This is her bio:

Lena Ortega Atristain aka Leena Lee is a Mexican sound artist, researcher, designer, and teacher specializing in nature/culture relations with a focus on soundscape ecology, bioacoustics, and field recordings. Through practice-based research, she aims to cultivate the community’s ecological consciousness by involving listening practices, field observation, recording, and soundscape composition. Her main focus is the bird population/individuals of nearby surroundings and how they relate to and are part of their territory. She approaches these inquiries by incorporating other dimensions of care and relationship with non-human animals and the environment that open possibilities to think critically about the spaces we inhabit and how we are environmental beings. She has been a visiting artist and researcher in different countries, participated in national and international exhibitions, and has published articles in collective books of philosophy, design, and sound art magazines.  Member of the Arte+Ciencia research and production group of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and currently teaching at the Environment University in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. 

I think this lecture will help me with my dissertation and current prototype project. As soundscape ecology, bioacoustics and field recordings are the main interest. She also has the idea of how field recording and listening can help bring environment awareness and allow us to think critically within these spaces, something I’m also doing research into! I hope it’s as good as I think it will be.

BIRD ENCOUNTERS

This project is centred around the current environmental climate that we exist in. It discusses the need for nature with humans and how we should focus our attention back towards the relationships between humans and the non-human world that exists. One way of doing this is through soundscape ecology, listening, and field recordings. The project proposal outlines a framework in which these acts can be obtained.

One of the main products of this project is to develop a transdisciplinary-experimental protocol that incorporates other dimensions than those typically considered in current listening research and the study of bioacoustics and soundscape ecology such as: dialogue, care, and accompaniment. We will use field recordings in artistic compositions with the intention of communicating ecological themes to listeners’ bodies, rather than discussing concepts, representing or reconstructing soundscapes. Instead of working with hypotheses, we will open experimental fields with no fixed direction and no previously established purpose.

It then goes on to discuss the steps that took this project into actuality. Firstly a conference to locate and understand current issues within the climate and discuss critically how and where these issues are occurring, finally hosting a sound workshop with participants that will lead into a sound concert and installation which combines the field recordings from both the sound walks and field recording trips with soundscapes of the cities to create a sonic piece that communicates emotions.

I find myself fitting very much within the same ideas and frameworks presented here. I want to create a sound walk booklet guide for my field recording process after researching this. I think alongside the finished pieces I want to create a booklet that explores the issues within the area and a few tasks to listen to and explore further within the space.

SONIC ALLEGORIES

Sonic Allegories is a project that seeks to explore the atmospheres in-between spaces, sounds that are barely perceptible, and areas of transitional space. The artists responded to two different locations within this framework of thinking one Cantera Oriente reserve in Mexico City and the other in TerraAstroCene a sonic walk in Evora at the Cromlech de Los Almendros.

Cantera Oriente reserve of Mexico City which was recorded is called the A3 buffer zone that sits in an ecological research laboratory from the UNAM university. Originally the site was a quarry and an asphalt plant which after being exploited for 25 years turned out to enclose a natural spring. When this was discovered the plant was closed down and returned back to the university. After the closure, the 16ft holes were covered in the soil so that plants could grow once again. Field recordings taken from this area were used in the compositions, they each tell a story of the place. Sounds of air and water, stories of above and below.

The second location Cromlech de Los Almendros, Evora Portuga, recorded soundscapes of the largest megalithic monument of the Iberian Peninsula. The sounds were composed into a sound walk in Mexico city and deals with the presence of the monument, the idea that because it dates back to Neolithic times and it has had to withstand so much change in the world makes its sonic presence interesting.

I found this piece to be captivating, and the motivations to be similar to my own work for my prototype project. I’m curious to do further research and to critically reflect upon my work and learn from their project as well. The two 15-minute tracks and video results are beautiful.

Post-Lecture Reflection:

She begins by wanting to do a Pauline Oliveros exercise. She asks us to sit on the edge of the chair, put our feet on the floor, have contact. Try to bring your mind to this moment present, focus on your breathing and take a couple of breaths together. Put your hand on your chest and feel your heart, tap the rhythm lightly. 

She loves this exercise because it gives us an opportunity to be in the same place even though it’s virtual and everyone is far away in these online meetings.

She works in the intersection of nature and culture through sound. An environmental approach to sound, care, dialogue and accompaniment.

Listening is an act of relating to the world, listening is about resounding with the world of which I am part.

Nan Shepherd was someone who pioneered accompaniment In environmental activities. The idea of going to nature just to be there, not for a reason. To reach a summit or to hike across it but to simply be and accompany the space. 

