Nacho Román

Microescucha #ME1 - "Out of Place" exhibition

"Caligrafías". Original track

Listening is a spatio-temporal phenomenon. Silence/sound is permanent, continuous.

- Pauline Oliveros

Sound piece based on the electromagnetic fields present in the Sala de las Francesas. Our sensory limits as human beings prevent us from perceiving a sound reality that surrounds us continuously. Reaching that level, making it audible and trying to understand and interact more deeply with our environment. In short, to reach our sensory periphery. The sound periphery, also of musical understanding.

The original source of the sound of the piece is the electromagnetic spectrum of the church, recorded through a special microphone that picks up and makes audible the electromagnetic waves of the place (electromagnetism produced by wifi networks, mobile networks, fluorescent lights...).

These recordings of the electromagnetic field have been modified and digitally treated in order to "musicalise" the sounds collected. The multiple parts of the piece are reproduced randomly. Moments without any sound are also incorporated into this random playback to incorporate silence as an important part of the piece.

General view of the exhibition "Out of Place" (Sala de Las Francesas, Valladolid)

Sound installation in the pulpit of the church

Curatorial text Exhibition "Out of Place" by Olga Fernández:

"The spectator's relationship with perception is situated at the core of Nacho Román's piece, Microescucha #ME1, which is part of the research and experimentation that this artist carries out around the recordings of field and the ambient. The work is a sound installation that comes from a previous recording of the electromagnetic waves of the church, which were later digitized and set to music. In this treatment of sounds, silence acquires a fundamental role, since, the The artist, quoting Pauline Oliveros, proposes that "Silence/sound is permanent, continuous. " The sound of the work and the atmosphere it creates in the church space invites the visitor to listen that tries to make audible -perceptible- other dimensions of the space where it is located, that is, to give shape to its sensory periphery.But beyond the purely physical, the work speaks to us of a certain aurality, since the devices Recording, post-production and reproduction itives already presuppose a certain mediality of the sound that, moreover, tries to capture a contemporary electromagnetism, produced by Wi-Fi networks, mobile networks or fluorescent lights, probably very different from what occurred in the church at the time of its construction.