Commission #7

Kinokologue Specimen Boxes

The Idea

Related news: Kinokophone unveil their Sound Specimen Boxes

We propose to place found sounds in specimen boxes similar to those commonly used in museums in the presentation of insect collections.

In place of physical objects will be sound recordings from our own growing archive, collected from locations around the world.

The boxes will contain physical objects which may or may not help the visitors in their interpretation of the sound, including as dissected media commonly used in sound acquisition and artistic interpretations of the sounds hosted in the box.

Visitors can explore the sound of the boxes via headphone plug in points

The "Kinokologue " is an experiment seeking to explore systems of categorisation of public sound collections.

Once a sound is collected, how is it preserved and presented to the public? Does its meaning and interpretation changes onces it is placed in an archive/exhibition context?

Part of this project will also involves looking into the multitude of interpretations and ways of describing a sounds

 

As artists, this project enables us to explore our own relationship to sounds we record, the process behind creating them, what they mean to others and our contributions to acoustic ecology. The specimen boxes are the first stage in a much larger project and it will allow us to experiment with our ideas and further develop our work.

 

 

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Profile

Kinokophone

 Kinokophone is a Manchester based sound and storytelling collective. They are passionate about soundand seek to generate much needed discussion on issues in sound art, the social scientific understanding of sound, and the public’s input into creating accessible public collections.

Kinokophone collects and composes sounds, stories and imagery from around the world. Kinokophone take their name from the Japanese word for mushroom. Mushrooms are a product of intricate connections that lie beyond the surface, with roots in folklore and imaginary worlds, much like the work we produce.  In short, our name kinokophone encapsulates what we like to do, which is is to record and communicate ideas with an unaffected sense of wonder for what is growing up around us, unearthing the intertwining connections that lie beneath the surface...

Kinoko: Japanese for mushroom / Kino: German for cinema / Ko: Japanese for child / Phone: as in microphone, telephone and speech sound

Kinokophone are Amanda Belantara, a researcher and audio visual artist working in ethnographic film and sound. her works seek to explore the constructions of the everyday though sound and Jon Tipler

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The process

The work had two main objectives. To address the associations between the initial motivation in recording a sound and its value as an individual memory and to  explore the challenges of categorisation and interpretation when making public collections. 

The collective played around with several ideas and design including working with embroidery artist, Akiko Yanagimoto. Kinokophone sent her five sounds, without telling her the sources of the sounds. She then responded to each of these sounds by creating embroidery works which were then layered within a box connected to headphone jacks.

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The Result

The final installation featured  five different sonic specimen boxes, each enabling a different way of exploring the various sounds contained within them.

Box 1 featured work created by embroidery artist, Akiko Yanagimoto . The  works, embroidened on transparent slides, were layered within a box connected to headphone jacks which the viewer / listener could listen to separately and associate with the visual representation defined by the artist 

Box 2 was a set of small drawers containing sounds that fit under the theme of nature. When a visitor opened the drawer, they were invited to “excite the sonic specimen” by pressing a button. 

Box 3 and 4 explored the various possibilities for describing or systematically categorising a sound. One box invited visitors to list their own category/description of the uncategorised specimen inside the specimen box , whilst the other used a set of wooden volvelles to reveal different words while one listens to a single sound source.

The last box enabled the users to share how they would combine various sound with their fellow listeners. Comprising of several volume buttons, the box invited listeners to leave a list of the combination they experimented with and they preferred for the next person to play with.

Kinokologue exhibited their new sound installation at MadLab  on 18th & 19th November 2011. The preview  was followed by Kinokolgue's regular night Kinokophonography, an evening of sharing sound recordings, exploring the experience of listening and discussing what these recordings and the process of making them can bring to life.   For ore information please read Madlab's review of the exhibition or The Shrieking Violet's account of her evening of sounds.

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What's next?

On top of continuing to share their love of sound recording during their regular sound sharing and listening sessions, Kinokophone hope to carry on developing new ways to archive and interract with sound collection. Their dream partners? The sound archives at the British Library.

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