Tom Zear

“Silence In The City”
Sound and music exist only through time and silent pauses that are part of it. Even if the silence is less than a millisecond long, it is essential for hearing the separation of the notes in a musical composition or in a sound arrangement. The importance of silence for sound or music is substantially less explored than sound itself. “Silence In The City” is about the possibility of finding silence. It is questionable to experience silence in a city today outside the wee hours between 2 and 4 am. Zear, along with Wolf Gowin, will produce in a room a “silence room”, a room within a room that will be dark. The darkness will be contributing to the sensorial experience, emphasizing the aural perception. This experiment will show the participant how difficult it is nowadays to experience true silence. They hope to achieve a room/place of quietude within the otherwise noisy soundpedro 2018 installations. In that sense it will be a contrapuntal sound installation. The participant will be seated in the dark “silence room” behind a closed door. Perhaps there will be waiting lines for others to get into the “silence room”, therefore, the time in this room will be limited to 1 or 2 minutes. Due to the experience in the sensory-deprived room, the participants will realize when they come out of the room how noise our present-day environment has become.