Throughout the month of April, we invite artists from Berlin and from the German and French speaking Switzerland to feature an audio piece as part of the Sound Series,initiated in 2023 by Display. It takes place in the framework of Emilie Ding and Alizée Lenox’s multi-channel sound installation, Move Along Before the Sun Rises, at Neun Kelche. The Sound Series enables both to extend the field of research and explore the diversity of sound works. The Individual proposals take the form of readings, soundtracks and other kind of sound pieces. They are broadcast on the platform www.display-berlin.com. Today, we are glad to present Diego Flórez and Bethan Hughes’ audio piece, the world in a glass hat which also provides continuity with the previous exhibition at Neun Kelche. 

THE WORLD IN A GLASS HAT
Diego Flórez & Bethan Hughes, 2024, 32 min 15 sec

The sound piece the world in a glass hat was originally created as a four-channel sound piece for exciter speakers as part of the exhibition To want the world in a glass hat. at Neun Kelche in Berlin (Bethan Hughes & Dominique Hurth, 13.12.24-01.03.25).

The composition departs from two points: the glass sculptures which form part of Dominique Hurth’s 2019 work, soundless voices, bitten tongues, haptic hands, and Sylvia Plath’s posthumously published poem, New Year on Dartmoor. Though materially distinct (a series of objects, a text) both perform how voice takes form, is captured, transmitted and transformed through space and over time. 

Predominantly constructed out of field recordings captured using a contact microphone on glass, the audio is arranged into seven distinct phrases. Stroking, striking, scraping, slicing, scoring, glinting, clinking: direct, tactile interactions with glass reveal its particular resonances and often contradictory material properties. In the background, a constantly sounding metronome, one that occasionally trips and stumbles, both keeps and loses time. When installed on the large glass frontage that dominated the Neun Kelche exhibition space, the audio invited the viewer to take a closer look and emphasized the window as a transparent threshold. 

Now recomposed with Diego Flórez and archived as a digital file, compressed to standard stereo format, the work takes on a new life whilst carrying echoes of its original context.

Bethan Hughes’ audiovisual installations, sculptures and texts interweave archival research and speculative narratives to explore the unnatural ecologies generated through industry, commerce and technology. 

Diego Flórez (Mieres, 1998) is a sound artist and filmmaker. He explores nature through digital and computational perspectives. He also finds inspiration in natural sound events, which lead him to synthesize complex and organic sounds. He mainly composes in Supercollider, using algorithmic and stochastic techniques. Mixed up with synthesis, field recordings —sometimes heavily processed— contrast and define a sonic universe in which nature and machine coexist: sometimes colliding, other times embracing.