Dream Sweepers the…

murmur of Imaginary Architectures

By Jenny Pickett & Julien Ottavi (texte à paraître dans site of sound II)

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VRVVRRVVRVRVRVRVVRVRVRVVVRVRVVRVRVRVRVRVRRRRRVVRRRVVVRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRVVRVRVVRVRRVRVRVRVRVVRVVVVVVRVVRVVVVRVV VVVRRRRRRRRRRRVRVRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRVRVRVVRVRVVRVVRVVRVRVRVRVRVVRVRVRVRVVRVRVRVVRVR………….

Hmm mm hmm mm mm, Thwack thwack thwack, Glug glug broom.

The grey film of yesterday dulls the streets in the half light, dodges between the cogs and scurries past the magnetic brushes – dampening the lucid teknicoloured acoustics and sucking up the debris of activity, before chasing off the sonorous brown tape and ultimately cleansing the imagination.

The fractured echoes:Sharp abrasive forms repeatedly penetrating the cochlea are absorbed by the neurons to be sorted by our synapses.

When sound first explodes in your ears, it is not immediately obvious in our understanding of it, that sound has the capacity to changed your metabolism – the way your body structured, before then changing the space around you, which having received this event, moves elsewhere – its inner structural configuration and operational system again changed. You find yourself suddenly located between two tall buildings, in a long street in which such constructions grow and thrive. There is a plateau of discussion between them, you and nearby cars, buses, pedestrians and other moving parts that reveal themseves to your naked ear. You are listening to the remembrance, a requiem echoes in the depths of you stomach, complete with spatial expressions inscribed in the bile – a semantics of this space. This place amongst all other places is not destined to remain in harmony with our tried laws of physics, this place against all odds will break the rules and defy gravity – this place above all else will escape cartographic depiction. The street cracks and this place begins its ascent alongside the nearest tall building’s northern face slowly hovering skywards – shouting at him – the pulsating pressure of this spacial niche impacts on the situation in which you find yourself. Finally shattering the assemblage of this micro spatial sound environment, this place engenders a fractal network of fractured echoes that span the horizon. Not one of those sound bites have the same expression, volume or depth and in this crowd of stocato samples, the original meaning in all but erased. Even the buildings, those enormous patriarchs of mass shaken to the core, reflect this fracturality, this new momentous mutation within the spatial sonic order of the place.

When we describe a sound we’ve experienced, we often explain this event without actually talking about it. What we describe instead is a mouthful of discontinuous flesh located in an unexpressed confusion, like millions of invisible and insensible impacts across parts of the body that no longer exist. In fact these subtle micro perceptions of this late sound, in its endless reverberating, profoundly haunts our cellular networks. This affect is generated via wholesale delays and non linear relationships to layer upon layer of accumulated sound perception which are intertwined with vast databases of sensitive memory. Triggering these layers produces a plethora of inarticulate sensations, amounting to that of multiple “vécue de situation” (lived situation), of subjective narration.

A car grounding out on the road as it charges – all six horses collide with a sleeping policeman waiting in ambush – arrousing a sound that passes through the memory this hot and wet day – punctuated by the heavy sun, walking into a crowded high street. The same car pulls up abruptly on your street corner – HERE through the ear canal – at the very same moment that you, seated in your chair, read this text, are being transported onto the streets of Sao Paulo. A magical occurrence that transcends your actual geographic location – mind travel through various regions of our planet, following an unmapped matrix of little trodden tracks into the complex maze of your memories. Once inside this sonorous maze we find ourselves here, we are not here – but here, and over here, in here – fluid yet unmoving. This temporal state, is the moment before we wake. The wake: The beginning of the end of one state and the beginning of the start of another. To wake from ignorance, from a dream, to hold a wake over a corpse before committing it to the ground – here we are in a cyclical motion, one where the acoustic space, at cusp of being born is always on the edge of dying, and yet transcends our geography. Mind the gap, here the void between these states is filled with otherness, here is an impossible architecture parallels collide!

The reality is here; A Lacanian manifestation of l’etre, where our being is no longer anchored to the present. Instead, it’s unity is fragmented throughout time and space – disembodied and floating across various procedures and mechanisms of geographic delocalisation. Time travel.

