• 2017

3 air horns
3 audio compressors
3 actionists

Belvís Park
With Xiana Arias and Lois Carlín

The Bucorde action is composed of 3 air horns that are located in three different points of the city. At intervals of 15 minutes and for a duration of 10 seconds the 3 air horns emit their sound creating a chord that resonates throughout the city as if it were a drone (sustained and continuous sound).

The air horns have a variable longitude that facilitates the modulation of the sound in its pitch, which makes it possible to produce more high or more low sounds. In this way, each chord that is emitted every 15 minutes is different. As a whole, it is a matter of creating a sound composition dilated in time that lasts all day.

The idea of ​​this dilation of time was already executed by John Cage in the piece Organ² / ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible), in which the organ of the church of St. Burchardi in the German city of Halberstadt, plays a score with a duration of 639 years. Approximately once a year the organ changes its chord. The curiosity to hear these three notes, and the right moment in which the chord changes, causes a pilgrimage that each year has about 10,000 people.

Órgano da peza Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible)
Fuelles da peza Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible)
Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible) na igrexa de San Burchardi

The power of sound used as a call (and also its use as an organizer of time) is something that the city of Santiago de Compostela has internalized given its large number of churches and bells. The sound of the Bucorde plays with this idea of ​​call and follows the temporal structure of the bells: a sound that is repeated and that in this case creates an expectation about how the chord will change. Not to mention the connotations about the control of the community through sound.