[un]forgotten spaces
lisa chung

we dream, we remember, we forget.

[un]forgotten spaces is a sound installation based on field recordings from Gary, Indiana. One place in particular that much of the material is derived from is an abandoned steel mill that we visited as a class. This place was the starting point for my brainstorming as I considered which elements (from such an incredible and overwhelming field trip) I thought best for this piece to encompass.

I began to wonder not only what happened in that space before I arrived, but how its history, if documented, would be mediated by another. Who holds these memories? I also began to wonder what it meant for us to inhabit (or, re-inhabit) in this space, and if, by being there, we were somehow adding to the memories contained within the walls. This is reflected in the way that the piece grows as more people interact with the sensors placed on the floor. I wanted to capture the feeling of a time-lapse camera on a busy street corner, how the location on the map never changes, but the look of a place, how we interact with it, and how we ascribe meaning to it is ever-shifting.

The sounds included offer various perspectives on this particular steel mill, and also on Gary, Indiana. There are the resonant sounds of the place itself, the hum of surrounding factories, the gentle lap of the nearby waters of Lake Michigan, and the clatter of freight trains. There are also sounds of my professor and fellow students in this space-- exploring, documenting, talking, singing, shuffling. Snippets of a television documentary presented by the Gary Historical & Cultural Society, as well as local radio sometimes fade in, as well as sounds that might have once filled the space-- echoes of machinery now unused, workers long gone. This material comes together in a sonic collage that paints a portrait of a place; it combines elements of what is real, yet results in something perhaps imagined, surreal... just like memory.