About Me
Statement about my workAn important part of my work has always been related to daily sounds that suround's us, as well as with the relationship of these sounds with context. In my sound installation Off Side (Mexico City, 1999), I have a slide projector showing 11 images of found objects that I took in India and Thailand during 1998. At the same time, there is a sound system playing soundscapes recorded in these two countries. A non-linear counterpoint between image and sound is established.
Several of my compositions and of my sound artwork deals with the contemplation of different sound actions which are "musicalized" through electroacustic means. In this way, the sound of the screeching wheels of a car can become the central element of an artwork that could play eternally (Rocha, Orozco, 1994), or, the sound of a small water stream unfolded in time can become an electroacustic composition (Rocha, 1990). The precedent works explain the significance of my intention; I am trying to develop an attitude towards the contemplation of the world through sound.
One of the first concepts with which I started to work with was the idea of the unity related to the multiplicity. Of the simplicity converted into complexity. Unfolding a sound object by manipulating it with a computer is one of the ways to do this. The same thing can be said about objects. A deconstructed machinery, or anything broken down to pieces and converted into a sculpture. By changing the internal disposition of an object, we change its meaning and we create metaphor. This is a driving force in my music work and in my sound artwork. An example of this is In a fraction of a friction, an audio and video installation created starting from the ephemeral sound of a wooden match being lighted. This sound reproduced thousands of times becomes catastrophe, a natural destructive force, but also, it becomes ambiguous, it could be similar to natural phenomena like rain which is a positive and productive force.
Another very important line that helps to read my work is related to opposite forces and to their interplay. These forces could be antagonistic, contradictory, but also complementary. Their simultaneous display can create ambiguity; but then again, unity is always somehow regained. My doctoral thesis about quantum theory of sound (Rocha Iturbide, 1999) has only strengthened all these concepts. The duality of atomic particles, the simultaneous wave and particle condition of an electron is contradictory, ambiguous and irrational, but at the same time, complex, coherent, and organic. In this sense, Ping Roll (1997) is my work more thoroughly related with the atomic theory of particles. Nevertheless, all these ideas are not only related to physical phenomena, but also to spiritual thinking. My work Impasse is related to Zen Buddhism and Urnoboros is related to the alchemical serpent that bites its tail. Alchemy and Budhism, as well as the Tao, and other spiritual philosophies, have clearly to do with the Quantum theory.
Different conditions of matter, its transformation into different states, theory of chaos, going from order to disorder, continuity to discontinuity, processes towards entropy, etc, are also concepts related to my work. But once again, the physical facts are only a way to unfold poetic meaning from sound and visual objects.
What is the connection between my sound work and my visual artwork? It is the process, the way of looking at these elements and of presenting them. A visual object could be opposite to a simultaneous sound object presented in the same installation, but it is their coexistence and interaction which will create ambiguity, complexity, and which will unfold poetic meaning.
Some of my recent sound installations are: Dentro Fuera Dentro (2006), I play the drums with frequency (2007), some of my recent compositions are: tetraktis, for string quartet and electronics, performed by the Arditti Quartet on March 2007.
