This work was originally composed for a sound art installation.
The show ‘the pursuit of happiness’ opened to the public in Arsenal Gallery, Poznan, from May 7 until June 6, 2010

The sound installation was experienced from within a small exagonal cell furnished with comfortable cushions and drapes and dimly lit with a single salt lamp, broadcast through 4 invisible speakers. The audience was invited to sit or lie down and enjoy the bath of vibrations.

The music is composed using sounds from the 5 elements (TCM, qi gong), and use resonant frequencies of the recorded natural sounds. Each element is attributed an energy centre and entrains the body and the corresponding chakras following techniques of sound therapy. Beat frequencies are used throughout and help the mind settle and relax.

Although the audience could walk in and out of the installation at will, listening through the entire work, one would resonate each chakra from the root through to the crown and cycle through all the elements in a balanced manner.

May this work bring you peace and happiness.
©Hervé Perez 2010


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reviews:

Sheffield-based saxophonist and laptop artist, Hervé Perez, is a frequent collaborator with Martin Archer and a member of the extended Discus family. This work is an electroacoustic composition that was designed and originally presented as a sound installation in 2010 as part of a show entitled ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ in a gallery in Poznan. It seeks to use techniques of sound therapy in order to engage with and recalibrate the body’s natural energy system, much as a gong bath is supposed to do. The original installation was experienced in a small cell, dimly lit by a single salt lamp and the audience were encouraged to sit or lie and let the vibrations do their work. Interwoven throughout are sounds from the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal and water – as specified in Qigong and traditional Chinese medicine – and the tracks correspond to the seven chakras or energy centres of Indian Vedic medicine. The idea is that, by listening to the entire work from beginning to end, each chakra will be resonated in turn, bringing balance and harmony to the listener.

All of which sounds, even for those with a high tolerance for this kind of thing, like a load of New Age guff. Fortunately, there is much to enjoy in the way the sounds unfold. The opening introduction layers sprinkled keyboard dapples with miniature, tactile flickerings and sepulchral rumblings to suggest a distant weather system pregnant with rain. The following tracks then concentrate on each chakra in turn: from the root chakra, situated in the perineum, and treated with a murky drone and ringing tones like a fingertip on a wine glass; through the sacral chakra in the lower abdomen, traditionally associated with water and here awash in liquid sloshes, splashes and trickles; right up to the chakra of pure consciousness in the crown of the head, represented here by an ephemeral drone seeded with glittering twinkles.

Daniel Spicer, The Wire (438, August 2020)