Bosphorus: a practice-based investigation into borders and collaboration

Abstract

This paper explores Bosphorus, a practice-based investigation into border as place. Bosphorus is a film and composition that reflects upon the complexity and diversity of Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait as both a literal and metaphorical border. Located at the meeting of East and West, the Bosphrous is representative of geographical, political, and cultural perspectives on 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. Bosphorus seeks to communicate the real-time experience of the strait as a place, giving the audience the opportunity to reflect upon the political and social aspects of the location.

Two single shot, real-time films are displayed, 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 field recordings and musical abstractions 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.