My project explores ways to understand enclosed, constructed public spaces in Rome through the presence of bodies in physical locations, through the actual physical confrontation of a physical body (alive or inert) and from the perspective of a recording microphone. This will culminate in a series of field recording based compositions that show multiple perspectives of these spaces and an experimental series of compositions and installations that reimagine and sometimes attempt to recreate aural structures based on these public spaces. These recordings explore what the sounds, structures, pressures, movement patterns, time, and pace of life is like through common structures across diverse neighborhoods and communities. I would like to better understand how feelings of enclosure (protection to shelter to denial, and everything in between) exist in Rome, and particularly how ancient structures contribute to the aural architecture in everyday life today. This project and my time at AAR fold into my larger interests regarding history, hope, loss, creation from a (resonant) body, and the challenge of oblique communications.

The photograph of Victoria Cheah was taken by Jason Thorpe Buchanan.