Collaboration avec le festival Les Escales Improbables de Montréal
Le Festival international Les Escales Improbables de Montréal est un évènement annuel qui se tient en septembre ; il invite des artistes représentatifs des courants de la création d’aujourd’hui et s’appuie à la fois sur la création, l’art actuel, les principes de déambulation aussi bien à l’extérieur qu’en intérieur.
Aural Excavation (AE) at the Old Port
SOUNDIG Montreal, situated near Lachine Canal on the Old Port (3 - 8 Sept 2013) invites you to search for the Soul of the Old Port.
Portals of sound, recorded or reconstructed from the Old Port and surrounding area through its histories, mythologies and hidden places, are presented as part of an archaeo-acoustic dig. Sound artifacts from material culture and the environment can be heard through a series of listening pipes within the structure that can be entered from multiple directions.
Portals of sound, recorded or reconstructed from the Old Port and surrounding area through its histories, mythologies and hidden places, are presented as part of an archaeo-acoustic dig. Sound artifacts from material culture and the environment can be heard through a series of listening pipes within the structure that can be entered from multiple directions.
Three fields of sound in search of soul
SOUNDIG has four doorways and many windows looking out and looking in. There
are two routes through the structure, both have stairs to a second level where it is
possible to look into the central ‘well’. The soundscapes, audible through the pipes in
each of the routes, are categorized.
From Jungian psychology we understand that The Psyche (or Soul) comprises three
major interacting levels:
1 – Consciousness
2 – Personal Unconscious
3 – Collective Unconscious
Jung’s model of the psyche
Each of the zones in SOUNDIG relate to one of these levels.
1 - The outer route (East/South) = Consciousness
Collected from archives, these field recordings are snapshots of Montreal life and various ecologies nearby to the Old Port. These are sounds from the conscious world and are ordered in categories of their sound quality. You can read more about these categories from the information boards or simply listen to the sources to determine their different qualities.
2 – The inner route (North/West) = Personal Unconscious
These soundscapes have been created by the SOUNDIG artists in response to myths and stories from local histories. Each relates to a specific place and is accompanied by a picture or an artefact from that location. Stories and myths are of our unconscious and here we have abstracted them into sound in an attempt to personalise them.
3 – The interior = Collective Unconscious
Microphones placed into the ground directly under the installation are manipulated live and amplified into the central ‘well’. These are the sounds that are under city right now, normally you can’t here them. Like the collective unconscious we can’t necessarily access this space, we have to watch and listen through the small windows to the conscious world. The SOUNDIG artists are controlling this sound bring out certain resonant and spectral qualities.
are two routes through the structure, both have stairs to a second level where it is
possible to look into the central ‘well’. The soundscapes, audible through the pipes in
each of the routes, are categorized.
From Jungian psychology we understand that The Psyche (or Soul) comprises three
major interacting levels:
1 – Consciousness
2 – Personal Unconscious
3 – Collective Unconscious
Jung’s model of the psyche
Each of the zones in SOUNDIG relate to one of these levels.
1 - The outer route (East/South) = Consciousness
Collected from archives, these field recordings are snapshots of Montreal life and various ecologies nearby to the Old Port. These are sounds from the conscious world and are ordered in categories of their sound quality. You can read more about these categories from the information boards or simply listen to the sources to determine their different qualities.
2 – The inner route (North/West) = Personal Unconscious
These soundscapes have been created by the SOUNDIG artists in response to myths and stories from local histories. Each relates to a specific place and is accompanied by a picture or an artefact from that location. Stories and myths are of our unconscious and here we have abstracted them into sound in an attempt to personalise them.
3 – The interior = Collective Unconscious
Microphones placed into the ground directly under the installation are manipulated live and amplified into the central ‘well’. These are the sounds that are under city right now, normally you can’t here them. Like the collective unconscious we can’t necessarily access this space, we have to watch and listen through the small windows to the conscious world. The SOUNDIG artists are controlling this sound bring out certain resonant and spectral qualities.
City & Soul
By James Hillman
The city asks for discovery, for fresh perception, not for new planning; the secret city, the momentary eternal city that springs from imagination
and surprises the heart. We may catch it in a glance through a doorway, refected in a puddle, heard in the closing of a heavy door. The city belongs to the saxophone, And to the Imagist poets/ “in a Station of the Metro,” Ezra Pound witnesses “The apparition of these faces in a crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough.” Again: Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall / She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens… “
An erotic imagination pervades great cities. We love them because they hold us in their bodies, excite us, exhaust us, don’t let us leave. Or, we
quiet them as from a lover because we can’t take it anymore. The eros emanating from stranger, at a bar, in the waiting room of a city office.
Possibilities of seduction on a cross-town bus: not the frames and builds of agrarians but city bodies wrapped in allure. Falling in love by the
Seine, the Neva. Bridges, quays, thin canals in winter, even the paving stones are in live. And where love, there is revolution: the cities as cores
of polis and the hot blood of politics.
The great city is a record, a document, a memorial. Not the spirits of nature, but the ghosts of civilization inhabit the city ground. It is
constructed of deeds, deeds that arise in private minds, often in the quiet desperation required by the Muses who are the true ghosts of civilization.
James Hillman City & Soul, ed. Robert J. Leaver (Spring Publications,
Putnam, Connecticut, 2006)
By James Hillman
The city asks for discovery, for fresh perception, not for new planning; the secret city, the momentary eternal city that springs from imagination
and surprises the heart. We may catch it in a glance through a doorway, refected in a puddle, heard in the closing of a heavy door. The city belongs to the saxophone, And to the Imagist poets/ “in a Station of the Metro,” Ezra Pound witnesses “The apparition of these faces in a crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough.” Again: Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall / She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens… “
An erotic imagination pervades great cities. We love them because they hold us in their bodies, excite us, exhaust us, don’t let us leave. Or, we
quiet them as from a lover because we can’t take it anymore. The eros emanating from stranger, at a bar, in the waiting room of a city office.
Possibilities of seduction on a cross-town bus: not the frames and builds of agrarians but city bodies wrapped in allure. Falling in love by the
Seine, the Neva. Bridges, quays, thin canals in winter, even the paving stones are in live. And where love, there is revolution: the cities as cores
of polis and the hot blood of politics.
The great city is a record, a document, a memorial. Not the spirits of nature, but the ghosts of civilization inhabit the city ground. It is
constructed of deeds, deeds that arise in private minds, often in the quiet desperation required by the Muses who are the true ghosts of civilization.
James Hillman City & Soul, ed. Robert J. Leaver (Spring Publications,
Putnam, Connecticut, 2006)