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photograph: Bojan Gagić, Dubrovnik, 2008
HAPPY PLACE
– – – Not Visible On Google Maps
P R E F A C E : K A R O L I N A R U G L E
The work consists of twelve autonomous loudspeakers, twelve floor sensors and the main computer containing the recordings of happy places - locations chosen by the blind residents of Dubrovnik, recorded a couple of days earlier. Each of these sounds is a separate story with site-specific structure, the narrative of which depends on the moment the recording was made.
The overall sound landscapes are formed by movement of people (audience) at the site of the installation.
Each of us has their own happy place(s). The idea of someone’s happy place changes depending on person’s feelings and states, upbringing, life situations we are put through. My daughter says she has many happy places. My grandmother was blind, her happy place was her armchair in the living room. My happy place changes depending on my mood.
Neurophysiology teaches us that every thought is an image, sometimes realistic, sometimes abstract, but always an image. It has its shape, its colors, a certain energy charge. Somehow, from that, one could derive a theory of the dominance of the sight over all other senses, at least in the times we live in, as we do indeed conquest the world around us through sight.
Deprived of sight, blind people construct their images, thoughts and memories in a different way. Mostly through sound and touch. They don’t hear better than we see. But they listen and hear in a different manner, for them sound carries some meanings and content that elude us – people relying on sight.
M.A., 2’01”, recorded in Dubrovnik, July 2019
Field recording as one of the art forms of sound is nothing new. In 1889, an eight-year-old boy, Ludwig Koch, recorded the sound of birds outside his home using an Edison cylindrical wax phonograph. Through the years, the form has evolved in various directions; we record sounds of untouched nature, undersea, space, electrostatic storm surges, melting ice, deserts and rainforests, we record the sound of everything.
The ambient-sound installation The Happy Place is simple. In its core it carries recorded sounds of the happy places of blind people living in Dubrovnik. As they listen differently, they will walk us through their particular landscapes of the ordinary. Because, with all due respect to the universe and electrostatic discharge, the happy place is here and now.
year: 2019
curator: Karolina Rugle
medium: interactive sound installation
first installation: Dubrovnik Summer festival (part of project: The Future of Ambiance)
production: Dubrovnik Summer Festival
coproduction: Art workshop Lazareti
copyright: all rights reserved, Bojan Gagić, 2024.