Face to face: Knud Viktor and his sound images

The cicadas knocked Knud Viktor off his chosen course. The insects were everywhere, and their noise was deafening. Knud Viktor (1924–2013) was a graduate from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where he studied painting. In 1961 he moved into an old limestone house at the foot of the mountain of Luberon in Provence, intending to paint there. However, his encounter with the local fauna and the sounds of the landscape prompted Viktor to use microphones and tape recorders rather than brushes and pens to capture his impressions. He became a ‘sound painter’, as he called it.

Engaging in inquisitive, close studies of his surroundings with fully immersed attention, Knud Viktor recorded the sounds of cicadas singing, water babbling, owl chicks in their nest, rabbits talking in their sleep, rockslides, worms gnawing in apples, a peasant crying out to his horse and wine bubbling in its barrels – hundreds of sounds portraying fragments of life on the mountain.

Viktor edited and orchestrated his recordings to compose ‘sound images’ – images sonores. He insisted that he did not make music, but works that were an extension of painting and sculpture. Visual art created out of sound.

Viktor’s sound images are simultaneously abstract works of art and very concrete depictions of animals and lived life. In his photographs, spiders and praying mantises look us straight in the eyes. In the sound images we get to borrow his ears, sharing in his fascination with his surroundings and the species that co-exist there with him. Through his microphones and tape recorders, cameras and lenses we gain access to unique details of the lives of the animals and the landscape. We imagine what a rabbit might dream of as it murmurs in its sleep, or what it must be like to be a tiny owl chick feeling the rush of wind as its mother lands on top of the nest. We connect with the animals – as if in a conversation. Face to face.

Overall, Knud Viktor’s body of work reflects a desire to interact with other living beings on shared terms. In doing so, his works can unsettle the hierarchies we habitually impose on the world. Viktor’s work revealed to him an overarching theme: humanity’s tremendous impact on its surroundings. Viktor heard insects and animal species disappear – a deafening silence in the wake of their departure. Today, where species are disappearing at alarming speed across the entire globe, Viktor’s works are more relevant than ever.