The High Fidelity Wasteland Trilogy is a series of audio-centric works that experiment with the material waste left over from generations of decomposing sound reproduction technology.
High Fidelity Wasteland III: Broken Loudspeaker Pop presents a landscape of broken down loudspeakers collected from the trash and donated from the local community in Frankfurt am Main (DE). Rather than playing music, each loudspeaker amplifies an individual square wave oscillator which produces a consistent thumping, clicking, crackling or popping sound. While each speaker embodies a unique acoustic character emphasized by its innate material deterioration, the installation as a whole creates a pluvial soundscape that evolves over time as they fall in and out of synchronization in an aleatory manner. To further emphasize the material dimensions of sound, the technical infrastructure is approached in a very visual and tactile manner. Rather than being generic and and hidden out of sight – cables, power sources and hand-wired circuits in this work are bright, colourful and exposed and treated as an expressive artistic material.
Artwork commissioned in the context of a Residency in at Atelier Goldstein for the “On Hearing” program 2023. Further production support provided by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Photos: Elena Osmann