LATENT SEEDS [we are the environment]

Latent Seeds was developed as a multi-stage process of listening and improvised playing over the internet - a reflection on spatial awareness, on being present and being part of an acoustic environment that extends beyond constrained and isolated individual spaces. As the starting point, or the “seed”, Alarm Will Sound musicians were asked to listen for and to record unique sounds of their individual environments (running water, creaking upstairs floors, rattling radiators, etc.). The second stage were video chat sessions, during which Neumann played the recordings back to the musicians through a loudspeaker in their rooms and asked them to respond to these new compound acoustic environments, this time on their instruments.

These are the playing notes:

[the existing acoustic environment]

[audio from the loudspeaker]

imagine contributing to an aural environment / as reaction or new occurrence

sit and sense / yourself within this environment

do not imitate nor calculate / listen

deciding not to make a sound is also playing / environmentally

sometimes ~~play~~ from a distance / engaged remote listening / imaginative

[away from the microphone]

[what the microphone might be hearing]

textures from the instrument / unrecognized

harmonic relationships / subtly sustained

duration should be strict / subjectively judged / in presence

from a place of listening

As the video chat sessions went on, Neumann added each recording to the pool of sounds that he played into the loudspeaker in the musicians’ rooms. Through this process Neumann layers and accumulates different individual environments, spaces, fragments and improvisations.

The improvised conversations stemming from, happening in, and talking musically about the various acoustic environments and the listening sensibilities of the musicians now become the multichannel installation. You, the listeners, are now invited into this new complex sound field in a physical space.

In Oct 2022 it was shown in the context of the exhibition How to Measure an Invisible Border, [Como medir un límite invisible] curated by Juan Betancurth, at the Goethe-Institut Bogotá
In Sep 2022 Latent Seeds was shown at MEET Milano, as a VR installation
Latent Seeds was part of the group show Forward Ground, Mar 30 - May 8 2022 at Fridman Gallery
In Nov 2022 Latent Seeds premiered as a VR installation for CT::SWaM's #VRstilllistening