Cielo y Tierra

The paired oppositions of inside and outside, above and below, matter and energy lie at the heart of this project. If land artists “not only moved away from cities […] but also from modernity, in seeking a connection with nature through ancestral and non-Western cultures” [Lozano (2019)], the material dimension of this installation follows a similar path. I have abstracted the sea, mountains and birds of my own lived environment into a wider, global frame in which the cubic structure, as a Platonic solid, evokes the element of earth. The cube contains a sonic hemisphere tuned to the vibration of the root chakra, itself associated with the energy of the earth. If the sphere symbolises wholeness, the hemisphere speaks of the lower half — earth — in contrast with the other half, sky, which is represented not by another hemisphere but through sound and images. The water in the bowl, the most abundant liquid on the planet, evokes the origin of life held within a matrix of sound. Beneath the cube and the bowl, a spiral of sand — inspired by the work of Mario Merz (1925), for whom “if form disappears, the root is eternal”, and by his interest in the Fibonacci spiral — symbolises movement and evolution. It begins at the centre of the bowl, in the sonic matrix of life, passes through the cubic structure and expands outwards. All the elements of earth are physical and, viewed from below upwards, emerge from the spiral, the bowl, the water and the cube: expanding energy, the matrix of life, vital liquid and earth itself, in a process of material evolution.

The synthesised images of clouds, together with the sounds of rain, thunder and birdsong emitted by the television, evoke the elusive nature of the sky and the speed of light and sound. Through the cubic structure we can perceive this luminous, sonic reality, but we cannot touch it because it is volatile. We can, however, approach the bowl and generate our own sound, allowing the installation — this metaphor of sky and earth — to be transformed by our trace. In Izaguirre’s words (2010), this is a displacement in which the subject stands at the centre of the ‘object’ of appreciation: the environment itself. Here, a new soundscape is created by combining music, birdsong and rain. Different moments in time and space converge within a single physical reality which, in turn, can be transformed again through human presence and the sound of the bowl.

Murray Shafer’s work in bioacoustics and his creation of musical compositions based on natural environments have had a strong influence on this piece. A track inspired by the element of Air was composed for it, while human hands are invited to contribute by creating earth-inspired sounds with the bowl.