Strata — Ömer Kurtuluş

Strata is an album in which I research the sonic archaeologies. Both pieces so far excavate Istanbul, and both are dedicated to Halil İbrahim Tutar.

The two are the same excavation carried out by different means. Strata cuts the trench by hand — a 36-channel periphonic field in which every layer sounds from the first second, separated only by height. STRATA II hands the excavation to neural models trained on nothing of the material they erode, and listens to what they cannot carry.

Works in this album

01 Electroacoustic STRATA A single cut through the ground of Istanbul: every historical layer sounds from the first second, separated only by height. Tuned to a pitch set measured from the call to prayer in Hagia Sophia — which is never heard.

02 AI STRATA II Twelve channels of Istanbul field recordings eroded in real time by three neural models, none of which has ever heard the city. What survives each pass is not the city but what a machine could still carry of it.

All works →