The location is here; The past, present and future are dismantling the notion of the here itself. I am not here, whilst I am still here, touching a moment where there is no longer one self or one time – there has actually never been this “one” self or point that we seek out in order to satisfy our desire of it. The sense of continuity it affords us.

The paradox is here; Multiple levels; layers of anomaly; a state of enigmatic positioning; we are actually here, fragments in moments, impressions of our beings scattered amongst the real and virtual undergrowth of our own mortality. Some parts we loose on an inextricable path, layer upon layer of memory, an “enchevêtremment” of experience, lived and altered germinates our environment. The speed of our existence transforms the mind set, we forget our origins in the fast flowing present, yet loosing control of here and elsewhere counteracts our forgetfulness.

Sound carries with it the intensity of every single element of this fragmentation into the narrow spiral of “now”. Embedded in its realm of instantaneity, extracting a demonstration of the living and of reality, sound simultaneously fabricates these fractured elements in a virtual or unreal manifestation of elsewhere. This ability to shift the present and localised moment, remobilises the past – its acoustic modality, is inherent in our comprehension of the sonic environment and even transcendent in our structuring of it. Various references are tuned to the individual characteristics of an audible event: The timbre, amplitude and frequency resonate amongst those deja entendu moments, which we have consciously or subconsciously catalogued in the temporal cortex.

dislocation & machinimagination of blind sound crashin a process of dislocation.

Moving between an infinitesimal micro-space, this location is a perception or an illusion of unity, but one in which we reach the point of an eternal end to its repetition. Once again we break into many. The mechanics of subterfuge, the body, like a machine with built-in obsolescence, is preconditioned to die, listening to impenetrable points of convergence, lying in bed consumed by silence, the last echoes of a memory reverberate against the skull.

Vague rumours are whispered slowly in your ears…

Drifting amongst the synapses, triggering ambiguous snippets of time with redoubtable accuracy, a single point punctuates your attention. Drawing in every markable perception to concentrate on this one item with a scrutiny that, rather than reducing the obtainable sensory data, expands into an entire universe of information. The trajectory of this instant dislocates the synch point at its source, the very same moment it appears to the consciousness. The resulting desynchronizing of perceptual residues distorts the self by creating a realm of possible indeterminate repetitions, reordering and reconstructions. With percussive violence, the dislocation of such punctuations conclude in an architecture of nonsense.

The volume: a shape of inconsistency, blurred between the panes of an inpenatrable mirror.

The abstract: a metamorphosis of content, two faces of the real blindfolded – thus never perceiving any contradictory details.

The transformation: a mental deformation of reality, deep inside a machinic process of the unimagined agenda of your nerves.

The foundations: a virtual anchoring of boundaries, seamless stitches contain the torrents of experience

The construction: a dissolution of bricks and mortar, millimetre upon millimetre of flesh erased by your revolving muscles.

The facade: a seismic texton of archimovement, no more concrete acoustics only surreal blocks broken into billions of turbulent particles.

To define the undefinable, an architecture that encapsulates this moment, born of mind, body and cement, would be to trace the journey of a single grain of sand as it surfs the swell of the ocean and crashes upon a trillion similar grains resting on the shore. As we approach an articulation of this construction, without warning it hides behind a thousand similar utterances, its appearance again camouflaged, thus avoiding all description. Through the sonic dimension we can attempt an architecture that reflects these textons (tectonic textures) of an archimovement (architecture in movement), driving the time orientation of a space to collide with future acoustics and our memory concrete sonic objects.

This sonic role-play sobs a wisdom of sorrows only to be hushed up by discrete utterances, which then disconnect the atemporal. Control is lost to us now and resistance appears inevitable. We struggle, hiding ourselves behind an ephemeral door from the artefacts and the electrical mantra that resides within, broadcasting properganda, the unwanted content and music we attempt to avoid! Yet in contradition with this, the archimovement invokes and captures the essence of these radio waves, tracing them back their source, the route from which we arrived and by reshaping our path the traveller fades away. Heavy eyes start to close. A ssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttttttttt rises from nowhere, pushing against the limits hearing, demanding an acute listening to the micro details present therein. The pops and squeezes of your own blood pressure dropping resonate with an intense clarity amongst the noises mixed in the audio cortex. We hear it in mind, we hear beyond it and approach the silences……………..now no longer even the remnants of a

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… – rests. ————————————————————.

