Binaural Views of Switzerland

︎︎︎More photos below!

Listening to reality through the amplification of a microphone is like secretly entering the fabric of the world. It’s like drifting with your ears inside a dense matter, leaving your face out to breathe. It’s spying without malice. [...] It’s the clanging of cow bells woven with the cries of playful children, creating a sound substratum of the Alps; or that of a powerful mountain waterfall mingled into the roar of a military jet. In an unrestricted state of freedom in which things can flow, sounds move, influencing each other as if in an endless dance.
Alan Alpenfelt

Audio-visual installation
2019 ︎

︎Selected for Pro Helvetia Swiss Selection Edinburgh

Concept, journey, sound recording
Alan Alpenfelt

Kaiser Panorama
Franco Mondia & Antonio Lo Menzo.

Soundscape creations
Enrico Mangione

︎
Upcoming

No exhibitions scheduled atm.

︎
Past

Brixton House
London, UK
8-12.3.2022
Pro Helvetia Swiss Selection
brixtonhouse.co.uk

SonOhr
Grand Palais, Bern, 2022

Edinburgh Fringe,UK
Pro Helvetia Swiss Selection
Summers of 2020 & 2021
CANCELLED (Covid-19)

Lugano High School 1
Lugano, CH
2 - 14.2. 2021

SonOhr Festival
Bern, CH
26.2 - 7.3.2021
https://sonohr.ch/
CANCELLED (Covid-19)

FIT Festival internazionale del Teatro e della scena contemporanea
LAC Hall - Lugano, CH
5.9 - 11.10.2020
https://www.fitfestival.ch/

PHOTO IS:RAEL
Tel Aviv, Israel
11.2020
(”Selfies” video sequence)
http://www.photoisrael.org

Swiss Stereoscopic Society annual assembly
La Chaux-de-Fonds, CH
14 - 17.2020
CANCELLED (Covid-19)

4th International Conference on Stereo & Immersive Media
Lisbon, Portugal
18 - 20.6.2020
CANCELLED (Covid-19)

Accademia di Architettura
Università della Svizzera italiana
Mendrisio
14.11 - 5.12.2019

Binaural Views of Switzerland is an audio-visual observation of the changes caused by human activity in the Swiss Landscape since 1863, when the pioneering British photographer William England made his Grand Tour of Switzerland, creating stunning stereoscopic photographs of over 150 locations.

Artist Alan Alpenfelt, over a two month journey, re-discovered 30 of these locations, documenting the changes in their aspects and atmospheres, re-presenting them in his exhibition, using binaural sound recording and 3D photography.

His work highlights the stark contrasts between past and present by immersing the visitor in the sights and sounds of each environment, then and now.

The centre of the exhibition is a Kaiser Panorama, which features the stereoscopic photographs linked to headphones through which the visitor can choose between the contrasting binaural soundscapes of the present day or the imagined ones of the past.

Awareness of the effects of mass tourism, modern transport, climate change and industrial development pervades the exhibition, stimulating questions as to how resilience and conservation can somehow still be achieved.

Discover more here
︎ binauralviewsofswitzerland.com

All the locations Alan visited on his journey, are placed in Google Maps Street View. Will you find them all?
︎ Here is one...