Summary

"Surround Sounds" is a silent video installation in which animated onomatopoeia are projected onto four walls. Christian Marclay cut out the words from comic strips and animated them so that they evoke their acoustic properties. "Whizz" runs across walls, "beep" flashes insistently, "thumps" falls systematically to the floor. Although silent, the work immerses us in a mental musical composition, a symphony of illustrated noises. Spectators hear with their eyes and develop a personal sound narrative linked memory and their everyday experience of the sounds that surround them.