Black out now, The cycle begins, A premonition of tomorrow.

Finally we are scattered throughout n number of minuscule traps, set in the puzzle of this grey labyrinth. We do not walk, rather pieces of us fly in every conceivable direction. This is a collective de-connexion, a thick fog closing in with such density, it becomes hard to penetrate or interpret anything in here whatsoever, amongst this mass accumulation of stories. There no longer exists the matter of individual notions separated by consciousness: Concepts, signs, languages, sound, smells, vision, light, bodies, touch every sensible part of our cells merge in this alternate sphere. The physicality of life evaporates – here the machinimagination takes over and dictates both our movements.

In dreaming. An urban architecture of boundless space. Desiring lines are drawn and redrawn from the sensational claustrophobia of a magnificent theatre seat, set high above the stage of activity. Time here varies with every shallow breath, leaps forward or backwards with ever palpatiaion or flutter of the heart muscle. Vast planes reveal themselves within this theatre as the intensity of paralasis sets in. Producing an infinite number of configurations from a decollage of instances intentionally or unintentionally committed to memory, this vitual realm collapses in on itself over and over again, only to reemerged from these immeasurable depths increasingly amplified. These spacial abstraction resound with the echoes of conversation, music and machinery, but are remixed amongst our sonic living space, the refernces of the buildings we inhabit. Every crack of contracting wood, every rumble of a passing car or each escrutiating scream of a mating fox reorganizes the architecture of our dreams and on occasion causes our abrupt departure from this realm. However, at the apex of this imagined architecture, where various nonlinear narratives play out, a small space emerges, the acoustics of the city break into the histories of our dreams, drastically summing up our nightmares, revealing the blandness of a magic trip, concluding a love affair and eventually obliterating all other possibilities through which we might escape the cold light of day. The city reveals itself to our senses, erasing the last traces of this fantastic alternative architecture, until at last we wake and engage ourselves in an activity with its concrete.

The dream sweeper is the low whirring hum of street cleaning vehicles. Who, in the small hours of the morning, set to work clearing the city of all evidence left behind by yesterday. The dream sweeper then, simultaneously begins to bulldoze the structures, lives and stories of our urban dream space, leaving only the city in its wake.

SHLURR-SHLUSH-SHLURR-SHLUSH-BBBRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM… Scrubbing this route with bleach, disinfecting this body – the city – by eradicating yesterday, scrapping off any sign of conception, the virginity of our streets and its architecture is thus preserved.

an imaginary architecture into a narrative de-languaged sound of spaces/places de-memorised I don’t listen, I just remember… I have heard it before, somewhere here… maybe it was over there, perhaps in my desires… But…Did I want to hear that? I walk out into the street… an enhanced ear, I am receptive of the smallest of sounds… remeasuring this place, renumbering this sequence, remembering this sonic experience… a déjà entendu occurrence… the ding…

wrrrrrrrr, tchokkochok bip, tssssssssssssssssssssccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Echoing the abstraction of what I almost remember, I found this occult object resonating on the surface of the pavement, writing across air currents, vibrating amongst invisible molecules. Rocks of movement. I touch upon an idea that causes the symptoms of such an illusion; the uncertainty that what we perceive – the real, is the only reality and the one, that is merely displayed before us. Therefore, the other or the alternate reality, is merely demonstrated to us, the real always in a state of becoming is lived or visa versa. Following this path, we chase our hallucination or “earlucination”, for it is the sonic dimension producing this sensible affect, manifest by perceived phenomena: Hearing non-existent volumes of memory that explode in our nerves system. The description of this apparition, plays a sort of magic trick on us, with the slight of sound, we do not yet know where it comes from, yet its own blurry aura expands quickly across our boundaries – consuming us within its inarticulate mesh – consistently escaping our understanding – it is impossible to hold, catch or grasp and we loose it amongst the labyrinth of signs.

brrrrrrb brrrrrb brrrrrb brrrrrb brrrrb ta ta ta ta ta ta ta clink clonk thud Arrivals. In haste a path is calved through each city, brief encounters with its rich and impoverished offerings linger throughout the similarities of an everywhere. “LOOK! La tour Perret one of the first skyscrapers in Europe! built in 1952”, a classic comic book construction, we can almost hear Superman ripping through the skyline! The rumble of traffic, the rhythms of suitcase wheels across her streets. The buzzing, clicking, beeping and wailing of WALK – DON’T WALK, and then we get intimate.

