📷 Patricia Sevilla CiordiaSound Installation
Hearing Silence
Material:
multichannel installation with 8 speakers, amplifiers, cables and sound. Variable dimension.
Hearing Silence is a generative sound installation that engages the possibilities of listening through the sonification of AIDS-related death statistics. Developed as part of a broader artistic research project on sound and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the work articulates the tension between presence and absence, sound and silence. The installation challenges audiences to witness AIDS-mortality data by ear, displaying sonic impulses at the limit of human hearing.
For the exhibition, the artist is presenting “Hearing Silence”, a cluster of speakers draws from a previous one-channel sound work entitled “UNAIDS_FactSheet_en.pdf”. This the work is presented as a multichannel set up. Each speaker generates impulses of a 20kHz sine wave, displaying the pulse rate of worldwide deaths from AIDS-related causes in different years. The piece sonifies the most recent statistics from UNAIDS, the world's most extensive data collection on the HIV epidemic.
In Hearing Silence, each death is rendered as a near-inaudible acoustic event—a burst of a 20kHz sine wave—calculated to occur at intervals matching the temporal frequency of these losses. Each monitor is archiving a different year, for exaxmple the most recent data set is using the 2024 figure of 630,000 deaths per year, the average interval between pulses in a year is about 50.1 seconds. The result is a soundscape of silence and near-silence that quietly underscores the scale of global suffering. The 20kHz frequency lies at the threshold of human hearing—technically audible but often imperceptible to most listeners.
Data sonification reveals that the average interval between pulses has been increasing over time, reflecting a changing but still persistent pattern of loss. Despite its minimal aesthetic and near-invisibility, Hearing Silence is charged with urgency and historical memory. It references the sonic activism of groups like ACT UP, which used auditory interventions and number—such as air horns or chants and numbers in banner—to give sound to lives lost and demand attention from the state and medical institutions. In contrast, this work retreats into silence, asking us to listen to what is not immediately there. The sine wave becomes a spectral marker, a sonic trace of those not always counted or remembered.
The work embodies what could be termed a “volume of silence”—a space where sound exists beyond human perception, yet is measurable, real, and loaded with meaning. This inaudible sound field reflects the structural silences surrounding HIV/AIDS, particularly in regions still criminalizing queerness or lacking access to antiretroviral medication.
Credits:
Tech/Max Patch: Eagle Wu
Production: Patrick Rüegg
Comissioned for nGbK with the financial support of la Caixa Foundation and PICE, in the context of the doctoral studies at the Complutense University of Madrid
