Jan Trojan: The PEARL
"I heard her breathing, she whispered to me in the noise of the crowds, steps, motors, that mixture of mind-numbing half-sounds which Luigi Russolo lusted for. Maybe it was a lament, plea, greeting. I don't know. But she is breathing, somewhere deep underground."
Perla is my personal world, one which I walk through holding a microphone and wearing headphones on my ears. I record sounds underground - the metro, escalators, footsteps in the vestibules, station announcements - and then modify and reshape them into a new world, "Perla - the soul of Prague", exactly as I see and hear it. Then I compare this soul to the normal everyday sounds we are inundated by - cars, streetcars, tourists, commercial music... In this way, I create two types of worlds which I pass between and place against each other. Perla is about the voice of Prague which I want to show to the outside world. About its soul. This piece was my way of doing this.
