PHANTOM ISLANDS – A SONIC ATLAS

During centuries of ocean exploration, numerous islands were sighted, charted, described and even explored – including some whose existence has never been verified. Poised between cartographical fact and maritime fiction, phantom islands haunted seafarers’ maps for hundreds of years, inspiring legends, fantasies, and counterfactual histories. The multimedia project Phantom Islands – A Sonic Atlas interprets and presents these imaginations in the form of an interactive map which charts the music and environmental sounds of phantom islands from around the globe.

Phantom Islands are artefacts of the age of maritime discovery and colonial expansion. Visitors of Phantom Islands – A Sonic Atlas are invited to explore a map of the world’s oceans in which a number of historical phantom islands can be found. Along with the names, dates and circumstances of these islands’ discoveries, the atlas can be explored acoustically; emanating from each island and its surroundings are sounds of apparently musical, biophonic and geophonic origin. By moving around within the map, the visitor also changes the audible soundscape and can thus navigate a global archipelago of plausible, yet fictional ethnomusicological connections and unreal field recordings.

Andrew Pekler (b. 1973, Samarkand) works with techniques of digital sampling and analog synthesis to re–contextualize found sounds and archival musical materials. His latest work, Tristes Tropiques is an album of synthetic exotica, pseudo-ethnographic music and unreal field recordings. In recent years, Pekler has also produced a number of video and installation works. In addition to his studio productions, Andrew Pekler has composed music for theater, dance, and film and played concerts in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia.