Sonic Scapes - Chris Tille - Artist in Focus - March 2018

Our urban environment is the topic of Chris Tille's new series of photographs 'Sonic Scapes', revealing the invisible energy of our cities through logging their hidden forces. He uses a relative spectrum analyser, a hand-held device that records frequency ranges between 1 Hz and 20 GHz of which only a small array can be perceived by the human ear.  Tille transforms these acoustic accounts into visual perceptions to interpret the surrounding environment.

It is not the familiar metaphors of skyscrapers, boulevards and grid patterns he has bestowed us with, the results are pulsating symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns seemingly bouncing on water.  He utilises the light in the visible spectrum and transforms the sound waves into bright and dark pixels. Loud noises with low frequencies produce whitish pixelised manifestations which can be observed in the lower area of the photograph. In contrast, soft disturbances with high frequencies emerge as grey appearances in the upper region of the image. Tille’s collected data conveys the invisible energy of several metropolises in the language of a graphic score. His charts embody rhythm counts, melodic structures and peaks - dazzling and yet elusive.