|
"One day, while playing didgeridoo inside an empty metal filing cabinet, I discovered something extraordinary. Everything around me vibrated. I wasn't just producing sound anymore—I was inside it.
That experience planted a question that stayed with me for years: What if the instrument became a space?" |
|
Inside the instrument
Rather than creating a larger didgeridoo, the idea was to reverse the relationship between musician and instrument. Instead of holding the instrument, the musician would enter it. Sound would no longer travel around the body, but through it, transforming listening into a physical experience. The musician would no longer play the instrument. The instrument would play the musician. |
|
|
Why "Uroboros"?
The ancient image of the serpent biting its own tail has long symbolised the endless cycles of life, death and renewal. For Igor, it also became an image of sound itself. Breath becomes vibration. Vibration becomes listening. Listening becomes breath again. The circle closes, only to begin again. |
|
|
The first full-scale Uroboros was built between 1988 and 1990 while Igor was studying at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. It was later exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and presented in concerts and sound installations in the Netherlands and France.
Below a video presenting the prototype, finishing with the final show with Uroboros, at the Roxy Theatre in Amsterdam. |
The Experience
"I still remember playing Uroboros while it was suspended from the ceiling of the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Two other musicians were inside the instrument with me. Surrounded by vibration, it felt as though we were all playing inside my own ear.
Another time I brought Uroboros to a large party and invited people to come inside. Four people lay around in the instrument while I played in the centre. The sound arose above and around us, surrounding us all. It remains one of the most extraordinary listening experiences I've ever shared." |
Continuing explorations
Although the first Uroboros was completed more than thirty years ago, the dream of inhabitable sound has never stopped evolving.
An Uroboros in thin layered wood that really vibrates the surface, or made out of one whole tree in Borneo, out of Bamboo rings, or a Horn in see-through epoxy, lit from inside... Some instruments are built in wood. Others continue to grow in the imagination until the right moment arrives. Perhaps every instrument is a room waiting to be entered. |
Inhabitable Uroboros |
Shared Resonance |
