Listening to Dante 1477
Oct 28, 2021, 08:57 AM
Moored gondolas in Venice reimagined by Guyda Armstrong.
"This re-imagined sound is centred on an object from Venice’s past, a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy printed in the city by Wendolin of Spira in 1477. It begins with present-day sounds which could have been heard at the time of the book’s making half a millennium ago, and then moves into the present day and to another city, with field recordings of the place where it now lives, deep in the climate-controlled stacks of the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library. The original field recording of the gondolas was made on the Grand Canal, just outside the windows of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana's rare books reading room."
"Books (and not just Venetian books) are made in water as part of their paper-making process, and this is a particularly watery book, which has seen significant water damage in its long life. Subterranean and watery sounds tie the piece together, as it moves from the splashing of the canals of Venice, into the ambient sounds of the underground library book stacks, and up through the back stairs of the building as the book is taken to the photography studio.
"We capture various other noises along the way: the winding of the moveable shelves to access the book; the hum of the server fans and climate conditioning units; the intermittent beeps and thuds of the door alarms and studio equipment. Sounds from the original field recording are slowed down and resampled to provide a constant sonic undertow. The book itself can be heard as its pages are turned and photographed, and the piece closes at the end of its brief trip up into the world, as we switch off the equipment and prepare to return it to the depths."
"This re-imagined sound is centred on an object from Venice’s past, a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy printed in the city by Wendolin of Spira in 1477. It begins with present-day sounds which could have been heard at the time of the book’s making half a millennium ago, and then moves into the present day and to another city, with field recordings of the place where it now lives, deep in the climate-controlled stacks of the University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library. The original field recording of the gondolas was made on the Grand Canal, just outside the windows of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana's rare books reading room."
"Books (and not just Venetian books) are made in water as part of their paper-making process, and this is a particularly watery book, which has seen significant water damage in its long life. Subterranean and watery sounds tie the piece together, as it moves from the splashing of the canals of Venice, into the ambient sounds of the underground library book stacks, and up through the back stairs of the building as the book is taken to the photography studio.
"We capture various other noises along the way: the winding of the moveable shelves to access the book; the hum of the server fans and climate conditioning units; the intermittent beeps and thuds of the door alarms and studio equipment. Sounds from the original field recording are slowed down and resampled to provide a constant sonic undertow. The book itself can be heard as its pages are turned and photographed, and the piece closes at the end of its brief trip up into the world, as we switch off the equipment and prepare to return it to the depths."