Mediations (towards a remake of Soundings)

The beginning of a new version of a previous work [Soundings, 1979], in which I aimed to expand the reflexivity of each text in relation to the interaction between different physical substances, in this case, sand, and the speaker cone. A speaker fills the screen, and I begin to speak, referring to the speaker itself. This is followed by more statements of what I am doing, ‘…a hand enters the frame…’. A hand full of sand enters the frame and is slowly released into the speaker cone. Every nuance of speech causes the cone (or diaphragm) of the speaker to vibrate, causing the grains of sand to bounce in the air. The more I talk about what is happening, the more the movement and patterns of the sand change or feedback. Sometimes, the grain of the voice seemingly merges with what is experienced as «sand.» The hand allows more and more sand to drip onto the speaker until the cone is no longer visible. The tone of the voice crackles and becomes radically muted. When the speaker is completely buried, the voice sounds distant but remarkably clear.

Quasha, George y Charles Stein. An Art of Limina: Gary Hill’s Works and Writings. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, 2009, p. 584

https://garyhill.com/work/video/mediations.html

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