SACO9 Now or never

REVEALING SILENCE AND SOUND | Iván Ávila Sunset in San Pedro de Atacama. The fifteen attendees of sound artist Pablo Saavedra Arévalo’s workshop are present there on the open grounds of La Tintorera guest house. Pablo spent three weeks living at the oasis preparing for the workshop.

Pablo tried to avoid having preconceptions about the territory he had come to explore. This allowed him to more freely approach the people of the place (both natives and newcomers alike) who contributed to his field research, availing themselves to the informal interviews he conducted. A number of the people he met during his time in San Pedro are at La Tintorera, ready to participate in this experience whose first stop is an open dome, built out of earth and wood.

Pablo explains to those in attendance, whose ages range from eight to seventy years old, that the purpose of the exercise is to discover the sounds of the environment, both natural and artificial, even the ones that we ourselves are making. This is why the participants are remaining quiet for a few minutes, sitting in a circle inside the dome, finding out that the apparent stillness of the place isn’t really so: it is full of the sound of movement: of the plants, trees, insects, animals and vehicles driving by outside.

Soon thereafter, Pablo “crowns” each person with a device made from cardboard and plastic tape shaped like antennas. Everyone fans out in different directions through that rural space, using those extensions to touch walls, logs, the ground and furniture. Through vibrations they discover the sound each element makes upon contact. The conclusion reached is that nearly everything that surrounds us is capable of generating sonic responses that we are able to then hear as sound.

The next exercise consists of the use of contact microphones in order to listen to sounds that are normally imperceptible. These are amplified with a speaker that the artist found in an illegal garbage dump, giving it new life in this workshop.

So the participants are able to sense how the various materials react –bottles, pots, funnels, pieces of wood– each emitting totally different sounds depending on what they are struck with.

Pablo has worked these past few weeks with what he calls “future remains,” commonly used items thrown out by the residents of San Pedro, that at some point will become part of the desert’s geological layers, and perhaps even be analyzed by archaeologists hundreds or thousands of years into the future. Out of corrugated iron, kettles, a stove and some plates, he built an installation three meters in length, and a meter and a half tall. The final part of the workshop 166