Name: infields.xyz - Track 04 by Sounds Like a Book
Duration: 5 min 32 s
Description: "infields.xyz" connects field recordings of a cell tower site with a printed publication. The site is located close to Fãgãras on a hill and consists of 4 towers sending radio and cellular signals.

"infields.xyz" connects field recordings of a cell tower site with a printed publication. The site is located close to Fãgãras on a hill and consists of 4 towers sending radio and cellular signals.

infields.xyz - Track 04

The book and sound piece "Eu și el împreună cântărim 200 de kg, ceea ce înseamnă vreo 4 saci de păpușoi" reflects on my parents' marriage and their unceasing work in the fields, cultivating crops. It explores how these intertwined elements, their relationship and labor, shaped me.
	
By associating the concept of marriage with the idea of agricultural fieldwork, I intend to outline a project created from and about worries.

Eu și el împreună cântărim 200 de kg, ceea ce înseamnă vreo 4 saci de păpușoi

"About fences, defense and non-human gatekeepers" explores the relationship between the presence of fences and stray dogs within both rural and urban settings. It draws insightful parallels between human-made boundaries, societal structures, and the inherent tension between protection and exclusion.

Midnight in the village (Book Title: "About fences, defense and non-human gatekeepers")

Is it possible to search for something when we don’t know what it looks like? To what extent are we capable of persisting in such a quest? What can give purpose to a search?

"Resembling Something" delves into notions of memory, futurity, alienation, and solitude through a speculative fictional narrative, unfolding in a sound piece and a book.

"Resembling Something" envisions a future where the village of Șona, Romania, has been abandoned by humans due to a global crisis. Something previously unseen, once living underground, is now emerging to the surface. A woman embarks on a solo journey to investigate and discover what it is.

Resembling Something

The project "Botanical Evaluations" speculatively investigates a pseudo-science dedicated to plant pathology, creating a fictive system in which flora suffers from imaginary afflictions. 

Through a conceptual intersection of invented botanical drawings, speculative texts, false diagnoses, and fictional remedies, the project constructs an alternative reality. Sounds generated from dried plants, combined with digital synthesizer compositions, amplify the sense of absurdity, exploring how we mythologize the vegetal world and inscribe it into personal narratives, challenging the boundaries between reality, fiction, and memory.


Botanical Evaluations

6 57 96 209 114 illustrates five decaying houses that stand as witnesses to a series of lost narrations. The project underlines the changes experienced by the local community and their impact on its identity. On the walls of these houses, overlapping patterns spread once with rollers, reveal fragments of a layered history—a silent language that speaks about the community's life and the transformations of the place in the current context. The book employs both photography and text to create a poetic portrait of each space. The work includes a sound composition with recordings made within the boundaries of these houses, where the everyday sounds of the surroundings intertwine with the memory of the structures.

6 57 96 209 114

Just in time for the inauguration of the new communal stage of Șona, a cassette containing the recording of the classic play that will open the space was anonymously donated to the local radio station by one of the villagers. 

"The singing hills are out to get us!", a sci-fi musical play that explores the “true” horrors and origins of the strange mounds guarding the village from above, dubbed “guruiețe” by the locals. Collecting interviews, conspiracies and scientific theories, the project follows how their legend got distorted through time, and how the locals remember the guruiețe's origin, all of them possessing a small fraction of their "actual" mysterious arrival, next to the village.

The Singing Hills are out to get us!

Wooden stick is a handmade book that revisits the idea of the photo album, bringing attention to the carriers of wooden sticks in the village of Șona. Whether used as a tool handle, a walking stick, or a bush cutter, the stick also serves here as the book's binding. Its charred appearance recalls the blackened facades of Șona's barns, evoking the possible sound of the book: the crackle of fire. 

The low-tech sound recording is the result of rubbing a contact mic that I deliberately dragged across the ground. The idea is to reproduce the gesture of the shepherd who crosses the village every day with a tree branch in hand, its foliage brushing against the asphalt.

Wooden stick

This project revolves around an attempt to measure the present moment. During my two-week stay in Șona, I observed the surroundings, outlined and separated the elements that could end up as the objects of my study. I let myself be affected by anything that came my way and had a quantifiable feature, then ordered them in a timeline-based structure. This process bounded to my sonic experience that triggered, in some instances, what I chose to record. It was also dependent and equally limited by my capacities as a body in space. The outcome resulted in a glossary system of knowledge, action and existence.

Sample_Playing a Ping-pong match

Sounds like a Book is a book-making and self-publishing platform that addresses those interested in the book as a medium of artistic expression. As the chosen name suggests, SLB focuses on the visual transmission, conversion, and representation of the sound.

infields.xyz - Track 04

Sounds Like a Book

Related tracks