“You’re not listening to sound; you’re listening to listening itself,” says British sound artist Julian Brown.
Brown is explaining the experience of his audience as I interview him across the street from the Ex Convento del Carmen near Guadalajara’s centro, where his sound installation “Derivas” has been in a window of the museum, alongside a public sidewalk on noisy Avenida Juarez, for about six months. I was going to say the installation was “on display,” but that implies a strong visual element, and “Derivas” doesn’t have that. It centers on a single, large window where visitors can use their hands to stimulate speakers or simply listen to the often subtle sounds that spontaneously emanate from them.
“It’s a celebration of Guadalajara,” Brown explains. “It’s about listening to nothing in particular, just being in the moment.”
Many of Brown’s explanations about his work sound perplexing at first, but he has a knack for illustrating them (there’s that visual emphasis again) with a well-placed story or simile. To explain the above quotation, he elaborates: “The work to me is the personal experience of listening to it. I’m recording myself being in a specific place and time.”
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