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Canal. There’s a nice stretch nearby where we liv
e that’s like a meadow. The canal recedes very quickly from the concrete into grass and field, and there are plenty of birds nesting there. So I walked there and recorded those sounds.” Awarded the Covid-19 Crisis Response grant, Steenson began to weigh his options. “The idea of documenting work and exhibiting on a webpage didn’t appeal to me really. After talking to my partner Laura Fitzgerald, who is also an artist, I knew that I had to exhibit the recordings in a public space, located somewhere others could experience them.” “The constraint, of course, was cost. How could I produce the sound in a viable setting for the money I had? That was when I thought about speakers used for public address, in areas like bus stations or at Luas stops. Luckily, I had a friend who works in Irish Rail and I sent him a message. He passed it along to the communications department and she spoke to her bosses, and it moved quite quickly from there.” “I also contacted Bird Watch Ireland, a charity dedicated to bird biodiversity and wildlife, and after consulting with them I decided to stage the exhibition in November. If I had broadcast the piece during the spring, with loudspeakers situated outdoors, it could have been very disruptive. It may sound beautiful to us, but it’s not the same for birds. If you broadcast birdsong through every railway PA system across the country in the middle of spring, you could cause some kind of ecological catastrophe! That wasn’t my intention.” Nonetheless, Steenson decided to present his Although he appreciates their usefulness, Steenson is cautious about online exhibitions. His concerns are thoughtful and reflect the hesitation felt by many in the art world. They are also substantiated by an extensive knowledge of sound artworks. “What I like about a lot of sound work is that work virtually as so few people were allowed to travel to work. “A friend put me in touch with Ian Maleney, an author and journalist who runs the alternative publishing site Fallow Media. He was the perfect person to collaborate with – he understood the project right away, and he developed the website.” on-chorus.com fallowmedia.com it intervenes in a specific context; it interacts with the other objects in the environment. One of my favourite pieces is Max Neuhaus’ Times Square. It’s a sound that emanates from underneath the subway grating, on permanent display in Times Square in New York. It’s a beautiful piece because it transforms the aural palette of the location – it takes a cacophony of noise and random sound and orchestrates it, creating something unified and coherent from all these fragments. The installation holds all the sonic elements of the space together. It becomes meditative.” Steenson speaks compellingly about the specificity of art. He worries “that sound has become a little undervalued” in the digital age: “whatever your streaming platform, whether its Spotify or YouTube, you can access anything, at any time.” His sensitivity to this issue motivated his decision to restrict the accessibility of his piece online. “To go back to the time-based nature of the work, the other thing that I think is very important is the listening aspect. If you can only listen to something at a particular point in time, and other people are listening at the exact same moment, some form of connection happens. Even though you may be separated, physically or geographically, the object of your concentration is the same; you’re sharing an experience. I wanted to explore this idea because we are living through a time when we do feel separate from one another, and we can’t interact or see each other.” “Besides highlighting the absence of noise pollution and the sound of nature, I wanted to draw attention to this. I think the idea that everyone listening is connected, whether standing on station platforms around the county or self-isolating at home, is beautiful.” 53