Åsa Stjerna – Sonic Promenade

A site-specific sound installation for Breiavannet

Sonic Promenade is a site-specific multi-channel sound installation specifically conceived for ARTICLE 2008. It is a part of a series of monumental sound installations which focus on the role and identity of nature in urban environments.

Sonic Promenade takes the trees planted alongside the promenade of Breiavannet as its point of departure. This location can itself be regarded as a typical piece of constructed nature. Since the beginning of urban planning, trees and vegetation have played an essential function in the construction of recreational spaces in the cities. Parks and avenues are examples of cultivated nature that are used as part of the urban architectural system. However, regarded as an architectural material in the same sense as glass, steel and concrete, vegetation has no value of its own. Within the vocabulary of landscape architecture they are being referred to as “living material” – vegetation is considered like any other construction element in an architectural context.

The intention of Sonic Promenade is to create a switch of focus from regarding the trees as “living material” and instead to look upon them as “living beings”. Therefore, during the exhibition period, a number of trees alongside the promenade are being equipped with “voices” consisting of sounds distributed via loud-speakers mounted high above on the tree trunks. Together these “voices” form a soft sound cloud, accentuating the site and making the trees visible. The sound material consists partly of recordings from the site itself - sound which has been broken down to abstraction. In doing so the place itself gives voice to the autumnally naked trees. The installation is intended to be experienced as a low-level sound field coloring the site. The geometrical design of the installation emphasizes the perspective and depth of the location, and creates a spatial illusion.