In Reach of a Murmur

2022

refurbished telephone booth, halogen tubes, aluminium vacuum holders, exciters, tactile transducer, power amplifier, 5-channel audio



Mechanised howlings, ghostly hums, and low-grade whines are produced relentlessly by the back-end infrastructure that keeps social apparatuses functioning. When operating efficiently, the focus on these systems is placed only on their inputs and outputs rather than their underlying complexity. Consequently, the more successful they become, the more opaque and obscure they grow. In Reach of a Murmur examines the possibilities of unblackboxing an architecture of power through media archaeology. As structures of authority deteriorate, they end up experiencing leakages. Secrecy eventually overflows its physical confinements, spilling noise as a by-product of their decay.

A spatial audio configuration pours the data of files stored in the hidden server room of the former courthouse into a public telephone booth by means of vibration and resonance. The piece renders these transmissions as dying signals of the judiciary, colliding its archaeoacoustics in an inversion of physical and sonic horizons.

Exhibited at “Holding Pattern”, De Oude Rechtbank, Amsterdam, NL
Presented at “Silence: (im)possible absences”, curated by Noise Research Union, STRP Festival, Eindhoven, NL

Technical consultancy: Jan Kees van Kampen