La hora libre is a sound installation that proposes a listening to the material and symbolic resonances of the Ex Miguelete Prison. A system takes each name from the list of people detained in the prison and turns it into a chord, a gesture or a piano phrase. These piano recordings generated by the system resonate in the bars of each cell, using a series of electromechanical transducers attached to them.

The audience can listen to the resulting sounds by pressing custom modified stethoscopes (designed by the artist) on the iron bars of each window cell. The sounds vibrating on the metal can´t be heard just with your ears, but only using these stethoscopes, creating an intimate listening situation between listeners and the vibrations and resonances on the prison building of prisoners’ names.

CREDITS
Technical Assistance: Juan Cruz Amusategui
Concept, composition, stethoscopes & system design: Nicolás Varchausky
Commissioned & produced by EXIT 23 (Roberto Maqueda & Juanita Fernández)

Premiere
The piece premiered at Festival EXIT 23 at EAC Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo (Ex Miguelete Prison), Montevideo, Uruguay. March of 2023.

Supported by the R&D Program “Temporal Systems and Spatial Synthesis in Sound Art” (Escuela Universitaria de Artes | Universidad Nacional de Quilmes).