BACKGROUND _
This research entailed finding sonic attributes from a specific site, through the vehicle of its inhabitants’ sound memories. The idea was to collect data to produce a site-specific sound installation related to the site's history. It presents a theoretical construct of the relationships between human beings and space, and then extends these, exploring the possibility of interfering in this space and attempting to enhance these relationships. The ex-mining area of the Province of Limburg, in Belgium, was chosen as the object of investigation because it still has a very interesting characteristic: the mines are no longer active, but the people who worked there are still alive and live locally. In other words, there was a chance to get to know a no longer existent site through the narratives of the people who actively experienced it during a specific period of time. This exposition presents the results of the talks with the former miners in which they describe the mine environment in a very sensitive way.
_ SPACE AND PEOPLE
The investigation began by recognising the complex interaction between space, human beings, and heritage. However, it also found it necessary to identify an artistic approach, with which to deepen knowledge of more specific issues. The analysis concentrated on the artistic scope of the site through exploring the inhabitants’ memories of a specific period of time and the questions that preceded the first stage of research were:
_ Are the former miners’ capable of using memory to describe the attributes of the no longer existent mine site?
_ How do these attributes influence the perception of the no longer existent mine?
_ How these attributes be identified?
_ Is the contact with the former miners important to create an art work related to the site?
The above questioning constituted the research questions of the project and aimed to focus the work's main intention: to use the results of the research to guide an artwork that could connect people to their heritage and/or generate sensations that connected people to the space in which the artwork was placed.
The object of investigation was chosen during the first contact with the former miners population from the Province of Limburg, while developing a previous work. The fascination with the history of the old mining areas and industry [that have almost completely disappeared] was based on culturally relevant aspects of the site, and how they revealed an important part of the social history of the region.
After choosing the object of investigation the intention was to adopt theoretical concepts capable of guiding the research. The theoretical construct instigated reflections through certain subjective dimensions of space, since the aim of the work was to identify relationships between the site and its inhabitants. This inquiry was founded in the philosophical field and concentrated on the phenomenological approach developed by Malard in her thesis [Malard 1992]. The fieldwork was also based on a methodology presented by Malard [1992], which connects the process of collecting data to aspects related to the inhabitants’ perceptions. The analysis comprised the fieldwork methodology and practice, and the identification of the results.
The inquiry sought to assemble a theory of space in relation to human life in a way that provided possibilities for artistic expression. It was based on the belief that getting to know the inhabitants is the best path to understanding particularities of the site, and consequently being able to construct a consistent site-specific artwork.