Title: What is Rising
Artist(s): Gaspard and Sandra Bébié-Valérian
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): Sonic, visual, visceral/touch
Issue(s): Fracking
What is Rising is an audio-visual performance on the theme of fracking. The performance takes place in an anechoic chamber, that is one where there is no sound reverberation. The experience of being in an anechoic chamber has been described as very uncomfortable. The artists draw upon seismic data from earthquakes caused by fracking, and they use this data in a live audio-visual composition, where sounds are mixed with on-screen visuals and type, in a ‘sonic and sensory composition’.1
The seismographs from existing earthquakes are ‘performed’ in real time in what is both a performance and installation.2
Additionally, there is a narrated component, with two narrators describing contrasting perspectives on the technological future-present. One character ‘trusts the system, he believes in its proficiency and thinks he belongs to [a] global system he doesn’t want to fight against’.3 The other character ‘feels the things, he’s scary [sic] and knows that he will ineluctably die in the catastrophe. He questions the system and tries to understand it’ (ibid.). Mixed with these voices are low-frequency sounds, and even infrasound, which is sound at frequencies that cannot be heard but are felt in the body. This adds a visceral component to the installation.