A composition made from sounds of an apartment building, transposed to a storefront

Commissioned for Eric Mattson’s Neighbours, festival of urban sonic interventions.

I created this work using only sounds recorded in my apartment building, including sounds that my neighbours in the building made for me to record while I visited them. The resultant composition is transposed down the street to a local sneaker shop, where I perform it on VCRs hooked up to windows and shoeboxes. Audible from both inside and outside the shop, using the glass of the storefront as a resonating membrane, the composition gathers people on location and explores the relationship between what is seen and what is heard in a neighbourhood, as well as the interaction between different spaces. Mobility, reciprocity, and serendipity are the guiding themes of this homage to the mixing of people, spaces, and sounds in the small part of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce I called home for 7 years.

Year: 2014

Role: Artist/Composer