'Sound Seam' is a film which gives voice to the idea that every surface, in particular parts of our anatomy, is potentially inscribed with an unheard sound or echoes of voices from the past. The soundtrack’s musical composition is interlaced with a voice-over which draws on Rainer Maria Rilke’s text 'Primal Sound', where he reflects on the possibility of playing the coronal suture of a skull with a phonograph needle. The overlapping voices of the narratives tell a forensic love story of yearning, encryption, inscription, decoding, memory and erasure. The film uses microscopic photography, scanning electron microscopy, and sounds of otoacoustic emissions to uncover haunting aural bonescapes. The voiceovers too are recorded using old sound technology as a filter - writing and over-writing of wax cylinder to create unexpected scratches, glitches, loops and echoes. The music is composed and recorded onto wax cylinder and acetate discs by composer and phonographer Aleks Kolkowski.

During 2009-2010 Aura was artist-in-residence at UCL's Ear Institute, where she undertook research into hearing anatomy and shot most of the microscopic footage, including a golden cochlea, an ear drum and inner ear hair cells. The horn sequences of the film were shot at the Museum for Music Automatons in Seewen (Switzerland), during their temporary exhibition "When Sound Still Came from the Horn". All close-ups of acetate discs and wax cylinder sound grooves are from the private collection of Aleks Kolkowski.

AV FESTIVAL 10: Energy presents the world premiere of Sound Seam, an atmospheric film installation by artist Aura Satz in collaboration with musician Aleks Kolkowski.

The installation explores sound inscription, encryption, decoding and the material quality of memory. It draws on the German poet Rilke's 1919 text Primal Sound in which he proposes that the groove-like line of a skull (the coronal suture) could be played with a gramophone needle. The mesmeric film uses microscopic close-ups of gramophone grooves, wax and acetate shavings, phonograph cylinder recording and erasing technology, as well as footage of the anatomy of the ear, where inner ear hair cells have been animated to look like a sound groove, and a gold-plated cochlea spirals like a shellac disc. The musical soundtrack is derived from the analysis of sounds made by playing a gramophone needle across a skull and from otoacoustic sounds emitted by the ear. Every one of the hundred-odd recordings used has been individually cut onto a wax cylinder or disc record, some even over-written so as to create unexpected surface noises, scratches, glitches, loops and echoes. You are invited to listen to a magnificent array of original phonograph, gramophone horns and ear trumpets and piece together the various strands of this intriguing 'forensic love story' voice-over which draws on Rilke's text.

Guided Exhibition Tour of Great North Museum: Hancock and Hatton Gallery, Saturday 6 March, 2.30-3.30pm. Tour starts with Sound Seam.

Interview on the opening night at the AV fetival.

Exhibition produced by AV Festival 10 in partnership with Great North Museum: Hancock. Funded by The Wellcome Trust and produced during an Artist Residency at the Ear Institute, UCL, London. Sound design produced with support from the AHRC.

Screenings

1-6 March 2011

Screened as part of a selection of artist's films curated by the Wellcome Collection

21-23 June 2012

Pop-up Cinema at Christie’s South Kensington

with screenings of films by Aura Satz. Part of Supersonix Symposium, Exhibition Road, London

Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd: 11am to 6pm; and Saturday 23rd 11am to 1pm

85 Old Brompton Rd, London SW7 3LD

3-7 October 2013

Screened at the 51st New York Film Festival

Our popular yearly touchstone for experimental film returns with 45 programs in glorious Super-8, 16mm and 35mm film and HD formats. Many familiar faces have returned and this year's slate feature 45 new artists as well as several mini-retrospectives of artists including, Aura Satz, Lois Patiño, Sandro Aguilar, and Jean-Paul Kelly. Views will also offer special tributes to the late Stom Sogo and Anne Robertson, whose work is a testimony to the power of a cinema that is fearless, confidential and inextinguishable. Curated by Mark McElhatten.

1st November 2013

Screened with a live voiceover as part of ‘Unconscious Archives’: Malcolm Le Grice, Aura Satz, Sally Golding, Gideon Vein, Guy Edmonds, Cafe OTO

13 May 2015

'Soundfigures: Films by Aura Satz'

18 Feb 2016

'Between the Bullet and the Hole' (Plus Other Shorts) + Q&A at Whitechapel Gallery, London

24 March 2016

'In and Out of Synch', an evening of films and sound with Aura Satz presented by Liquid Architecture and Gertrude Contemporary

7th March 2017

'Between the Bullet and the Hole' (Plus Other Shorts) at HOME Manchester