Each creak, snap, clonk – the whirring of her heating system or is it the air conditioning? Warming up our familiarity and cooling down our distrust. This heightened sense perception distracts our listening, sleep is close now. The pillow talk of our new residence, her octaves reverberate in the inner ear.

Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

or Resonant frequencies, haunted by the metabuilt, a massive maelstrom of concrete walks down the street, squashing everything beneath his feet, flesh and bones crack and explode under the pressure of a 100 meters of metal and the “verriére” or glass extension, whose walls oscillate at 45Hz. In front of this invisible site, we discover morphing materials, repeatedly reconfiguring their core molecular structures. These transformative elements adapt to our bodies. Our bodies are now freed from continuous adjustments dictated by persistent constructions. The walls transmit sound. Bats locate their flesh and fur in this environment using ultrasound echo analysis. These intelligent constructions adapt their fundamental structure for absolutely any purpose, any event that may happen within their guts.

John opened the door, room 63. bang! invisible shots. He witnessed an impossible dismantling of space in the brief seconds directly after. John had never seen such a space. It reminded him of something, something he could not put his finger on. “What a mess” he announced. Fragments of his own voice reappeared in different parts of the room. Other voices appeared to be added to his own! This was not exactly a nightmare, as John felt comfortable here, this sense familiarity gave rise to the sensation of his having already lived this, thus producing a calming atmosphere. The slow moving reorganisation of the room, moving walls, floors, ceilings, doors and furniture, transformed the space into an architecture of almost everywhere. The configuration of an every-space resonated at a low frequency, probably around 78 hertz , this affected the lighting and colouring of the room, drawing out various different patterns. John started to see what he called a chair in the corner, he walk over to it and sat down. Now, looking at the room from new perspective, the chair appeared to morph, it had adapted itself to his bottom, spine and head, John started to feel a sweeping relaxation take over his heavy corpse. Closing his eyes for 30 seconds, John listened to the hum. The room hummed at a frequency lower still, but with emitted paradoxical reverberations, as to maintain a sense wakefulness – John fell asleep.

MENTAL ARCHITECTURE isn’t it? Perceptive construction, Conceived of change, Its molecular core reordered, Relying on the body to pass through its intestines, Contractions through space, We move from one place to another, Our traces inhabit this geography, Persistently creating and recreating our apartments.

Altering a range of parameters in relation to our state of mind, this is not completely an autonomous entity. There remains the possibility of its being controlled by its inhabitants – those with the will to venture into the depths of their own personality. Those who see fit, may, once inside the control tower, redecorate its interior and exterior architectures. A job, whilst given often to the safe hands of professionals perhaps? However, this multi-sensory reactive architecture attracts its own following of DIY enthusiasts.

“What he perceives is multiple, irreductible, coming from a disconnected, heterogeneous variety of substances and perspectives: lights, colours, vegetation, heat, air, slender explosions of noises, scant cries of birds, children’s voices from over on the other side, passages, gesture, clothes of inhabitants near or far away. All these incidents are half-identifiable: they come from codes which are known but their combination is unique, founds the stroll in a difference repeatable only as a difference.”1

There is difference in perception. An auto-poïetic memory clashes with an inappropriate mechanism of indolence, redundancy and acupuncture. The battle of air pressure oscillates at its lowest levels, – even lower than 0Hz! A sub-sub-bass – below the reaches of our imagination – exclusively tangible within a construction that includes living, evolving foundations, which serve to anchor us to their roots buried in the earth, with a culmination of impossibly articulated sensors. Vibration shake and make the skyline with these revolving tectonics. yet when it is happening, no one can really see it move. It remains beneath human sense perception, and but for the invention of special sensors to amplify this quantum neural alpha resonance, it is conceivable to never have an experience of it.

