(in)audible

2013+ | ca. 35′ | multichannel versions, live performance
stereo for headphone listening | release, Phonos, 2022

unheard, out of earshot, indistinct, imperceptible, hushed, faint, low, infrasonic, muted, soft, muffled, murmured, quiet, whispered, muttered, mumbled, silent, soundless, still, noiseless, unclear, ultrasonic

(in)audible explores a variety of sounds on the periphery of human perception, including phenomena beyond our usual hearing range, “hidden” acoustic spaces, and “small” or unnoticed sounds. The project attempts to listen with other-than-human agents (species, energies, matters, things and technologies), engaging in alternative ways of listening.

The aural materials featured in the composition were created using different extended listening and recording strategies. It includes electromagnetic noise recordings, geophysical and atmospheric effects, matters in states of transition, structural vibrations, ultrasound, close-up, contact and underwater bioacoustic sounds.

All the original recordings were made at multiple locations in Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, and Slovakia from 2008 to 2012. The first version of the piece was commissioned by FONair (Cumbria, UK), with a premiere broadcast in January 2013. In addition, different headphone and spatial versions of the work (4, 8 and 16-channel) have been performed live and exhibited at multiple events in Wroclaw, Ljubljana, Brussels, Brno, The Hague, Heerlen, London, Kent, Belfast, Girona, Pontevedra, Porto, Viseu, and São Paulo, between 2013 and 2016.


Listen with headphones.

CONCERTS, LISTENING EVENTS, EXHIBITIONS, BROADCASTS (SELECTED)

– Hipersonica 2016, FILE: electronic language international festival, São Paulo, Brazil [installation version for headphones]
– MWW – Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Wroclaw, Poland :: opening exhibition ‘Silence of Sounds’ [live, quadraphonic]
– Kinošiška, Ljubljana, Slovenia [live, quadraphonic]
– microvolumes 3.33 – Sonoscopia, Porto, Portugal [live, quadraphonic]
– (h)ear XL II – kuS, Heerlen, NL [installation version for headphones]
– Invisible Places:::Sounding Cities Symposium, Viseu, Portugal [installation version, octophonic]
– Hideous Porta #9, London, UK [live, quadraphonic]
– sound.art.event, MKII Gallery, London, UK [live, quadraphonic]
– Acoustic Ecology Symposium, Kent University, UK [installation version for headphones]
– Hidròfons III, L’Estartit, Girona, Spain [live, special 16-channel version]
– European Acoustic Heritage, Arqueological Museum Campo Lameiro, Pontevedra, Spain [live, quadraphonic]
– Sonorities Festival 2013: Beyond Soundscape, SARC, Belfast, Northern Ireland [installation version, quadraphonic]
– Ephèmére,Studio Loos, The Hague, Netherlands [live, quadraphonic]
– HS63, Brussels, Belgium [live, quadraphonic]
– FON Air Radio, Cumbria, UK [stereo radio version, premiere broadcast]

REVIEWS

THIERRY MASSARD | NOCOVISION

À l’instar d’un cerveau humain dont les capacités cognitives et sensorielles demeurent amplement inusitées, Pablo Sanz s’en amuse et investit de nouveaux territoires.

Ce garçon est une étoile – Une révélation et une Masterpiece !