Barron Sherer

Deering Estate visitors are invited to wander around the estate grounds in a contemporary expression of "Soundwalking," engaging in landscape walking with a focus on attentive listening while exploring surroundings. 

The artist in residence, Barron Sherer, has placed modules of layered ambient sounds recorded and processed at points around the Deering property. The audio works are spatiotemporal soundscapes comprised of field recordings, performances, and interactions with phenomena in specific locations and times.

Estate étude No. 2 is a suite of sound compositions comprising multi-tracked location recordings and mobile phone synth performances in the spots where Deering visitors experience them.

Since the founding of the Deering Estate in the early 20th Century, new sound sources have emerged at unprecedented levels. Sound fields can seem chaotic or incoherent in urban development zones when sounds therein are perceived consciously.

starling

goldfinch

hoopoe

Birds emit calls and sounds arranged into long and complex songs. The artist's synthetic approximation of calls in this site-specific composition points to decreasing biodiversity, evolving land use, and general anthropogenic noise.

Familiar sounds that are part of our everyday environment are expected, and the brain may predict and filter them out as routine.
Here, those sounds are aestheticized and given new context.

The artist performed mobile phone app synth improvisations and recorded them on-site with ambient sounds, responding to the existing soundscape and treating environmental sounds as a critical part of the composition's overall texture.

A moored dingy and Biscayne Bay's Geophonic rhythms, the artist mediates with a resonate bass pulse.

We approach the Deering Estate lawn as primarily a visual experience and manifestation. This composition emphasizes that the lawn's soundscape ecology has changed over time because of human activities that generate sound and how we should consider incorporating all senses in our awareness of place.

Ambient sounds like the hum of an air-conditioner or the noise from soda machines are considered background noise.  This composition encourages Attentional Focus.

Accompaniment for Ceiling Fans and Soda Machine

Editing and mixing can further refine the balance between the synthesizer improvisations and the ambient sounds. This process allowed the artist to shape the final sonic landscape and highlight workday cacophonies and tour groups.

The audio collage "Access Road w/ Workers and Flyovers" originated on digital video tape. Biotic, abiotic, and human-related sounds are layered with high-end hiss artifacts textures from decades-old and recycled tape. A snatch of a previous recording on the tape provides the final crescendo.

AUDIO EXTRACT from a multi-media piece
Deering Estate Artist in Residence Barron Sherer created an audio-visual work in 2021 commissioned for Subtropics Festival. The piece explored the projected films' experience, the apparatuses involved, and live sound creation. It was a site-specific work; all 16mm motion-picture photography was filmed at Deering Estate, also the site of the projector performance. Much of the sound was created by painting on the blank soundtrack area during the premiere screening while the film whirred through a projector.  

Pre-recorded elements:  Four channels of synth drone (digital) and drone on audio cassette passed through the projector's mic input.  The pre-recorded bits were improvised live during rehearsals projections in the artist’s studio and played back as wild sound during the presentation in loose synch with the image.

DEERING > Estate étude No. 2

10 ECHOES

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The Echoes

Grove Groove

The Birds (are sampled)

Worker w/ Solo Brush

Stone House Plaza

Deering Mooring

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