Samantha Simmons
Recycled Listening Room
Installation
Recycled Listening Room shows the filtering process of various stages of a sound memory. An audio recording is a representation of a sonic event, and recordings reproduce listening experiences from the past. With the creation of sound recording technology, listeners gained the ability to hear music performed at another place and time and to access a memory that was not their own, but another’s experience.
My collaborators reconstructed sound memories from their past by creating audio recordings based on aural memories from childhood. I then compose with the memories, and use them to drive through metal, adding more layers to the filtering process. I am confronted with my own listening memories through their experiences and stories of their memory digging process. We hear different signals, symbols, and codes according to our listening history. I filter these sonic memories through my consciousness, and again through the natural reverb of the metal. The metal sheets are resonators for the transducers that are playing the memory. The metal acts as a natural spring reverb to amplifying the memories. Reverb is the persistence of sound after it is produced and is created when a sound signal is reflected. This causes numerous reflections to build up and then decay as the sound is absorbed by the surfaces of objects in the space. The choice of metal signifies the longevity of the mechanical memory after it is recorded. Reverb also effects intelligibility of sounds, representing the lucidity of the memory over time. The memory collages start at varying lengths, and play on loops. This allows the memories to stack in different configurations, similar to how our interpersonal associations with memory and sound change over time. The composer Pauline Oliveros states that when we are listening there is a continual interplay with the perception of the moment compared with our remembered experience. She recognized that in order to experience the present moment we must confront memory, and we do with the aid of a recording.