TOTAL 2

Multichannel sound installation, loop

Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Andalucía (CAAC), Seville

Within the framework of the group exhibition Tablaos.

Produced by CAAC

In TOTAL 2, first presented as an installation in the Pergola Courtyard of CAAC, different brass instruments are played at the dynamic level pianissimo (pp)—the minimum volume at which musicians can project sound.

The piece is part of the TOTAL trilogy, which investigates the states of attention in listening at the limits of sonic materiality through three acoustic situations. Within this framework, the artist finds a site from which to explore different states of attention and their relationship to the formation of the self in listening and in acoustic space. Unlike TOTAL 1, TOTAL 2 appears at an intimate distance, in proximity. Although operating at different scales, both works explore a movement that is simultaneously expansive and contractive, which Mayoral refers to as “total listening”. This movement is also suggested in the inhalation and exhalation of the air projected by the different musicians. 

The score was developed from the way the wind moves the branches of the bignonia plant in the Pergola Courtyard of the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Andalucía.

“The self, in an extraordinary and delicate —and at times painful—movement, expands the extension of the unknown in order to gather within the softness of the concrete. It withdraws so as to later access the other through intimacy. It is in this oscillation, in this affective movement, that the process of self-assimilation takes place: an oscillation whose ultimate aim is to become capable of integrating the strange as one’s own—to metabolize scales, distances and difference from within a position configured as an apparently immutable matrix: the self.”

For Violeta Mayoral, this movement becomes particularly evident at the threshold of minimal audibility, since the auditory apparatus must sharpen its sensitivity in order to fulfill its basic function: recognizing the referent—the origin, direction and content of the sound source. At the threshold of listening, a state of hyper-focalization or heightened sensitivity emerges, enabling the acoustic space surrounding the piece to become integrated into the experience of the work, thus fostering a total listening of the sonic environment.

Musical direction: Maitane Beaumont 

Carlos Santos (soprano saxophone, alto saxophone and flute)

MCarmen García (E-flat clarinet and B-flat clarinet)

Acoustic assistance: Arnau Sala Saez

Programming: Sebastian Jara