Glacier sound space: sound recordings
Glacier rhone and aletsch 2000
Franziska Baumann is fascinated by the glacier as a listening space; she has been examining the forms of sound in and upon the glacier, inspired by the enormous tide of ice and its multilayered temporal and spatial dimensions, and she sets her own voice in dialogue with it.
Using stereo, zoom and contact microphones, Franziska Baumann senses the aliveness and dynamics of ice and the poetry of the sounds that live in glacial crevasses and grottos.
The sounds of the glacier (creaks, drips, rumbles, shuffles etc.) were recorded at different times on and within it. Her voice touches the icy crevasse walls in their various states from karstic to icy smoothness.
Warmth and cold produce different sound pictures. In collaboration with glaciologists from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and the Swiss Computing Center in Zurich, she has transformed seismographical recordings of glacial movements into sound paintings. A portrait of this work was broadcasted on all Swiss TV channels in December 2001.
Albanatscha: Sound performance, concert and installation
trafo station albanatscha, silvaplana, 2nd festival of the arts 2000
A huge hall ofmontage hall evoked the inside of a glacier with vocal sound space. A wall of free hanging speakers moved by the house installed crane.
A balance carried listeners through changing sound spheres. Glacial stiffness and movement, transitions from one sound space to another, multilayered time spaces of ice, water, and seismic vibrations. A huge brass door electronically opened the view to the mountainside. Franziska’s performances focused into a concert experience.