EURYALE

Murray Schafer in his essay “Soundscape: our Sonic environment and the tuning of the world” narrates how two classical mythical figures were the source of music birth. In one hand, we have the dreadful Euryale, one of the three gorgon sisters, who’s cries after Medusa’s death inspired Athena to create the aulos. On the other hand is Hermes, the messenger God who had discover the sonic properties of a turtle shell. “In the first of these myths arises as a  subjective emotion; in the second it arises with the discovery of the sonic properties in the materials of universe.” (Schafer 1977, 6).

Euryale arises as a figure of visceral sensitivity of sound, where exploration and its experimental experience are primal. A first moment of sense connection between these hermetic sonic properties and materials. A way to be affected by the acoustic paths and its pavilions. An embodied unfold and unfold of frequencies in space, where the listening as aesthetic disposition of self is the primal stone of experience. 

This action takes place in the Music Faculty of University of Chile, where the Music education is mostly Classical and in some ways still patriarchal. Different discourses of these spaces denied the importance or relevance of Sound Art or Performance in Art fields.

The action itself, consisted on going through the faculty undergrounds taking a mobile speaker with me. This speaker reproduced the signal of low frequencies. I made different pauses on different places and objects, discovering new micro-acoustics and its reverberations. Thus, I discovered these ephemeral pavilions with different resonances. These soundgraphies sprout from spaces.

At the end of the path, in a dark room, an aulos piece interpreted by Cristian Gentilini was resampled by a midi interface and abstracted until the sound became sharped and intense, as Euryale’s lament. Finally,  the gorgons, destructive and creative creatures, were re-visited by this feminist perspective of sound action.

Sound Action. Music Faculty (undergrounds), University of Chile. Santiago. December, 2017.