Contributions to Homeland Sound Topography – The Right Side of the Road
A mixed media installation
2009
In a generous gesture Volkmar Klien extends an invitation to the environment to be reflected in the noises he radiates. Just as composers compose to reflect their feelings, their lovers’ beauty or their hearts’ desperate sorrow in music, Volkmar Klien blasts out loud, unrelenting and somewhat forceful noise from speakers mounted on his ruby red car’s roof, not simply to reflect just a feeling (as love is), but the physical environment as such. In the same way that things do not need to be lamps to be visible, physical objects do not have to emit sound to be heard. All that is needed for their shapes to be reflected in audible information is a reasonably loud acoustic signal directed towards them. Driving through Austria’s East Volkmar Klien records the environment’s reflections, thus contributing greatly to the study of his fatherland’s sound topography, a branch of science he founded several days before.
“Letting the environment imprint itself in my waves and walls of noise I feel I’m able to imbibe through sound so many aspects of Austria’s beauty that would otherwise remain beyond audible arts’ scope”, he states.
Surveying topography Volkmar Klien sonically documents the wonders of Austria’s civil engineering, her inhabitants’ car parking habits as well as her countryside’s and villages’ natural beauty, especially all the magnificence beyond the right wing mirror.