Hildegard Westerkamp the pioneer of sound walks created sound walks and the concept of simply being within the space, establishing a respectful relationship within the space you are entering. 

Niebla was an album released in march 2022, this album explores the entanglements of nature and humans and non-humans. Situating the listener within the forest ecosystem. A place not of alienation but of consideration. This explores the symbolic relationship and engagement of the users and non-human species in the forest.

She then plays the album for us. Twenty minutes in length. 

She used very simple materials to create it. The multi-media piece is thought to be watched on a screen and she used stock photography from the internet. She wanted the audio to be the main guide and so she created very simple visuals.

This piece is inspired by the practice of sound walking from Westerkamp.

The research takes a life of its own for her when researching projects. It allows her to focus and use binaural beats and field recordings which are great for her. 

She was recently invited to a series of sound meditations inspired by Pauline Oliveros. It’s a program that has been going on for ten years. What she likes about this project is that it opens up something so specific like sound arts and something so specific like meditation to the public. Mothers, fathers, dogs, children. Everyone of all types attends.

They tried to move from the acoustic part of the presentation to the electronic part back to the acoustic part. She shows us a work file to listen to.

This piece was one part of two parts of performances, she likes to always include narratives and storytelling but she never tells anyone what the story is. It just helps her build structure and where it should go. She won an investment in their work and they went directly to the forest. Her room was over a place where the frogs would sing all night and this made part of the recordings, she also discusses the idea of sharing works in progress and hearing the process is important and helps, even more, to understand where we are at.

She finally moves to the last piece of work she wishes to show us.

This is another project in collaboration with her artist friend. They only focussed on one field recording, their process was that they decide on one tone that they want to base their whole performance on and explore that. For her also gestures are very important, she had a really beautiful fish bowl with water and used one of these controllers and put a few tones into the controllers and it’s her touching the water triggering the controller.

She also likes to work with lighting to create a sense of atmosphere, her PhD studies were focused on atmospheres and the reaction bodies receive from light.

Overall this lecture was thoroughly interesting, her ideas around the Anthropocene and capitolocene as well as the dichotomy of humans and non-humans. Ways of listening as understanding and situating. To give time and space to understand our connection with the non-human world, something similar to biophilia. I do wish perhaps she discussed more into this than just playing long pieces but I did still enjoy it. I will take some ideas presented into my own works as I finish off the compositions and editing, and perhaps make a booklet guide.

Here is her bio:

Anna Friz is a sound, transmission and media artist, and media studies scholar. Her work reflects upon media ecologies, infrastructure and environment, time perception, radio and transmission art histories, and critical fictions, with a focus on listening, improvisation, site-specificity, and repurposing technologies. Since 1998 she has created self-reflexive radio for broadcast, installation or performance, where radio is the source, subject, and medium of the work. She also creates large-scale audiovisual installations and composes for film, theater, and contemporary dance. Her most recent works include the outdoor transmission sculpture Solar Radio (with Absolute Value of Noise) at Wave Farm, NY; the 22-hour live radio performance Fog Refrain, and We Build Ruins, a series of media art works expressively considering mining and industrial corridors in the high altitude deserts in northern Chile. Anna is currently Associate Professor of Sound in the Film and Digital Media Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

Anna’s work and uses of radio and sound interest me, especially the radio section. I’ve been doing reading into radio sound-art work as I wanted to incorporate radio within one of my portfolio works for next year. I think this should help give me some inspiration.

BREAKWATER

This project is an 8-channel installation piece that explores the breakwater in Vienna Austria. It uses field recordings of underwater sounds taken with a hydrophone and contact mics. Short wave recordings and electromagnetic recordings. Open air as well. It explores the idea of where multiple points meet, and swell together to create a communal experience.

I didn’t manage to find audio links to listen to this work but it does sound interesting, I built an electromagnetic microphone this year and find its usage of it super interesting, the sounds are there but we don’t see them.

GHOST IMBISS

Ghost Imbiss is a collaboration with other artists using limited minimalist broadcast technology to see if they can transmit small delicate sounds. Sounds used were saliva, mouth feedback device. AM/FM transmitters and receivers. Walkie-talkies, glass bottle and the voice.

This project sounds really interesting. I hope she plays some of this work in her lecture!

Post Lecture Reflection

Anna starts by speaking about her background, she began playing with sounds in her early 20s on a community radio station in Vancouver Canada. Working in the studio was the first chance she got to use sonic equipment. Using old equipment gave her hands-on experience. She very much thought of the studio as a performative space.

Because they only had a two-track reel-to-reel player, when creating anything she had to perform into the tape machine and use the mixing desk as a performative tool instead of having multi-track recorders. 

