A phonographic approach to the documentation of Seville's historical Holy Week processions.

This paper, including audio excerpts, will address the theme of sound and history in describing the development and production of a collaborative work of electroacoustic art relating to documentary and archive within an experimental, cross-disciplinary context. The work explores some of the specific roles of sound within the processions of Seville’s Holy Week celebrations in 2007.

In March 2007, James Wyness and Duncan Whitley visited Seville to carry out multi-channel field recordings of key elements of the Holy Week Processions. The recordings were then edited with a view to deconstructing the recorded sound in search of an underlying syntax.

As the Church projects itself physically (and sonically) into public spaces, attempts at historical authenticity manifested in the behaviour of the participants and their accompanying rituals contrast and merge with the streetscape of a 21st century Western democracy.