Seven cities in seven minutes

Not so artist Alda Terracciano. Her eight-year project Streets of…7 cities in 7 minutes provides a 420-second multi-sensory global walk around the world. The installation using sight, sound, touch, taste and smell to evoke her travels, and will now be presented as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad live and online.

The installation consists of seven environments where each city is represented through a seven-minute video audio edit on loop, connected to the other cities through a spiral trail.

Terracciano examined each city for what she terms their individual ‘memes’  – the ‘units of cultural ideas, symbols or practices transmitted from one person to another through speech, gestures, rituals and other cultural phenomena.’

The memes she perceives in Naples and London were then compared to those in other cities, and organised in relation to them through the sound and visuals of the video pieces.

Terracciano says, ‘the city is a forest of symbols enveloping us with its sounds. The light is icy, tenuous, full of vibrations, changeable and secretive. Only a transient moment of tranquility falls upon us at the breaking of dawn.’

A less impenetrable idea of the piece is shown in the preview video below:

You can read extracts from her travel notebook here http://streetsof.org/

Streets of…7 cities in 7 minutes will be screened with a Q&A with the artist on 21 July at Rich Mix, 35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 before moving to The Angel, 354 Coldharbour Lane, Lambeth, London SW9 from 16 – 19 August