She very much began being used to having a silent audience. This habit has stuck with her, even today thinking about what sounds to play, she finds herself doing the same as she did back then. Layering up layers and making a piece in real-time. 

She has had a chance to present her sound work in many different places, from outside in the field, concert venues, installations and even more industrial places.

The pandemic has pushed her to be back on the radio, especially because of being at home. So she’s been interested again in radiophonic questions. Radiophonic has returned to the foreground for her. She decides to play us a piece which discloses her current electromagnetic interests.

She took part in a project where artists were asked to create a piece that reflects their position on transmission. She is really interested in thinking about media ecology and ecology more broadly and she is drawn into looking at depth into things that are underground and in the air. The surface tensions in the space. She says it comes from listening in boundless radio and areas of noise and rhythmic sorts of interference.  Embodiment is also important to her, she doesn’t like that the radio voice is disembodied. There are bodies everywhere in the voice, you couldn’t habit a voice If you haven’t inhabited your body.

She’s also been further interested in this question raised by radio, this experience of distance. In communication media there has been this obsession with overcoming distance, She’s interested in the opposite, enjoying the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. During this time of covid, she’s been listening to a two-way radio, a place of practical communication. If it’s air traffic control or anyone else using a walkie-talkie or a two-way radio. The idea of useful radio is a way of digging into the evidence of human presence without looking at street traffic or other things that people might see. 

She was invited to a festival with lots of other creatives for a 22hr festival performance. Some created pre-recorded and some created live pieces. She decided to make a 22hr performance, she was working with the notion of acoustic and electromagnetic sounds in the fog line on the bay area coast. 

The fog is a super important part of the ecosystem she lives in, a lot of plants and trees rely on the fog as moisture in her area. Climate change is diminishing the amount of fog and this has affected the forests severely. The fog is this balm for the dry landscape and accounts for most of the moisture the plants need. The fog establishes space in this area, but also this ambiguous medium, it’s difficult to pin down its form. 

She’s interested in morse code beacons that would help navigation in boats. These would give boats easier ways to navigate. Most are still discontinued but there are a few that get triggered once the fog begins. 

In her 22 hr piece, she worked with field recordings, people and creatures within this sphere and electromagnetic sphere and radio workers using walkie-talkies. She then shows us a part of the piece.

She discusses the walkie-talkie field recordings that she uses within this piece, she’s interested in how this represents humanity without photos of traffic for example.

She now wants to show us another piece that also has a visual element, but she’s interested in the nonhuman element of this previous idea she’s discussed. She created a live performance video that she was doing during covid at home through Twitch.

She now wanted to show us the video as now we know what’s going on in the air, this piece shows us what is going on underground. 

She’s also been thinking about radio and transmission systems, and she’s been researching this desert in Chile. It’s well known because high-powered telescopes are located there, and star viewing is incredible there. It’s also a place historically been fought over during colonial times as a site of extraction, salt mining and also ongoing massive issues of copper and lithium mining. This area has undergone a real transformation in this industry, and as a medium maker this is the materials that she uses, the demand during the pandemic has increased for these materials. When she is recording and filming in these mines the scope is expanding and expanding. 

She then says she will play us a multichannel installation with three screens, one screen is focused on the salt flats and a part of the desert that isn’t transformed yet by human activity and is adjacent to the location of a huge lithium mine. This area was once the bottom of the sea but now is at a very high elevation. 

When working on Longform projects she wants to create a tenant on how to approach the project. Her project in the desert has been about attention to time, duration, and the interplay between soft and hard power. This isn’t just human and non-human, but hot air rising from the desert, that the turkey vultures use to cruise on. The dune is about to collapse into the close city. How the desert outlasts everything. 

In her discussion, she also talks about bodies being a field recording device which is interesting itself, something I’ve been thinking myself for a while.

I found her talk overall thoroughly interesting and relatable towards my practice, the Anthropocene is definitely a large issue within this work and other pieces of hers. The uses of two-way and short-wave radio and the thoughts around the silent listener and the imaginary listener are of interest to me. She also discusses using pieces of equipment within her work that create the problems, recorders and laptops with lithium batteries from the minerals that are extracted within the desert. The question that ponders is if the field recording and the works are self-aware and can justify a balance between the need to listen as a way of understanding and wanting to create environmental change and or if this adds to the problem.

