Fermynwoods Podcast 32 – Sapphire Goss

The final episode of the Love + Light season of the Fermynwoods Contemporary Art Podcast is a new audio work by regular Fermynwoods collaborator, artist Sapphire Goss.

Entitled Light Sensitive Materials, the luminescence we are so accustomed to seeing in her video work, is transubstantiated into audible vibrations, offering a rare insight into how light, dark, and everything-in-between might sound. The name comes from an old chemical company in the former USSR/Ukraine – SVEMA – an abbreviation which translates to light-sensitive materials in Russian.

The first 8mm Sapphire shot was an expired film from the SVEMA factory in what is now Ukraine (Shostka Reel, 2022).

This audio work is created with the sonification of film reels – in essence, taking their luminance and creating audio from them. Within this sensitive process, using software she has dubbed, the Celluloid Synthesiser, Sapphire could adjust parameters like tone and pitch to compose the desired effects and sounds.

One of the most fascinating things about this audio is that many of the sounds come from holes punched at the end of film reels, the black at the edge of frames, and scratches and dust. These are then mixed with a selection of field recordings on tape and audio samples from the USC optical sound effects library. The result is a haunting and complex body of sounds which explore every aspect of light and dark, the extractive origins and realities of film processing, death and decay, and so much more.

"Listening back is very mysterious, a very oblique look at a period where I was unhinged, off-kilter and probably in a lot of pain. My mind has blocked that out for now like so many decayed reels. Fog, disintegration, decay: erasure is a protection sometimes as well as a loss. Material, personal, global. This feels like something I have unearthed rather than made. The last reveries of dying worlds."

Sapphire Goss

https://fermynwoods.org/fermynwoods-podcast-32-sapphire-goss/