Efraín Rozas — Still
Stemming from the fact that Western music is expressed in linear time, Peruvian artist Efraín Rozas created Still as a project to explore this as well as the deeper question of the human experience of non-linear time. Rozas' sound installation was hosted by The Kitchen at Queenslab during his residency there in April 2021. With this piece, he strove to challenge the traditional beliefs our society holds in regards to our existence based in linear time and the unsustainability of human life with our current trajectory. By utilizing sound and space, Rozas appeals to the audience to consider the more natural, biological, and emotional timing patterns found without human intervention, such as cyclical, pendular, and parallel times, to name a few. Is it possible for humans to remove themselves from the time construct that they have created solely for the procedural, self-imposed methods that control their daily lives.
Recorded live, in room during one of its one-hour viewings, Still is a captivating breakdown of sound over time. With "Part One" consisting of one long form, oscillating drone and "Part Two" being a very minimal collection of booms that reverberate through the space, Rozas challenges the form of Western music in regard to linear time and traditional harmonic and rhythmic progressions. While Still is able to be enjoyed as an audio album, installations such as this suffer greatly lacking their visual and spatial components. One can read Rozas' intentions for the project and embark on a thought experiment while listening, but the full scope of the piece cannot be realized, and that is a bit sad. The two tracks here on their own are interesting for their droning and minimalism. However, they're not designed to be standalone pieces, so they're not built or structured in a way that would bring the listener to say, "this is a great example of [X]." That is not to say that this release lacks merit or listenability. For the former, it's clearly stated that this is one part of a greater whole which is preserved through recording. Interestingly, with the whole life -> death aspect of linear time, the recording of this piece helps to lift it from that progression and inserts it into its own different time loop, that of foreverness. To the latter, the droning first track is soothing and the minimal second track is interesting, so running through this release is pretty ok. However, it really doesn't stand up to repeated listens and lacks the depth to be suitable background music.
Art installations are really great ways for multi-disciplinary artists to bring their ideas to life, and an intriguing way to make audio go beyond stereo and expand into full space. Much like smell is involved in taste, pieces like Still utilize sight and touch (that of being in the space) to further develop the audio signals and give this piece a spot in many extra dimensions. This audio recording naturally lacks the physicality of being at an art installation, but the recorded sound can still let the listener enjoy and ponder the questions posed by Rozas about linear time and its effect on humanity (and maybe more so with this recording, Western music).
For those looking for a sample of what may have been displayed during this installation, check out: https://onscreen.thekitchen.