A voice artist’s response to Jorge Macchi’s Refraction 2012

The deeply immersive qualities of REFRACTION speak of the existence of a plane of seemingly infinite possibility beyond the physical confines of the space and objects that configure it. It is a place in which time and space seem both to collapse and expand, and in which we are required to re-orientate ourselves in a physical reality which somehow, and at the same time, evokes arrival into enigmatic, apparently contradictory landscapes of the imagination, ancient and modern. Thus it is that, in a state of temporary disorientation, we sense our emergence into a clearing of unknown provenance and uncertain purpose, a place of light in a dark, primeval forest and yet at the same time have alighted into a devastated, post-apocalyptic wasteland, strewn with the detritus and deconstructed totems of industrial society.

This then is a location which invites us to undergo a re-orientation not just of the senses, but of the imagination and ultimately of the spirit, too; and in so doing, it reveals itself as a place of dreams, of memory, of voices past and present. It is as if we are somehow in this place, but not quite of it, or indeed of ourselves. Thus, it becomes a place of connection between now and then, between ourselves and countless, unknown others; a place in which we can come to know ourselves more deeply and more truly; and it is as if REFRACTION had been consecrated for this very purpose.

The challenge here for the improvising voice artist is clear – how to fashion spontaneous, evocative responses in sound to the range of energies and resonances, both physical and metaphorical, contained within the space and the particular configuration of the objects within it; how to uncover and disclose, for example, the hidden palette of angular, sonic refractions already present in Jorge Macchi’s enigmatic vision ; how to reveal in voice the remarkable, other-worldly, acoustical properties of the space itself- the rich allusive configuration of the metal uprights, at once suggestive of times past and present, of the synthetic and the organic; of their imaginative transfiguration into a timeless woodland landscape, and of a clearing within a forest – dedicated perhaps to some long-forgotten ritual practice ; of a devastated industrial wasteland and of bleak, modernist soundscapes; and of cathedral buttresses, reaching towards the heavens and of the sacred harmonic vibrations with which they resound….

Steve Boyland

17th November 2012, Liverpool