Here is his bio:

Alex De Little is a sonic artist and researcher with bases in Leeds and London, UK. His practice encompasses installation, composition, performance and workshops; it is concerned with the interrogation of listening as a way to understand environment, self, and social relations. Alex’s work and collaborations have been featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Tate Modern, Somerset House, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Health Museum (Houston, TX), Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art (Copenhagen), The National Science and Media Museum, London Contemporary Music Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Walmer Yard, and the Hepworth Wakefield. Alex completed a practice-based PhD with Scott McLaughlin and Martin Iddon at the University of Leeds, and postdoctoral research fellowships at the Universities of Leeds and Nottingham. He is a member of CAVE (Centre for Audio-Visual Experimentation), and an honorary research fellow at Goldsmiths Centre for Sound Practice Research.   

Based on this bio I think Alex saying that he is interested and concerned with the interrogation of listening as a way to understand the environment, self and social relations to be very critical. I also consider this a lot and within my time studying for my three-year degree I have found myself accidentally leaning towards my entire focus being on these ideas and questions that present themselves when one listens a lot. I’m keen to know more about his ideas on the same questions that I have.

Floating –> Radialsystem (with Sonic Acts of Noticing and Soft Agency) [2021]

This project was in collaboration with Sonic Acts of Noticing

It was an extended listening and reading walk in Berlin that followed a flow of water from the university to an ex-pumphouse on the edge of the River Spree. The walk was said to engage practices of collective reading and listening as an approach to engage with the flows of water.

The walks were set up in a silent disco fashion with one field recorder broadcasting its sounds whilst someone else lead the walk. The sounds would shift between hydrophone recordings and contact mic recordings. The idea was to amplify or be present in the context of environmental sounds.

I think this idea of unified sound walks is something I’m fond of. The shared human experience certainly amplifies experiences and discussions, especially with something precious as the natural world, after all, it’s not anything one person owns but the whole planet that enjoys it. I’m curious about the setup and further ideas for this piece.

Eastside – What If? (with Hannah Beard) [2021]

In collaboration with Hannah Beard, Alex created a billboard and sound walk that imagined an alternate future for the east side of the city centre of Leeds. A city centre that amplifies people rather than road traffic and is a direct response to the climate crisis. Again with a similar silent disco approach Alex created soundscapes of the proposed future sounds of this newly changed east side city centre if the plans that his collaborate Hannah Beard created became true. A sonic postcard of the potential future. They would walk around the current locations and listen to what they could be and if they take off the headphones they listen to what it currently is.

Following on from the first piece to this one, I’m excited to hear his extended lecture on these topics and the climate crisis, the use of field recordings in this context and how he has pieced together these landscapes. His ideas and intentions within his work and how he responds to a few of my questions.

Post Lecture Reflection

Alex starts by speaking about his background, his undergraduate was in music and experimental music. He became more interested in sound influences after finishing both. He became interested in sonic phenomena and acoustic phenomena and their behaviour in their environments and if you can create a compositional practice around it.

2014-2018 he was doing a PhD in sonic arts and sound studies at the University of Leeds. It was in sound practice and situated ways of listening in acoustic phenomena and to critique ocular visually dominated modes of production. He wanted people to engage not necessarily through space or aesthetics but through intensities of vibrations. 

Just before the pandemic in 2019 is what he will start with, the offshoots the tendrils and the things that come from this are what this discussion will become.

He’s led through listening rather than sound, listening as a broad practice, giving and taking attention. A practice is subjective.

Listening as relationality, how we relate to others, ecologies and urban, non-manmade environments. He sees it as a reimagined way of listening, potential transformation through listening is how he considers how we can change ourselves. His craft through the result of this is setting up situations of listening and how we can develop practices that take from what is already there, from existing practices, and new practices such as deep listening. Listening as offering a time for reflection.

Since finishing his PhD his projects have become super collaborative, he believes perhaps it came from doing a PhD and being sat alone for a long time which has spiked this. 

He starts with his collaboration, Listening in Spaces. 

British High Street of Exchanges, (with studio Polpo) [2020 (2021)] 

In late 2019 he was invited by studio Polpo to join the installation. They are a social architecture practice, and they’re interested in the social dynamics of creating and building. Considerations are climate and social justice.

Could the high street become a place of cultural exchange, they wanted to see the high street, not as a place of exchanging capital but how can we draw attention to social solidarity on the high street. He brings up again listening as a way of paying attention, they wanted to convey that in an array of loudspeakers in this form. Studio Polpo set up a lot of access around the city to collect these recordings. They hid microphones around places of interest in the city, one was an afro barber. His task was to take these field recordings and allow the listener to immerse themselves in these spaces, to sit in the barbers and hear these conversations. To hear these interactions that were taking place. 

