Esteban Pérez

ASHGRAN XX3
05.23–06.22.2024

ASHGRAN XX3 is a sound installation that includes a graphic score and a soundscape. Informed by the metaphor of the palimpsest, the piece explores the relationship between sound and drawing.

This work is part of a year-long research project called Palimpsestuous Oscillations, which attempts to hear simultaneous contextual layers through overlapping sound recordings of natural landscapes. The project emerged from a series of walks through the Ashnola River’s shore in British Columbia, where layers of ice formed due to the region’s low temperatures in the Canadian fall season. These ice formations were interpreted as a natural sound score of frozen frequencies, capturing images and recording ice sounds for a composition using a granular synthesizer.

By dissolving the sound into grains, this piece aims to access different temporalities of the river, aligning with Andean epistemologies that perceive the landscape as sonically animated and conceive music as an extension of the Land. The graphic score, created through silkscreen, overlaps drawings of ice images, attempting to visually represent a palimpsest.

— Esteban Pérez