Abstract
A multichannel durational performance constructed from field recordings made in and around the local of the performance’s venue. Mêtis explores the interface between installation art, sonic art, and improvised electronic performance practice (the work’s structure, sound diffusion and processing constituting its improvised elements). It emphasises the process of sustained and expansive listening through subtle alteration of familiar and recognisable sound worlds using repetition, slight sonic modifications, and enveloping stillness. On one level it reasserts the idea of the musical value of everyday sounds, and on another it evokes the deeper significance of sound and of our connection with it. By reducing the perception of linear time and by its modification of the familiar in the soundscape, the work raises questions about the ways sound is experienced in the world and the aesthetic basis for those experiences.