8'8'8'

their object ness can become a background depth

'8'8'8'' is a simple black box, an 8x8x8 feet cube of darkness: both a cubical frame and a container for the experience of listening.

Wooden frame and black cloth block out all light. With this I mean that you cannot see your hand in front of you face, even after adjusting to the darkness. Even after thirty minutes in this space, you still cannot see a thing but the electricity from your own eyelids. Ambient sound of direct environment. Real floor of environment. A double bed inside the cubicle to lie down on. Seemingly nothing happens, only the absence of visual information.

This space is specifically a room with a view. Expectation - a long distance in time. Darkness = anonomous = zero density of flesh. Dynamic range of closeness i.e. can stretch from being inside the observer’s
body to the horizon . Splitting of attention: now we start to be in two different times at the same time, or three, or four, or hundres. scale is implied.

Design and Photo Credit: Andreas Brendhaugen

I had this cube installed inside my studio for a couple of months and when the windows were open, depending on the changing weather conditions, air would sometimes move the fabric to replicate the feeling and sound of breathing. In 888 everybody’s breathing and every single bodily movement had a sonic silhouette. Later I placed some microphones in the room: one by the window, a speaker underneath the bed and one high up outside the cube. Eventually they started to amplify the live ambience. I later also prerecorded the sounds of the moving fabric in air and layered them on top of the real, thus creating a kind of false ambience.

on blindwalks

I get the sensation that I am closer to
“reality,” that I’m less pre-occupied with what society might
have programmed me to notice. My awareness especially of the
temporality of occurrences is heightened. The image in my mind
of the world becomes more energy-flow oriented and temporal.
A lot of information is of course obscured too, but a lot of detail
is revealed, especially the rhythm of everything and the complex
contrasts in the appearances and disappearances of things.
The nuances, differences, repetitions, similarities, beginnings
and endings… so completely unexpected… Re-appearances. Like
a drama that plays on and never stops. If someone is sitting
quietly, that person doesn’t exist until they move, or until they
say something. Only through movement do they appear and
disappear. Buildings don’t exist until sounds reflect off them
or are swallowed by them to reveal their acoustic blueprint.
A woman is reduced to a pair of wooden high-heel shoes: the
concrete she walks on, sharply colliding with each klibk-klibk of
her steps, a series of frequency bubbles bouncing around and off
the surrounding walls and ceiling. Doors swing open, then close.
Voices. Talking. The fountain in the background disappears as I
move on.