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Basement Bass (Boréalis) - 2014

Materials: mechanical floor with speed control, wood, bass speaker drivers with amplifier, sound, record player with record (Sounds of Silence), guitar amplifier, miscellaneous audio equipment

Dimensions (h x w x d):
floor approximately 9 x 120 x 120 inches
record player unit approximately 18 x 16 x 11 inches

Basement Bass�(Bor�alis) was part of the exhibition�Perdre Pied� (Losing One�s Footing)�for the Biennale nationale de sculpture contemporaine (Trois-Rivieres, Quebec). A rotating floor has been turned into a bass speaker. Sounds recorded in Bor�alis Museum's sub basement, located below river level, are heard through the floor speaker (the bass end of dripping water, droning fans, etc. coloured by the architecture of the space). When a viewer stands, sits, lies on the floor, they feel the sound as much as they hear it.

Sounds of Silence, playing on the record player, sounds through a guitar amplifier attached beneath the rotating floor. The record features reproductions taken from many different albums where artists chose to have no sound or to incorporate large sections of no sound; what is heard is the sound of the material of the record itself.

See also: Basement Bass (Barnicke), Basement Bass (Gairloch)


Exhibition History:
2014 Bor�alis (Trois-Riviere, Canada)