Ludwig Berger
A Year’s Hours
8760 min of static field recordings, compressed to 48 min.

The material of this work is based on a static recording: I installed a microphone under the roof of my father’s house in a small village in Alsace (France) for one year. Each day, I recorded one minute of sound on the hour at four different intervals: midnight, morning, noon and evening. I subsequently selected one recording per week for each of the intervals.

Released at Impulsive Habitat, 4 Tracks, 48 min.

These (untreated) recordings were then sewn together in four different tracks, one for each time of day, spanning the course of a year. This results in a cyclical movement consisting of four different time-lapse sequences that trace the entirety of a year in one place.

> Awarded with the GRAFE Kreativ Prize 2014
> Honorary mention at “Bonn Hören Sonotopia 2015”
> 4-Channel Installations at Goldsmiths London, RAME (Saillon, CH) and Seitz Gallery (Berlin, DE)
> “A definitely must have for all fans of field recordings” (kulturterrorismus)
> “A well thought project. We can perceive seasons, animals, sound of time and human sounds. A sound sequence that points out the fixation of sound, what it allows, to play with time and times.” (Déphasage Radio)
> “Could this be a model for a possible sound map: providing a representation of the place linked with a variety of locational sound recordings to create a sonic ‘overview’?” (Min Kim: “Image Sound Map”, Invisible Places 2017)