HIDDEN

What if sound waves were not transported via the medium of air but via water instead? If our acoustic perception took place in a space filled with water? Gravity and weight would be lifted, the movements less strongly contoured, everything would be softer, slower and quieter. Time would be tangible.

“HIDDEN”, writes Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin about her new work for string quartet and electronics, “is an attempt to get at what is hidden underneath expression or underneath music. It attempts to reach even further where there is a barely audible presence which is on the edge of our perception. We do not know this presence, and it might be foreign, undecipherable. “HIDDEN” is a very slow-moving 45-minute experience transforming the ear into an eye. The ear is given space and time to observe and orient itself in the unpredictable aural landscape. It is an underwater submerged landscape of rocks, inhabited by low vibrations which are felt rather than heard and with layers and layers of peeling away fog. Monolithic groups of sonic ‘rocks’ are seen/heard from various angles. The piece is about observation; it tries to trace/perceive/sense the emergence of expression.

Chelsea Leventhal
An immense world still heard it
Sound installation (2015) WP

Chaya Czernowin
HIDDEN
for string quartet and electronics (2014)
Commissioned by IRCAM Centre Pompidou
Electronics created by IRCAM studios

JACK Quartet

Carlo Laurenzi IRCAM computer music design
Jérémie Henrot sound engineer