2023 – 20′ – CZ/PT

SLAM, “sounds like a movie”, is a fixed-media acousmatic composition for 5.1 Dolby Theatres made of film sounds. It plays with a sense of cultural memory by referencing well-known films in a stream of sonic associations in a format that is the standard approach of multichannel sound in cinema. In that sense, the composition questions a few assumptions that established themselves during the years of film sound history, namely the patterns that define that history.

SLAM puts forward an idea of collective memory in film culture in a semi-historical approach of film sound as a story-telling tool. The composition hops from film to film in a chain of personal associations, either driven by the sound itself or by the film per se.

Occasionally, it makes use of the common strategies of 5.1 spatialisation to emphasise the fictional qualities of the scenes in use – sometimes by maximising their atmospheres, other times by highlighting a certain aspect of the sonic data in an attempt to emphasise the content in the original sources. Along this process, the sounds unfold different layers of understanding: from evoking the materiality of the period in which they were created (analogue textures, old school compressions, digital characters) to the process that a reduced listening experience pertains to. It occupies the space between what “sounds like” something that is collectively recognized, individual memories and, as always, a sonic liberation of narrative constraints. SLAM is an étude au cinema as much as an ode to film sound while being, literally, cinema for the ears.

The original 5.1 version has been adapted into a 30 channel installation to be exhibited at GHMP, Prague.

For an extended program note (in Portuguese), please visit here.

Screenings:

• 21 June 2024 @ Cinemateca Portuguesa, Lisbon
• 17 February 2024 @ Eletroacoustic Music Festival, Bangor – Wales, UK
• 30 November 2023 @ Ponrepo, Prague (premiere)