Bosphorus [Single Screen, 8 Channel Audio Version (Stereo Reduction)]

Abstract

Bosphorus is a film and composition by Joshua Horsley and Magda Stawarska-Beaven. It reflects upon the complexity and diversity of Istanbul and its natural and political borders. As these borders, shift, change, open and close the geography remains. The desires and needs to cross these borders evolve with political change. In a climate where borders, migration, and refuge are common the sea has become a symbolic place of crossing, desperation, and hope.

Two single shot, real-time films are displayed on a single screen, depicting the journeys from East to West and vice versa with 8-channel audio communicating the Bosphorus as a space and place. The composition is comprised of binaural and hydrophone recordings of the strait, combining concrete and processed sounds to communicate both objective and subjective accounts of the crossings.

Bosphorus is a collaboration between a fine artist and musician working with field recordings and abstraction processes respectively. This meeting of practitioners is discussed within the context of the corresponding audio materials, emphasising the intersection between the embodied self, represented by the point of audition, and the abstraction of that audio toward music. The field recordings represent a conscious exploration of geographical, cultural and continental borders and as such, they communicate the peripheral border of self as the collection point for the audio data. The subjective experience that is represented through sound and the subsequent musical abstraction, are discussed within the context of creating a shared experience of place and crossing.