Itziar Barrio in collaboration with Seth Cluett

Particle Matter is an audiovisual work by visual artist Itziar Barrio, created in collaboration with composer and sound designer Seth Cluett. A materialist investigation into matter and multitudinous manifestations of the micro, Particle Matter approaches its subject in a rhizomatic fashion, utilizing the language of the montage -the dialectical technique of producing a new composite whole from fragments of moving images and sounds- to explore the forces catalyzing and created by the movements of the fragmented and microscopic; the pieces left over. 

Particulate matter is the sum of all solid and liquid particles suspended in air. This complex mixture includes both organic and inorganic particles, such as dust, pollen, soot, smoke, and liquid droplets. Many of them are by-products. A by-product is a secondary product derived from a production process, manufacturing process or chemical reaction; it is not the primary product or service being produced. In chemistry, “by-product" is used to refer to a product that is not desired but inevitably results from molecular fragments of the original materials and/or reagents that are not incorporated into the desired product, as a consequence of conservation of mass.
Many of the sound recordings included in Particle Matter were carried out at the historic anechoic chamber at Nokia Bell Labs (NJ), which absorbs over 99.995% of the incident acoustic energy above 200 Hz, and is considered one of the quietest places on Earth. Particle Matter is a work approached from the horizontality of all the agents involved: images of geological phenomena, steam, gas and particles; audio recordings of protests, dusts of different origins converge creating this video. 

Particle Matter is best experienced with the use of headphones. 

This work was produced by AECID and supported in part by Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology program