SD card + booklet – Artkillart

There are some sounds we are unable to hear, because they above or below the audible spectrum of the human ear or are masked by sounds occurring alongside them or just before. ‘Lossy’ Compression technologies make use of these psychophysical details when making files smaller. But the interpretation Matthieu Saladin offers of the inaudible is more political, because he thinks of this phenomenon as something that goes beyond the listening and comprehension of a group of people. In his analysis this group is a metaphor for broader society; the act of listening is something socially, culturally and historically constructed and audibility can be defined less as a psychoacoustic phenomenon and more as a social construct. As such, we can imagine a horizon of audibility. Sound is always a product of our sensory perception, not something external, and human beings understand sound through the limitations of their sensory organs and their own bodies. Saladin’s conceptual approach shows attention not only to these listening forms, but also to listening formats. Saladin explores how listening formats such as the MP3 have been strategically designed with the choice of the appropriate technical and legal supports. In the SD card attached to a booklet designed by Jean-Baptiste Parré, there are over 6GB of material, totaling 3,857 elements. The software used here reverses the typical function of an MP3 encoder. Instead of deleting the inaudible and masked frequencies that are normally removed to save space, these are the only frequencies that the software preserves. Such a format choice is not intended as a critique of compression or the applications that this format has made possible. Instead it’s simple inviting a new dimension of the inaudible, one that we can easily engage with given our familiarity with this particular format. “Any sound is a relationship”, Saladin reminds us, and this relationship is embedded in a long history of hearing. The perceptual codec, namely the fundamental technology of the minidisc, mp3, mp4 and different other digital audio forms, is a great representation of this long story, La capture de l’inaudible is a coproduction by Artkillart with Synesthésie St Denis and all the work was made during an artistic residence. Apart from the theoretical inputs and the software, thanks to Ianis Lallemand, it’s also possible to engage with the project as a huge sound library.

 

Radio Grenouille – L’Art Des Sons – Matthieu Saladin – La Capture de l’inaudible

 

AKA15 – MATTHIEU SALADIN – LA CAPTURE DE L’INAUDIBLE [remix DRIFT-01 splitted master A1 T AKA11]

 

AKA15 – MATTHIEU SALADIN – LA CAPTURE DE L’INAUDIBLE [remix WUNDERLITZER A1 AKA07]