Surfacing – 2005

In .

Teri Rueb

Surfacing is a GPS-based sound walk in the Berlin Tiergarten designed as part of the symposium "Sound, Art, and Urban Space" organized and curated by Sabine Breitsameter at the Akademie der Kunste in 2005. The topography of the Berlin Tiergarten becomes a stratified landscape of subterranean surfaces that successively "peel away" to reveal layers of sonic "sediment". Sounds blend organic and mechanical references, suggesting the various materials that might be found underfoot at various depths (from buried electrical cables, sewer pipes, and subway tunnels to soil, concrete, stone and organic matter). The body becomes a playback head for the urban and organic infrastructure below as each sonic layer is played in response to movement along a linear path through the gardens.