Maria Blondeel

essay

A basic condition As a sound artist Maria Blondeel concentrates more and more on the very preconditions of this discipline, which combines visual and sonic elements into integrated works. First of all for several years now she has been working with light as the driving force for her installations - both artificial light and sunlight. Falling on photoelectric sensors this alters electric currents, which power sound generators. These produce square waves. Pitches rise and drop with the changing intensity of the light. She can make mobile versions of these installations, placing the sensors on vehicles. One of these, a trip by car around the Brussels circular road at dusk, was recorded on film, the camera pointing straight upwards. In one continuous take it documents the immediate surroundings overhead as the car drives past and the way they influence the light falling on the sensors, while daylight is gradually fading. The changes in the overall luminosity are twinned with the sounds from the generators, a connection so direct that at some point you'll start to focus on the light rather than the objects. Blondeel uses a recording made in similar circumstances for her most recent work, Sunlight. This is an installation in which the visitor should lie down with the head on a pillow that has been fitted with loudspeakers. At a very low volume these emit intertwining square wave lines, just above the hearing threshold. Lying there you are not only listening to light, however. Blondeel has tuned the generators to produce pitches that coincide with tinnitus, an ailment she has been suffering from for some years. [René van Peer], April 2006