Pillow Songs
An intimate multi channel sound installation, experienced through loudspeakers embedded inside a collection specially constructed beds.
Pillowsongs is a sound installation exploring sleep and rest as a space for listening. Recordings mastered on eight different compact discs were mixed into speakers embedded inside pillows on beds installed throughout a darkened exhibition space, lit only dim blue light-bulbs.
Listeners hear these sounds by resting their heads on the pillows – resulting in a very intimate and ‘inside your head’ listening experience. The soundtracks combined field recordings, electronic drones, voices and short-wave radio transmissions. Each layer is played from a separate programable Compact Disc player, with track (sound layer) combinations changing from day to day.
The slowly reconfiguring sound textures, dark lighting, and restful means by which the audiences engage with the work, engage listeners in a highly intimate, and hypnotic hypnogogic listening experience.
Listeners often reported a high degree of uncertainty as to which sounds where coming from the pillows, and which sounds had emanated from outside the gallery space. Falling asleep can be an appropriate way of interacting with this work, given our ability to perceive sounds whilst in certain stages of sleep.
Entering the installation through a light trap I was immediately immersed in a darkened space, an aura of deep blue incandescence emanating from the single light bulbs hovering above three simple beds.
As I lay down and my head came to rest on the pillow, an oceanic space rippled by sonic waves rolled out before my closed lids, and began to gently propel me across its textured surface.
I was hearing a subtle blend of the synthesised and the found. Extreme long fades in and out (mostly beyond immediate detection); modulations of pulses and beats, time-signals and thunder; the sounds of a radio tuned to the warbling between stations; a dog barking in the fog of winter dusk; sounds I had not encountered since I lay as a child with my first transistor radio hidden under my pillow long after my family had gone to sleep; drifting in and out of consciousness, hearing a voice, a passage of music, the rain on the roof and the hiss of off-station static.
Aware of the subjective nature of my response, I could also sense the broadly recognisable character of many of these sounds. My dreaming was but a single current stimulated by the stream of the artwork in which I was immersed.
Poonkhin Khut has been working with sound, installation and performance since 1987, and graduated from the University of Tasmania in 1993. Pillow Songs exemplifies his clean, minimal approach. Significantly, Khut makes conscious use of the space between sounds to define their quality, and to animate the role of silence as a sonic texture in its own right. His use of digital sampling and recording enables him to retain a “digital silence”, and this in turn facilitates his manipulation and layering of what he characterises as “wet” and “dry” sounds…
The gallery installation realised an interesting alliance between low and hi-tech in that the computer mastered CDs were played through three conventional CD players programmed to deliver a selection of tracks that were re-mixed each day. These signals were then channelled to each of the three beds.
Much of the success of Pillow Songs can be attributed to the consistent strength and individuality of these primary tracks, and the generous acoustic space which Khut allows to exist between the combined tertiary elements. The mix manages to maintain a tension between the mysterious and the recognisable whilst remaining open and suggestive.
“A Digital Silence” review by Martin Walch
RealTime issue #24 April-May 1998 pg. 46
Exhibition dates
2000
Pillow Songs, curated by Cath Bowdler, 24HR ART, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
1999
Poonkhin Khut: Pillow Songs and Di Wu: The Door of Silence, curated by Melissa Chiu, Gallery 4A, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 10 November – 4 December
Poonkhin Khut: Pillowsongs and Anne Holt: Thin Blue Line, Temple Studios, Prahan, Victoria, Australia, 9 - 25 September
1997
Pillowsongs, SideSpace Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania, 16 - 30 January
Production Credits
George Poonkhin Khut: Interaction concept, art direction, interactive sound design
Garry Wain: Percussion effects
Acknowledgements
Pillowsongs has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts (New Media Arts Board) and by Arts Tasmania, and the Contemporary Art Tasmania (CAST) exhibition touring fund, Gallery 4A (NSW), and 24HR Art (Norther Territory).
Special thanks to Richard Levis, Stephen Ashley, Anne Holt, Wendy McPhee and John Utans for their support and involvement in the development of this work.