Sura

Abstract

SURA was a 2021 interdisciplinary exhibition held at Spazju Kreattiv in Malta, curated by Elyse Tonna. It explored "dolls" as symbolic objects across cultures through a spiritual, narrative lens featuring work by Glen Calleja, Lori Sauer, and sound artist Matyou Galea. The project received the 2021 ARTZ ID Exhibition of the Year Award.

The sound needed to be ‘timeless’ as in frozen in time. Slow and gradually evolving to give this notion of stillness.

I was looking into the creation of tension, tension being built up but never released.

I wanted to ‘slow time’ so much that the sound becomes an object or an image. I want to avoid the notion of the sound being a separate floating layer but rather incorporate it as part of the show. Usually our relationship with sound is dependent on change across time, melodies, rhythms etc... Since I am not writing a song for the radio I wanted to eliminate all of that.

I also wanted a very physical manner of engaging with the sound; if one wants to hear more or less of the sound, one just moves closer or away from it, going away from surround effects and panning as these tend to be very generic and usually only effective on a static audience, not an audience that is invited to wander around.

In a nutshell these sculptures work with droning tritones. The tritone is linked to shamanic rituals (including gospel music) and is said, in conjunction with long or slow droning tones to induce visions, hallucinations and trance like states. The tritone also has a very colourful history and was once reputedly banned by the catholic church and branded as the devil’s interval. Aside that it has been used extensively in rock and metal music from Black Sabbath and Jimmy Hendrix, to sound artists like Alvin Lucier and La Monte Young in the 60s who experimented with ‘slow tuning’.

The other element incorporated in the work with is a take on a Shepard’s tone. This is an auditory illusion where one cannot tell if the pitch is rising or falling. I would like to create an “infinite riser” where a pitch goes up in tone for ever creating tension that is never released. This will give an impression of a moment frozen in time. These sculptures consist on a number of multiple instances of these infinite risers, a tritone apart, where they will be experienced differently from inside each room versus outside in the ‘corridor’ where the interval should be more pronounced. The low tones will complement this and also add a very physical connection between the space and the body of the viewer.