Delhi
Polyphones

The sound of the city is one of our most decentralized systems. Disintegrated harmonies meet and not at long-wave polyphonic curves. It enjoys autonomy and independence where mergers of new kinds are constantly occurring. Aural auroras of every city. An atmosphere created by the many vocal spheres of the city’s inhabitants, human and non-human. The birds nesting in hundreds of tombs around the city, the train signals, the few surviving lakes, all pulsating electricity with characters of their own. They blend seamlessly into our local sono-spheres. And through BaRiya’s practice of observing overtones and polyphones of regular frictions in and around us, the artists felt that there is an aural, auroral map missing from our sonic palates.

Can we return to the city as a natural body and hear its many paraphonic polyphonic voices which inter-dependably make up our sonic environments? What BaRiya wanted to uncover more closely is which tones make up the city’s sound map. By synthesizing soundscapes through digitally emulating processes of polyphonic overtone singing, Tuvan throat chanting, or Bulgarian polyphonic chanting, the artists were seeking to let the city take the performer’s spot. Rather than looking at a performer’s sound ornating spaces, they wanted to hear what the space is saying in all its multiplicity; to reveal a new imagination of the city. New aural concerns and care. Aural auroras of everydayness, spaces and communities creating a oneness in multitudes, sharing in a timesthesia ritual. A ‘natural entity’ characterized by dystopian noise as much as pristine environments are perceptually characterized by the color green, all parts of an evolving biosphere. All revealed by capturing the sonospheres of the city and presenting them in textual-sonic collages, including ultrasonic and hydrosonic environments. These collages are to be made  using not only the sounds as they are, but also synthesizing them to let their overtones and undertones resurface.