An unheard Echo
An exhibition at Krognoshuset, Lund 2022

An Unheard Echo
The exhibition An Unheard Echo is to be regarded as a sound installation that can be experienced both by listening and seeing. A graphical score is central to the exhibition at Krognoshuset. Five drawings are placed on the second floor of the exhibition space, each drawing is a chord. The size of the drawings, the height, and the width of the paper is created as the volume, and length in time of each chord. In the same room, seven notes objects in copper are placed on the floor. Each copper object is indicating a note in motion, an indication of a melody. A room of muted sounds.
The installation functions as graphic score was interpreted to create an audible sound installation by Joe Cave. At night the sound could be heard outside the building emanating out over Mårtenstorget in Lund.
The lament heard from Krognoshuset at night is a composition that has come from a collaboration between Sara Wallgren and the composer Joe Cave. A computer model of the artist's voice was created through machine learning, The extracted voice then functions as an instrument in itself. An attempt to capture the essence of a voice, and to illuminate the voice's expression and feeling, while disconnecting it from coded words and the body from which the voice comes. Based on the notes presented in the installation on Krognoshuset's second floor, Joe Cave created a melody and rhythm that merges with the artificial voice.
The starting point and inspiration for the sound installation was odes and lamentations. Lamentations are often sung by women and professional mourners. A form of expression that at various times was condemned when it was considered a platform for women to be heard in the public space. Singing lamentations often transformed from being an individual act to being about expressions of politics and injustice.
In the lower floor of the exhibition space an installation made entirely of wood is placed. The structure can be seen as a simple plattform or a stage as well as a resonance box. An item that is pending. Where the sound installation is not heard but can be seen upstairs, here is the stage or plattform from which the song may be coming, but in the absence of the body the voice is modeled after.