Jon Law creates immersive sound installations and performances that make extensive use of field recordings and room tones. His works are often realized in unconventional sites because of his practice of recording, manipulating and re-introducing field recordings into their space of origin. During his month- long stay in Riga, British musician and sound artist Jon Law embarked on a journey to discover the areas of Riga that neither tourists nor locals usually venture to walk around quite often, if ever. Abandoned structures of obscure purpose, obsolete objects and places that become sketchy and not frequented very much during day or night. Yet Jon’s project pointed out to the fact that despite their poor and derelict state, they are a part of the city nonetheless. Using sound to establish this connectedness, he re-entered them into the map, even only for his project.
ARTWORK
TERRAIN VAGUE
Jon Law (United Kingdom, 1986)
Terrain Vague, 2018
Site specific sound Installation
Jon Law is a British musician and sound artist who developed a project with the New Theatre Institute of Latvia, in Riga. In his work he creates immersive sound installations by recording and manipulating sounds that then he reintroduces into unconventional, abandoned, or marginal spaces. During his residence, after a series of psycho-geographical walks to discover areas that neither tourists nor locals usually frequent, and creating ambient recordings of sounds, the artist created a site-specific sound installation made up of four audio tracks. These tracks were then installed in four abandoned buildings without a clear aesthetic or practical function, located in the so-called grey areas of Riga. On the occasion of this exhibition visitors can listen to the four sounds in four unexplored points along the path from the Railway Station to the Nemunas River that runs through the city of Kaunas. The audio tracks, which now compose Terrain Vague (II), inserted in the Augmented Reality Guide, immerse the visitor in an atmosphere that is halfway between natural scenery and urbanised landscape.
*If you have missed the other soundtracks you can find them in the AR guide. Here you can find the map to follow the path.
