On Chrous
Christopher Steenson
Fallow Media
English
Text by Ann Maria Healy.
Softcover
Edition of 200
8 pages
320 x 320 mm
2020
ISBN Not Available
On Chorus is a national public sound artwork by Christopher Steenson that broadcast field recordings of Dublin’s inner-city spring dawn chorus across Ireland, using Ianród Eireann’s network of train station PA systems. These sounds were played every morning between 8am and 9am, from 16 November to 29 November 2020. By transmitting the sounds of lockdown, the artwork sought to highlight the use of listening as a connecting act during times of social distancing, as well as using sound as a way of ‘listening to the future’ and imagining new architectures for cohabitation between human and non-human species.
This artist LP collects two field recordings made by Steenson, which document the birdsong being transmitted in two Irish train stations. Side A features a recording from Friday 20 November 2020 at Dublin Connolly Station. Side B features a recording of Dún Laoghaire Station on Sunday 29 November 2020. The LP is pressed on 180g black recycled vinyl, and is housed in a gatefold package designed by the artist. Also included is an 8-page booklet that features 35mm photographs taken by Steenson during the artwork’s creation, as well as a specially commissioned text by visual artist Ann Maria Healy, which uses the format of an LP lyric sheet to expound on ideas related to potential futures, hyper-reality and communal listening.
(source: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/products/on-chorus-christopher-steenson)
Description of Form
This object takes the form of a gatefold sleeve. One side contains a black recycled vinyl record (180 g) within a printed sleeve and the other a slim photobook.
About the Artist
Christopher Steenson is an artist based between the north and south of Ireland. With a background in psychology and the sonic environment, his work uses sound, analogue photography and writing to forge ways of ‘listening to the future’.
christophersteenson.com
(source: https://christophersteenson.com/about)
About the Publisher
Fallow Media is an alternative space for contemporary creativity. We publish work from across the artistic spectrum that challenges our inherited ideas of form, structure and content. We believe that the internet offers us critical and conceptual approaches that remain largely unexploited in the worlds of literature, music and the arts. Fallow Media operates at a slower pace in the hope of questioning our own assumptions about what publishing online can look and feel like.
fallowmedia.com
(source: https://fallowmedia.com/about/)
