Swiss mountain transport system. ERNST KAREL
(Gruenrekorder 2011)
Swiss mountain transport system is a good example of how, when heard out of context, sounds are even more capable to create a separated sensible experience other than the one we experience with the objectual causality of those sounds. There are two experiences occurring simultaneously that are linked and yet completely independent.
On the liner notes of the release it reads “…gondolas (aerial cable cars), funiculars, and chairlifts – of different types, of different vintages, and accessing different elevations, in different parts of Switzerland. In this way the album is a sonic investigation of the integration of such technology into the Swiss social-geographical landscape.”. What I hear deals with deeper and more sensible and experiential aspects than the landscape and the social-geographical considerations, again this is about sound about the reduced hearing overlapping the casual hearing, about hearing something beyond the actual documented object.
The vehicle is both an instrument to link two geographical places but it is also the place “where traveling occurs” and this phenomena is clearly depicted on this work. Traveling on vehicles is about moving geographically but also about remaining still, about quietly being aware of movement, and this is when this release works on a poetical level.
On Swiss mountain transport system the listener effectively experiences stillness and movement and this contradiction underlies the irony and innocence that occurs when formal aesthetics
considerations are taken in the process when
the object of interest is reduced and articulated.
Swiss mountain transport system is a great example of how methodical work can also lead to very strong sensible experiences capable to deal with actual perceptive implications of the object such as movement, vehicle, space, inside, outside…
When John Cage entered into an anechoic chamber he noticed there was no silence because he could hear something…his body, the vehicle.
-John McEnroe
