Vision One

I would like to thank Romulo Moraes and Frederick Arias for inviting me to read this piece at their event Atopia Incident 1.

A second chance at making the times speak their mind, the gallery is in the basement of a brownstone—it has ambience. It is within the fortress. It is in a location where one could saunter accidentally through its doorframe, into a collection of rooms somehow more windswept than the village outside. It is near the beach, or at least it smells like the sea, and the driftwood on display feels like it has, at one point, spent its life in the sand.

In the gallery women hold flutes that melt as they speak. They wear, among other things, dark dresses that rustle as they take quiet steps. Their gentle wrists are weighed downward not by earthly pull but by a respectable demeanor; a façade whose edict includes a clause requiring elbows, when attached at the arm, to nestle atop the hip bone, however slight it may be. When it is time to touch the art, as it is, the process has to be done with knowing contrast. It has to be done knowing that pearls and driftwood have the same mother. But knowing should only pass as a thought does to a labored mind. It should drift by, imperceptibly, and not be spoken.

A gentleman should never wear a tuxedo in a gallery within the fortress that smells of the sea. This is because the exhibition may be titled Degrees of Contrast, or Levels and the Procession of Light. The title tells us everything we need to know about the dress code. The women wear, among other things, black dresses, while the men take on camouflage within the context of the art. They wear moleskin, a cravat, suede loafers with a monogram. They carry a stylo, and their hair must pass through the same process of aging as the object they are about to engage with. The object they are about to engage with, of course, is the driftwood.

There are four speakers in corners of the room that comprise the entire gallery, and two subwoofers along the two short ends of the space. They emit the sine tones of 600 Hz, 600 Hz, 470 Hz, 469 Hz, with the resemblant numbers placed diagonal to one another. The subwoofers should emit the power frequency of 60 Hz. They should all be discomfortably loud.

The effect is a simulation of the sound of multiple siren tests overlapping. As the audience meanders about they will feel as if they are on an island between two peninsular communities that on the first Tuesday of every month sound air raid sirens that are of slightly different opinions. Their corporeal drift will emulate the orbit of flotsam around said island, and resonant tones will overlap in harmony as they do on the near horizon.

Though the provocative décor would suggest that a kind of dancing might be welcome, one would be loath to assume a partner is readily available. In the center is a small shape reserved for a rendez-vous among former friends who have known one another in any capacity, including the most extreme. As the schematics dictate, this is a muted realm of acoustic imperfection.

On all its sides tones float by, but never do they pass through.

On all its sides tones float by, but a splintering may have already occurred, where a handful of participants have grown uneasy about the poor acoustics in the gallery. They call themselves the collective engagement on high-frequency speculation, and it is their self-assumed role to scrub clean the center of the room from its organic and particulate matter.

Without consultation their engagement is brought into the now very sterile center of the room, into the shape that has formed, where they are rung together as a single bell by a mallet wrapped in drapery by a figure wrapped in drapery. The collective engagement on high-frequency speculation speculates but nonetheless emits the collective high-frequency of 810 Hz, swinging to project its vibrations around the space through its resonant opening.

Despite a spectacle, the driftwood drifts much to the overcast delight of its audience.

Did you know? Said one of the voices.

Did you know

I was a dancer?

fluid

fluent in

a passive glance?

adore movement

submission

and repetition?

This is not a harmony, a hesitant fugue, but a promise of clarity and the need to establish best practice in distincting the nature of the chord from its three dissonant tones walking in step.

The brass nature of our single bell gives the appearance of completing the gallery tritone. falling just short.

My intention was straightforward, the bell echoed.

So it was certainly not from paralysis that we sat sedate within Heart Harmonics, a study of low frequency power tones on the internal process of the human body, august and forthright instead of the collect them at the foot myriad of voice. At a certain point… without fail… thankfully… and there’s wasn’t any pressure, per se… an argument that it was all loosely defined by the principles of color…

Our harmonics test the tone at which vertigo is provoked, the note of discomfort, of physical effacement of the acoustic properties of a crashing wave and its reliance on birdsong. This is to convey that the siren should not be hidden from or behind a layer of wax, that the siren should be embraced and feared as its mother, the sea.

Could you imagine the repulse of the room of the fortress of the sea with an audience, when an audience walked our bell pier down through the sand and cast away as an ocean-bound sea-ready vessel?

Could you imagine the hard to believe when you, my sonic prisoner, showing off your favorite shapes imprisoned me, your listener?

The brass nature of our single bell gives the appearance of completing the gallery tritone. Falling just short just, falling… to the collective engagement that speculates but nonetheless emits the collective high-frequency value of 810 Hz, while the room as now cast in plaster echoes the gossamer frequencies of 469 Hz, 470Hz, 600Hz, 600Hz.