Dreamed metasonic contortion & other instants

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

metaphor of movements

Throught it away! Eyes fixed on the walls of the suburbs of Incontinental, a city of flux. Looking for entities that live in the city, how can we see them? The advice given out by the city’s tourist information is as follows: It is not about seeing these residents, but rather about hearing or maybe listening to them, however no one is quite sure why. An esquisse of brown noise pulsates with n number of wavey lines emitting harsh low frequencies. Incontinental is as far and as wide as you can imagine, no one is living there, noone, not one human being or other creature. This city is composed of apparitions or disruptions in its magma of sound. These movements or flux tend to exist as a sort of metaphor, in which they join each other by means of an electrical stratagem upon a wireless path. For the novice these roads are totally invisible and almost unobtainnable. Incontinental is not exactly on earth, as we might apprehend, but could be describe as resting on its dimensional intersection, thus the city is strangely situated as a gate emerging from within a node of alternate realities.

XRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR An ants discussion. If you hear one, you’ll know that it involves deep listening. You will suddenly become aware of the mechanical processes of such entities. Banging your head, digging up the ground, rooting out raw synapse valves, rolling and tinkling the messages channelled beneath the earth. Becoming movement as that of an Ant, will uncover the crossing wires of communication through which they drink the speed limits of air transmission, in little big bang simulations of three vital particles. You should be worried! There exists no such kingdom, transmission is fear! The physicality of movement is probability, it retains the violence of degradation. In fact this is just de-fragmentation, from fragments of nothing more than a trace, a thought between you, the Ant, becoming a pure irreversible flux of noise.

related traces Every time we attempt to capture and archive sound or image, we consider the referent to be from a reality that corresponds to our lived experience of it. We must however, simultaneously confront our own failure to understand what exactly has taken place; Traces are ubiquitous, we are composed of traces, but do we always leave traces? We no longer control how we perspire, it happens despite any attempt we make to conceal this function. We can’t control our digestive machine and the rumbling that it makes.

What is considered a trace? What is a trace, if it is not a writing? Existence is like the sound you make with your mouth, your hand, your body, it is short and ephemeral. It is created precisely because it will disappear… A trace configures a metabolism of desire, a scheme of unsaid continuation, belonging to phantasm – a sperm strewn across a naked corpse after coitus – an undone passion, a crime, a dream, a near death experience. Writing is the desire of traces, however, whilst writing is not yet always a trace, it fevently holds to the pretension of becoming such a trace. Writing belongs to a desire of continuation or permanence. We are not only thinking of writing in terms of the text on a page of a book, or inscribed in the cornerstone of some ancient ruin, but also of writing as a spacial dimension read via the architecture, sound or marks left a surface, etched out by the tides, the brush strokes of a painting, the strachy graphite in a drawing, the utopia of cinema vision, video, cassette tape, vinyl, binary and writing as a recording and as transmission. This varied spectrum of writing crosses our understanding of the related traces – in almost every human activity undergone, we seek more and more to leave a message of its action behind, a legacy stretching beyond its original duration and beyond ourselves as participants or witnesses. These messages take on an appearance that their desired intention and/or purpose is of the writing itself. A determination to send forward a sign of our time, explaining who we were and what we achieved. Therefore the message occasionally may reach its target, but more often it emerges as something else, something other than what we expected – distorted by context, alternate or miss/readings and becoming the intention of another. Out of the context, writing belongs to the reader, now producing its text, its meaning and not only refering to its source, to the intention of its scripter. Writing, in reading opens it up to interpretation, reading as an experience, writing as vitruality, writing as a complex déjà entendu, as reexperienced from memory and sugestion, through inherent and related traces.

Living in a street, house, building, flat, apartment, attic, castle, bedroom is an experience in itself – you inhabit the central focal point of a script, an intentional writing. Whatever its purpose, you will read and experience the space of this writing on your own terms. Ultimately, the sensation is that of your own perspective, across the path you have scored out for yourself.

In France there is a Society of Builders that have constructed houses and larger buildings for many centuries. These buildings always include small peculiarities in the fabric of their architecture, left as the mark of thier signature: A round room, for instance, will contain a perfect point from which to listen to the entire acoustic space of that chamber – a point where you begin to read an architectural message. Nevertheless, before discovering this perfect point, it is unlikely anyone will introduce you to it, you might live for years in that same room without ever finding it, but instead experiencing something different, something other than was the original intention of those architects. Thus, the trace might never do as we expected it to, even so, shared with the others the trace becomes independent from any mediation or administration carved out of its own conservation. It is the remnants of an activity, of a subject and it creates a shadow that is not always anticipated.

the unexpected sounds

1.”Image music text” Roland Barthes – Fontana Press