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Divining for Lost Sound
by Peter Courtemanche and Lori Weidenhammer, © 1996
Divining for Lost Sound is an outdoor sound installation. This audience-interactive art piece is based around the metaphor of divining, the art of finding objects, minerals or water underground. The piece was designed to be site specific: adaptable to the context of each location where the work is presented. In June through July of 1997, the work was installed at the St. Norbert Arts and Cultural Centre - the site of a former Trappist monastery, in Manitoba. The background of the ruins provided the basis for a sound-score that evoked the history and solitude of the site. Chanting monks were juxtaposed with the songs of local birds, the sounds of storms and fires that had ravaged the monastery, and poetic-electronic treatments of daily life and the choral tradition that is so important to monastic culture. By drawing the audience into a garden through the device of electronic art, the work created a space for the examination of the modern electronic form through a romantic reflection of monastic simplicity.
The traditional divining rod is predicated on the philosophy that sympathetic vibrations exist in the earth and in the dowser. These vibrations can be focused so that they resonate and provide a guide to what lies within the earth. Divining for Lost Sound connects contemporary electronic technology in the form of radio waves and electro-magnetic fields with this ancient technique of dowsing. The piece attempts to bridge time. It places the audience in the role of the dowser - a venerable and timeless tradition - while connecting them to sounds that place them in the past. These sounds are like ghosts telling stories through song, weather, and whispers.
The piece makes use of a technology and techniques developed by Leon Theremin c. 1920. Theremin created an electronic musical instrument that used the beat frequency of two radio-frequency oscillators both as a source of sound and as a measure of the musician's position. The device had two antennae - one to control volume, the other for pitch. To determine the note of the instrument, the player varied the distance between her hands and these antennae.
Divining for Lost Sound uses a similar technique. Copper antennae - buried under the earth - are used to detect the presence or proximity of the listener. The antennae become a metaphor for a virtual stream - the diviner's treasure. The antennae create an electromagnetic field that surrounds the participants. This field reacts to the presence of the diviner and responds by transmitting an audio signal that can be heard on a portable radio receiver. As the participant approaches the antenna the clarity of the sound source improves. At a distance of several feet or more, the sound becomes obscured by static, but within a few feet of the antennae the audio is clear. This change in clarity helps to guide the participant along the path of the electronic water.
(Peter Courtemanche and Lori Weidenhammer, 1998)
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EXHIBTIONS
Ceperley House, Burnaby, 1999
Kunst in Der Stadt 2, Bregenz,
Austria, 1998
SNAC, St. Norbert Manitoba, 1997
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