Photo: Mike Kramer

How do I, an artist, listen? And how can I make others listen to what I perceive? Like everybody else, I am a selective listener. I experience my environment as a series of interconnected sound spaces in which I exist and move about 24/7, spaces which unfold through their auditory details, predictable in some cases, unpredictable in most. I make 3D recordings of these sound spaces (using binaural recording techniques) and arrange them into a composition in such a way as to give this pure, untouched environmental sound a new and characteristic identity of its own. Familiar sounds acquire an abstract dimension.

During a research trip this summer I spent some days listening to Heerlen, a town I am not familiar with. I became fascinated by the diversity of its sounds. As time went by I found myself listening from an urban planning perspective. I became aware of a sound theme which was not immediately obvious out in the streets, in spite of its pervasive presence: that of Heerlen’s many (half) empty buildings, a sound which only becomes clearly audible when outside sounds penetrate the unoccupied space.

This form of silence appealed to my fascination with silent spaces and it acquired a new identity: SPACES and SILENCES  The collective silence of Real Estate

Spaces and Silences is part of Cultura Nova 2013