Sonic Promenade (2008)

A site-specific sound installation for Breiavannet, Stavanger, Norway.

Commissioned by ARTICLE 08
Biennal for Electronic and Unstable Art
November 15 - 30. 2008.

[Technical realization: Fox-engineering, Berlin]

Sonic Promenade is one piece of a serial of sound installations, focusing on the role and identity of nature in urban environments.

The sound installation takes as its point of departure some of the trees planted alongside the promenade of the lake Breiavannet in the centre of Stavanger, a typical piece of constructed nature. Since the beginning of urban planning, trees and vegetation play an essential function in the construction of spaces of recreation in the cities. Parks and avenues are such examples, which illustrate how cultivated nature is used as part of the urban architectural system.

The intention with Sonic Promenade was to make a “switch of focus”. From a regarding of the trees as “living material” and instead look upon them as “living beings”. During the exhibition period eight of the old trees alongside the promenade were given “voices” consised of sounds, distributed via tiny loud-speakers mounted high above on the tree-trunks, making the trees visible. 

The installation could be experienced as a low voiced sound field colouring the site with the, for the season naked trees, where the installation emphasized the geometrical perspective of the location and through sound created a spatiality in the urban space.