The White Gold Screen

Ana Brape

DAD, Amsterdam, Netherlands — 2018

Sound design & development of eight custom DIY electronic sound devices — Juan Orozco

The White Gold Screen is an installation by filmmaker Ana Brape that explores the question of how cinema might be decolonized through material experimentation, non-linear temporality and alternative forms of perception.

The installation brings together three works: Cartography of the Body, an 8mm film buried for seven months in the Amsterdam Botanical Garden, allowing natural processes to transform the film material; The Migrating Film, a 16mm film carried across international borders and repeatedly exposed to airport X-ray scanners; and Thousand Broken Pieces, a screen composed of multiple porcelain fragments.

The octagonal projection space draws on the geometry of the Chakana, an Andean symbol associated with the Southern Cross constellation, navigation and ancestral cosmologies.

For this installation, Juan Orozco developed the sound design and constructed eight independent DIY electronic sound devices during a collaborative working period with Ana Brape in Amsterdam.

Conceived as small, autonomous sonic memories, each device could record and reproduce up to ten seconds of sound, amplify microphones or other sensors, and respond to external stimuli such as light, vibration or sound.

Six devices were distributed throughout the Chakana-shaped installation space, while two were positioned outside. Each could operate independently or interact with others in changing combinations, creating a distributed and evolving sonic environment.

Rather than establishing a fixed composition or a centralized listening point, the sound system explored non-linear time, fragmentation and the relationships between apparently independent elements.

The devices were deliberately open and adaptable, allowing their behaviour to be modified through interaction and changes in their surrounding conditions.

Through this approach, sound became part of the installation's exploration of solidarity, complementarity and dialogue, proposing a listening environment in which individual sonic fragments coexist and form relationships within a shared spatial and conceptual territory.

Credits

Artist / Film and installation
Ana Brape

Sound design
Juan Orozco

Concept, design & construction of eight DIY electronic sound devices
Juan Orozco

Sound system development and spatial configuration
Juan Orozco

Venue
DAD, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Year
2018

Format
Audiovisual installation / Experimental sound devices