Zeynep Ozcan: As If I didn’t and Inconnu

Exhibiting Artist(s):

• Zeynep Ozcan

As if I didn’t is a hyper-real soundscape of a dream. Composed of field recordings, it tells a story of an individual’s struggle with waking up, as she tries to find her way through a synthetic environment of abstract and real objects. The piece starts with a gloomy atmosphere that includes very few representational sounds. But as the piece moves forward, a balance between concrete and abstract sounds emerge to signal the individuals “ascent” to consciousness, This consciousness, however, swings back and forth between reality and a dream. The final gesture blows the whistle on the narrative of the piece.

Inconnu is originally composed for a 20-channel Acousmonium, which is commonly known as a “loudspeaker orchestra”. Each sound is designed for separate speakers, but each channel is considered to be laid out in a linear fashion where one sound could only travel into adjacent
channels, implying a strict directionality. However, the loudspeakers for the performance are placed on separate levels and asymmetrical spots in the construction in a non-linear fashion.
Furthermore, when the piece travels in the space, the structure itself adds various effects
beyond what the composition affords and further interrupts the linearity of the sonic trajectories. Through the specialization scheme I follow for the performance of the piece, I aim to obscure the trajectories I determined during the composition process. By blurring these
trajectories with an uneven dispersion of speakers and the resonant characteristics of the structure, I choreograph a metaphor for how an individual’s path should be ambiguous and distinctive. Still, through close listening, the audience can untangle this ambiguity and
recognize the underlying trajectories that are deeply embedded into the composition