One of Many (2024)

Three-channel sound installation (each channel 13 min.

The words ‘staircase’ and ‘stairway’ suggest a movement from the individual (stair) to the many of an entire space. Conversely, in the word ‘raindrop’, our associations may run from the multiple ‘rain’ to the singular sound event in ‘drop’.

The multiple sound events of footsteps and rain demand a different kind of listening to that of the singular. We seek out patterns and transformations within a sound mass, or we are content with the cloak of apparently uniform noise. The individual sound, on the other hand, exposes its defining features. Or does it really? Language would appear to present a similar situation with the sentence and its individual units of phonemes and syllables. The sentence may be the cloak that often hides materiality, the acoustical, and the gestural.

The work was first presented at basis e.V.—Production and Exhibition Platform, Frankfurt, in 2024.


Sound extracts: