Melia Roger
Melia’s Bio is this.
Mélia Roger is a sound designer for film and art installation. She has a classical music background and owns a Master Degree in sound engineering (ENS Louis-Lumière, Paris, France). She spent her last year of Master in the Transdisciplinary Studies Program at ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland), where she developed an artistic approach of sound, working with voice and field recordings. She is now living between Paris and Zurich, working for post-production film and her own artistic works.
Her work explores the sonic poetics of the landscape, through field recordings and active listening performances. Exploring human non-humans relations, she tries to inspire ecological change with environmental and empathic listening. She believes in the importance of participatory projects in order to share knowledge and personal experiences through sound.
Initial Thoughts:
I’m interested to see her speak about the sonic poetics of the landscape, I think it relates to my current recordings from Stave Hill. How can we look into environments and use sounds as a way of knowing the relationships between humans and nonhumans?
Waves of air and sand:
Waves of Sands is a two-screen video installation, 8 minutes long on a loop. The first video begins with Melia throwing her hydrophone microphones into the ocean. She then sits down and listens to the ocean and waves crashing amongst the microphones. She sits there listening for 8 minutes before packing up and leaving. I found the simplicity to be really striking, and very meditative as well. It reminded me of Jez Riley French’s work and his ideas around the microtonal sounds as interest.
The Second video was the other half of this, where Melia sits amongst the olive trees with a stereo pair of Clippy omnidirectional microphones hanged over a tree. She sits and listens in a similar context to the first video. i found the changing landscape and nature sounds to be of interest to me. It’s generative, it creates by itself, the beauty in randomness and the ability to sit and listen. Awaiting for something to potentially happen?
I really enjoyed these pieces but more from the ideas presented. I think the work although simple does have some depth.
Intimacy of lichens
This project took Melia to the Amazon rainforest, she created this tool which was two microphones attached to her hands as a tool for empathetic listening. Engaging through touch and performance as a way of understanding and deep listening. This project was done in Brazil through a residency. This project created a short film in partnership with Felix Blume and eventually into an installation that allowed participants to do their own empathetic listening with the tools she created, furthermore they were able to take the recorded performance home. In hopes, it would create an impact on the listener. I found this idea of empathetic listening something I hadn’t considered before. How can we listen with care and empathy to the nonhuman landscape around us? When does it become empathetic, to give our time and dedication? To attempt to understand?
Post-Lecture Reflection:
Melia begins by saying she will take us through her projects and that this will give us a beneficial experience in knowing her practice. She starts with Ghosts me (2018). It was about digital communication, being left on seen, or read, realizing that people have been connected, and spying on others and yourself. The application is always reminding you about what is going on. She decided to use this frustration as inspiration, ghosting is part of the subject matter within her work. This was her first attempt at an art installation, she displayed it in Belgium. The phone was on a desk, and the phone would ring and someone could answer. She created a persona of someone who would speak and explain why they didn’t want to speak, and you could leave a message back. She had around 80 messages of people leaving messages, about not being answered.
She kept the mic of the old telephone and she wants to take away from the aesthetic of the instant messages that everyone has. Vintage touch towards her installation. She showed us some of the messages left on her installation.
This piece lead her to her final piece for her MA, how do you take this idea and take it further, relating it to social, a specific event, and an enlarged formatted idea.
The voice is voices (2019)
Her piece focuses on voice, she was trying to combine this uncanny feeling you get with artificial voices. And to combine it closely with her identity. This was around the time when ai cloned voices simulating real people were in fashion. She did market research where she tried different tools and compared them. She worked with Nicolas Obin who is based in Paris and created a text-to-voice program. She recorded hours and hours of her own voice to feed the algorithm. One audio file per sentence and attached to the text file. The installation was a space with two voices, one human and one synthesized. The installation plays with the ideas between real and fake, the new wandering space, where identity is questioned.
Caring for the hum (2021)
4 channel setup, she wanted to create a link between the city soundscape of the location and some comments that she found online, she was interested in ventilation sounds. She had to find a link that is scientifically very heavy, air conditioners represent 10% of the global electricity consumption. But at the same time, lots of people find them relaxing to listen to. The juxtaposition between the climate issues but also the relaxation between the two interested her. She attempted to find a link between the two. She gathered different sounds from Zurich, and then she created a sound walk around the exhibition space, to listen to them with a lot of care and empathy. To listen and understand that they are present in the soundscape. The ventilation is always around, when you start to listen and pay attention they become so present.
Humeurs (2021)
She went back to record in four different locations where she had strong memories, following Limit and Zurich to Dietikon.
The piece explores intimacy with water, she used reverb heavily to create a dreamlike state towards herself and what the water sounds brought her. The piece is a mix of different recordings of the river and memories of the river. She made homemade hydrophones. This was more personal for her, to link the soundscape off this path. What were the sounds and places bringing to her? Recording and the act of writing were important to her.
Waves of air and sand –
Attentive listening was the main idea for her, she felt it was important to show the listener the film. It helps with focusing attention, to give attentive listening. To show the waves moving the microphones as well really gives another layer for her.
Birds and wires (2021)
She worked with her partner, recording frogs in the pond. She attached microphones to the fence and left it for twelve hours with two Omni mics. The theme was Sonic intimacies.
Drop rig exempt from November (2022)
Fox and common cranes interaction at Lac Du Der, She found fascination in understanding and learning the sounds over time from listening and recording. She called it to dialogue with the environment but she considers it interaction.
Bugs eating horse dung (2020)
She’s interested in the microtonal sounds of nature, recorded with contact mics. Timothy Norton and the ideas of intimacy without proximity. Marcus Maeder also is doing a Ph.D. in the sound reflections of soil and the intimacy within that.
Sand Fleas in jellyfish (2022)
is also very similar, two aquarian H2A microphones inside of a jellyfish being eaten by sand fleas.
The intimacy of lichens (2021)
She wanted to understand about who is playing and how we put the sonic attention between our ears and other beings. She tried through touch to give access to very tiny sounds with microphones she put on her hands. Using the body as the performer as the guiding instrument, with care and respect.
She doesn’t want to bring awareness but just inspire listening to most who don’t have attentive listening.
Listen with headphones she says.
Short film developed during the residency RESILIÊNCIA: artists in residence
at SILO, Serrinha do Alambari, SP BRAZIL Using a sonic device for empathic listening through touch
I found her overall lecture interesting because it really does come back to my current work. The last few projects with the ideas of microtonal sounds and intimacy without proximity really click within my current portfolio ideas. I need to develop it more but I think her ideas around how to respect other sounds and nonhuman worlds and bringing attention, through projects that guide attentive listening to be curious and impressive.