Jason Kahn

Any way the wind blows

“Any Way the Wind Blows” is an installation and recording project planned for a two-week residency.

On a conceptual level I addressed the notion of art’s place as something existing in the eye of the beholder. As in the old saying: “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it fall?

My initial proposal for the work at Nodar was inspired by the “walking artist” Richard Long, who documented his long walks with photography of sculptures he made with the environment he was walking through. I thought I would make the same with sound. Walking around in the hills and making very temporary installations or interventions using the elements of Nodar, basically the wind, recording it or amplifying it through different means. I was going to use steel wires, piano wires and piezo microphones which I built with steel rods and steel wire to pick up the vibrations of the branches and leaves of trees, or just the wind blowing through them, and then amplify these sounds through speakers, which I brought up to the hills.

My aim was to re-introduce these sounds in the form of a sonic mirror back into the environment. Later I used the recordings of these self-interacting environments to make several compositions, as well as to document the project. These sites were also documented by photos and video, providing at the end of the project a comprehensive documentation of the work process and the work it self.

What I imagined I would do is pretty much what I ended up doing, despite the fact that the steel wires themselves couldn’t amplify the sound to the point I expected they could, because the amps weren’t strong enough. I ended up finding other ways to work with the piezo microphones and the steel wires which were very satisfying and I was very pleased with the result.

Another thing I didn’t take into account was the distance. So I ended up being driven around by Luis Costa from Binaural/Nodar. In the first two interventions I did everything all together: I walked on my own and it took me about one hour. But walking with that much equipment can bevery tiring because of the high temperatures. These were the two only problems I encountered and,of course, as a stupid city person, the weather: there is not much I can do when it’s raining.

In my installations a sense of place is often the starting point for the work. I look by impulse for a place, a space, for what is I want to (or can) do. It is often not until I arrive at a place that I realize what it is I want to (or can) do. For this reason, I looked forward to learn about the community of Nodar through my work with sound, getting a feel of the place, and taking this sense of place,channeling it back into my work.

I think the main focus of my project was not the sound but working in the context of the sound to find a way into the environment. So, although I recorded everything I did (audio and video), the most important thing for me was going to that place, up in the hills, and setting up these installations, working with the environment. For me this was the whole point of the procedure: I found my way in the environment through sound.

Sound is where I find a higher perception of that environment, which is what I expect people who come to view my work to also experience. Of course, in that place it’s different because there is noone to come experience this work, so on that level it becomes a more conceptual approach because I have nothing to show other than documentation. In a way, the visual documentation becomes more important than the audio documentation-the recordings are very beautiful but what is most interesting is to see there is nobody but me up in the hills with the speakers, touching the wires, with all these microphones, creating a whole system to work with the environment.

Unlike other projects which seem to be based on the recordings and working with the recordings, I feel I was working more with the environment. Trying, by channeling back the sound of the environment, amplified, through the wires and piezo microphones, to create a sonic shadow of that environment. I gained a more profound perception of each place by creating an installation. I didn’t try to impose myself on the environment, I only tried to accentuate what is already there-I could only activate what is already there.

When I do a sound installation I’m not going to be so much interested in the sound I’m putting inspace. I’m more interested in the perception of the space. I use the sound to activate the space, to create a broader conscience of the space. When I work in a space I try to use a sound that doesn’t impose it self on that space, which is some how supporting the natural acoustic environment of the space.

I think my work as environmental work. I don’t think of it even as sound work but as an environmental work in the context of sound.

Kahn performs both solo and in collaborations, using percussion, analog synthesizer or computer indifferent combinations. For larger groups of directed improvisation he has devised a system of graphical scores. Kahn creates his sound installations for specific spaces. The focus of these primarily non-visual works lies in the perception of a space through sound. In 1997 Kahn founded the independent CD label “Cut,” producing to date twenty-five CD’s, both of Kahn’s own work and other artists.