Five Sound Questions to Verónica Mota

Portrait by Kiril Bikov

Verónica Mota is a sound artist born in Mexico, now based in Berlin. As an artist she operates under the name Cubop. Follow this link to her MySpace page to listen to some examples of her work.  

Next to composing experimental music Verónica works as a sound designer, film editor and sound recordist for film. Listening to her work is like being transported to a dream world, it is like visiting a surrealistic place inside the artists mind where memories live and fantasies take shape. Visit Verónica’s blog to learn more about her and her work.

These are Verónica Mota’s inspiring answers to the Five Sound Questions:

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

There are two impressive sounds I keep from my childhood. The first one was the long moan of a pig dying while its blood came out of its neck. My grandfather (R.I.P) ran a business as a butcher so each time I spent the weekend over there I experienced the pig’s death through a high frequency sound which was pretty strong and traumatic.

 

The second one was in my home town Mexico City. At night I used to listen to a really surrealistic and powerful sound. At the begining I didn’t know what it was. I though it was my imagination. At some point my father mentioned that one of our neighbors, who was actually running a pretty well visited photo print shop, had a lion up on the roof of a five floor building! This animal lived in captivity so it cried for freedom at night producing an amazing noise hard to forget.

  

Both sounds touched my soul deeply as a child because of the cruelty to animals going on behind them, but also because of their power and authenticity.  

2. How do you listen to the world around you?

Most of the time I do experience the world around me through the sounds it produces more than its visual images. I do not trust the visual sense, I trust the listening one. I think that listening carefully to your surroundings gives you the chance, for instance, to be in a free orchestra concert played by birds in the morning or an experimental noise concert on the public transportation.

 

For me being silent and listening is one of the most sacred and poetical experiences humans could have because, in my opinion, only this way we can touch the Beauty and Magic in this world. 

3. Which place in the world do you favor for its sound?

Urban contexts and places where you are able to listen to millions of life forms such as insects, i.e. the jungle. 

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

I think that sound has a strong therapeutic impact on our subconsciousness. As a sound artist I have been researching dream territories and composing sound landscapes which work as psychological journeys. These sound collages evoke the human mind and its emotional textures such as fear, joy, sadness, peace, surrealism, order or chaos.

 

Many of my compositions try to take the listener to a dark place, the mind, where the subject is free to experience her/himself as a surrealistic poem. The journey is complex and sometimes even painful because the audience is confronted with their own dreams and fears which usually they suppress in daily life. To open a door to the human mind using the power of sound is a way to find who we really are and/or would love to be. It is all about our dreams and self realization. Sound can be a key to get there.

5. What sound would you like to wake up to?

Wind flowing leaves or sea wave sounds. 

Also read the answers of other artists in the Five Sound Questions section.