Opus Mors

Description

Opus Mors is four listening spaces for one of the existential and natural aspects of being alive, which is death. The project portrays four sound environments that the human body commonly will be surrounded by or exposed to in the immediate post mortem: a morgue, an autopsy, a cremation and the decomposition – events that no one will ever get to sense on their own bodies because of the very fact of death. Opus Mors is an immersive, intimate and powerfully detailed sonic meditation into these four significant death spaces.

OPUS MORS consists of four unique works, each on its own vinyl LP, composed from sound recordings from the following four significant environments:

OPUS MORTURARIUM
Two ambient recordings made inside two morgues listens within the slow and deep tones from the facilities that keep the corpses cold.

OPUS AUTOPSIA
Detailed and precise near-field sound recordings of a full autopsy starting with opening the corpse, following the removal and slicing and cutting open all the organs and brain, to finally returning all the organs, closing and washing the corpse. This work comes with a detailed ‘track list’ that provides insight into the timbre of the unique human organs.

OPUS CREMATIO
Coffin being rolled into the oven, the oven’s different burning stages, the removal and relocation of the ashes to the ash cooler and then to the bone crusher. Finally, the ashes being poured into the urn. Vibration sensors placed on the surfaces of the oven reveals the sound environment of the oven as if heard from the inside.

OPUS PUTESCO
Sound recordings made at a forensic study facility where donated corpses are placed in an enclosed nature area to decompose while being studied. This work was made from ear-field sound recordings of decomposing corpses recorded with measurement microphones placed only 1 cm above- as well as with vibration sensors placed inside the corpses.