The Loudest Points is comprised of enlarged prints of Michal Naaman’s works done in 1977, entitled “The Bird’s Gospel” (“the fish believes in the bird”). In this collage a photograph of a bird’s head is paired with a photograph of a fish body, creating a new, hybrid image- a kind of ‘siren’. The original work is made with photographs taken from the Natural Life Encyclopedia and decadry lettering that is pasted on a plywood board painted with black acrylic (the work belongs to the Tel Aviv Museum)
The motivation for this joint effort stemmed from the artists’ disappointment that the ’siren’ is silent, that it would be possible to equip her with a voice, and so we have helped engineer a soundtrack by Yossi MarHaim. The soundtrack is broadcast by a strip of magnetic tape that travels along the enlarged body of the fish-bird image. And so the sound, as manifested in a physical object (the tape strip), passes through two loudspeakers located at both ends of the installation thus creating a recurring loop that is then heard through the two loudspeakers; the vocal repetition gives the siren her voice. The soundtrack is made up of recordings of voices of the groans and efforts expelled by first rate female tennis players (in this case, Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova) during their tennis match. Their voices were digitally processed in various ways, but the work is analog in nature. It is a product of the actual friction of the tape strip and the magnetic playing pin, a technique that is no longer used as tape recorders are becoming obsolete.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
