical shift through a physical space and horizontal timeline. Moving beyond the image, Neudecker at times works with classical music and sound ‘data’, exploring the pathos and evocative power of audio that is rooted in ‘ground truth’ – a term used in remote sensing to describe data collected on location. In this particular location no image – moving or still – can capture what sound manages to convey.
The sound recordings were taken for Hanging Gardens, Neudecker’s permanent, commissioned artwork for the new Cancer Centre at Guy’s Hospital. As part of the commission, Neudecker will create an audio-visual piece in the patient lifts highlighting the parallels between dense urban spaces and the internal structures of a rainforest. With the introduction of a window in the main ‘village’ lifts, passengers will be able to see the urban landscape as they travel up and down the building. At the same time – and in synchronization with the lift movement – a video monitor set alongside the window will show a similar journey taken through the Ecuadorian rainforest, from the forest floor right up to the jungle canopy.
‘With the three visitor lifts set into a glass-shaft, I immediately saw the opportunity to use them as mobile and constantly shifting viewing-posts, out to the cityscape and also into ‘another world’, which is both comforting and engaging’. Mariele Neudecker
The Cancer Centre Arts Programme is funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity and is an integral part of the new Cancer Centre developed by Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. The new Cancer Centre is located in the capital’s London Bridge Quarter and has been designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Stantec. The state-of-the-art building will bring together the majority of Guy’s and St Thomas’ cancer treatment and research under one roof. The Cancer Centre at Guy’s will open to patients in 2016.
The Arts Programme is funded by Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity and managed by Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Trust. The new Cancer Centre building in London Bridge which is designed by Rogers Stirk + Partners and Stantec will bring together the majority of Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital Cancer Services under one roof and is due to open late 2016.
Additional credits:
Bath Spa University, Bath, UK
Manus Pitt, BBC Natural History Unit, Bristol, UK
Laurie Lax and John Taylor, Bristol and Bath, UK
Jan Meinema, Creative Music Technology @ Bath Spa University, UK
Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, Germany