Thalassa! Thalassa! Erik Nerinckx 2014

The sea - are there experiences more enveloping, more intense and more complete than a walk on a beach near the water? Erik Nerinckx wants to represent the sea – that immense, fierce force of nature – as an experience. From a distance it comes to us as a massive wall of sound, an overwhelming murmur, an abstract flow of sound. But near the sea, it sounds different, more subtle, more varied. The artist retranslated this total experience into a sound installation of a decontextualized sea that unexpectedly rolls into someone's increased attention. The recording: Nerinckx recorded smashing waves on the beach. On a coastline of twenty-three metres he placed one microphone every one and a half metre, on a long straight line. This means we have our ears on sixteen different places at once. There is not one single position from which we are listening, there are sixteen points. A David Hockney of sound. A spatialized recording. The presentation: For the installation the sixteen audio points are placed back on a long line by way of sixteen speakers. The spectator gets an immense true to nature aural reconstruction of a coastline. A true evocation. Thalassa! Thalassa! can be presented both in the public space as in an exhibition space.