Original work by Alan Courtis

Psicogeofonías Tenues

This is an extract. The full piece is 11'10".

Fiction in field recording is increasingly creating a space of political and emotional intent. "Psicogeofonías Tenues" cinematically describe a made-up place that sounds almost right but contains internal contradictions. This suggestive work draws from recordings made in the Argentinian cities of Buenos Aires and Rosario, a car journey between the two, and other sounds from the Peruvian jungle and elsewhere. Here Courtis invents a new domain, crossing the much explored field recording arenas of psychogeography (our psychological experiences of a space) and geophony (naturally occurring sound produced by a habitat), with a dash of "psychophony" (the term for auditory hallucinations) to end up with a title, like the piece itself, which is more than the sum of its parts.

As artist-researcher Mark Peter Wright points out in "Listening After Nature": “Nonhuman sonic verisimilitude prompts a repurposing of mimicry as a critical and playful device within the practice-based domain of field recording. [..] Deliberately faking nature can draw listening into territories of productive doubt. It promotes suspicious audition above romantic immersion.”

Psicogeofonías Tenues transports us into a tense liminal space of aurality where two worlds cannot coexist without one consuming the other.

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