In this collaborative project with artist Nate Lareau, we don fugitive-like orange and white striped suits to resemble radio towers and for safety from hunters as we hijack the police bullhorn as a means to self broadcast. Logistically, we are equipped with custom-made harnesses that support a thousand feet of cable, allowing us to form a nomadic zipline that easily fastens to our torsos or tree trunks without damaging the environment. In multiple iterations, we explore the effect of landscape on sound by sending the bullhorn, playing at full volume, down this zipline from one location to another as a way to use sound to define those places, and collectively generate an acoustic map of the landscape. As sculptors, we are interested in treating sound as a tangible material despite its fleeting nature, and in this radio zipline as a whimsically foreign and manmade object on the rugged natural environment. The zipline allows the bullhorn to span “hollers” and travel downward amongst rock walls, allowing us to explore how different confines and contours of the landscape, and the resulting flow of the wind, impact pitch. Our process also allows us to capture the Doppler effect as the sound source travels fluidly past audio/video recording devices. We choreographed the footage so that different locations play side-by-side, harmonizing the country’s landscape.
To view behind-the-scenes project documentation visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/82481889@N08/sets/72157639916688274/
The above video clip is a segment from a much larger file.
Look for Radio Zipline October 29 - 31 in Waterford, Vermont, and Nov. 27 - 28 throughout the Big Meadows area of Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Copyright © 2010 - 2017 Marin Abell. info@marinabell.org
radio zipline
marin abell