Firedamp

Description:

While in residence at Western Front, Alexi Baris produced a new twenty-minute octophonic composition titled Firedamp as a parallel event to Rachelle Sawatsky’s solo exhibition Vitals.

In Firedamp, Baris explores the sonic potentiality generated by a solitary feedback patch on a modular synthesizer. Analyzing how proximity, frequency, and distortion work together to synthesize sense from raw sensation, Baris examines the relations they deposit and the individual perceptions that they trigger. Taking its title from the phenomena of combustible pockets of methane gas found in coal seams, Firedamp evokes a physicality, where vaporous emergences exhibit. This work also furthers Baris’s ongoing interest in psychoacoustics—how the human auditory system perceives various sounds—and the mimesis of nature that can occur in synthetic soundscapes.

Baris’s eight-channel spatialized sound installation was presented as an immersive deep listening experience in the Grand Luxe Hall, with audience members seated in complete darkness at the centre of the speaker arrangement. Six performances of Firedamp were presented for up to twenty-five audience members. 

Presented with the support of the Government of Canada and SOCAN Foundation.