Another project he was involved in was titled Deep Listening Certification Training (2020-21)

He was really interested in the practice of deep listening. He became interested in Pauline Oliveros’s project Deep Listening – Sonic Meditations. 

He studied a formalised way of working within listening, and gained his certification. It took him two-three months and he learnt numerous skills within it. After receiving his certification Alex went on to create his own listening circle within lockdown, he created sessions where everyone wrote journals of thought and ideas from listening. And sharing field recordings within sessions. 

Sonic Acts of Noticing (with Julia udal and Jon Orlek 2021)

They wanted to do more from the audio from that project, and drill down on the idea of listening in public spaces as a way of reclaiming the spaces. Sonic acts of noticing developed from the ideas that stemmed from this.

We listen to the city at a macro scale, as an ecology of diverse lifeforms and resources and habitats, we might recognise a dynamic, vital system to be stewarded for future generations of humans and other species.

He engaged this framework at certain places, using sound walks, and a field recording with a radio transmitter with everyone on silent disco headphones. Using contact mics hydrophones and then after create listening sessions 

Listening With 2020

listening as a way of relating a way around us, 

He was calling it material agency and instruments, how instruments have ways of listening to themselves. Listening allows us to see what instruments want to do, and the acoustic behaviour within each instrument. He then created a project in reflection on all this reading and theories, 

Listening in the Cthulucene: sound practices for survival

His last project was in collaboration with landscape architecture, Eastside a common ground (with Hannah beard) 

The concept was this, remove cars and increase pedestrian crossings. Creating public realm infrastructure for bikes, and feet. Exposing the coveted river that runs through the site. And create a new urban forest. 

The city has improved based on the city centre exposing itself. The possibility of sound as a way of articulating space. In response to this Alex considered how to propose ideas of landscape planning through sound. He instead creates and proposes a landscape of sounds which the architectural plan will become.

The power of convincing, the power of actualising. Share the environment that might help actualise the design.

He then created a fake sound walk to help bring more awareness towards the plan they have created. 

Overall this was a hugely inspiring visiting practitioner lecture that has brought up a few issues that I’ve been reading about for my dissertation and my portfolio works. I found his passion for sound and the curious ways in which he uses it to be inspiring. I also felt that he brought ideas to my brain I wouldn’t have considered. Sonic planning permission? Sonic Architecture? Excellent!

This is Yolande’s bio,

Yolande Harris (UK/US) explores ideas of sonic consciousness, using sound and image to create intimate visceral experiences that heighten awareness of our relationship to the environment and other species. Her artistic projects on underwater sound encourage connection, understanding and empathy with the ocean. Yolande is associate researcher and lecturer in digital media art and electronic music at University of California Santa Cruz and lecturer in digital media art at San Jose State University. Previously Assistant Professor in film/animation/video at Rhode Island School of Design, she has held major research fellowships at Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Jan van Eyck Academy and UCLA Art|Sci Center. She presents her work internationally, including Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the House of World Cultures Berlin, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and Ars Electronica Festival. Yolande studied at Edinburgh University, Dartington College of Arts, has an MPhil from Cambridge University and a PhD from Leiden University. 

I’m interested in sonic consciousness, what does that mean to her? How can sound become a conscious thing? Using sound and image to heighten our awareness of our environment and species is something of huge interest to me, I’m really excited to see her lecture and how she discusses these subjects.

FISHING FOR SOUND

Fishing For Sound is a stereo installation piece that creates a sea of social connections between spaces. Yolande weaves sounds from underwater, marine life and sonified navigation satellites. She compares the similarities of the intrusive background noise within all these environments and technologies. Environment, information and memory are key in this piece of work. Where listening is like fishing for sound.

I found this piece to captivate me with the visual and sonic elements together. Once again I do find myself in a situation where I do enjoy the sounds and the overall work but without further context, it’s hard to really see the defined meaning. By no means am I saying her work is bad or not active enough for my own thoughts but more that I think this sort of work becomes its full form when accompanied by further explained texts and ideas.

MINKE WHALES SURFACE THROUGH ICE

This piece of work discusses the ideas and themes of what it might feel like to be oceanic. To come from an existence of aquatic consciousness, Yolande collaborated with scientist Dr Ari Friedlaender who gave Yolande the footage of cameras attached to these whales. Yolande contributed the music, the harp and other sounds.

I found this piece to actually become a favourite of mine, simplicity really works sometimes. I see the harp and the other sounds in an almost ironic beautiful tone. Disclosing the beauty of whales surfacing and returning back. The playful nature of these animals exists in locations that are extreme difficulty to exist. Where life is difficult. The juxtaposition between the audio and the cold tough oceans these whales live in brought a smile to my face. I’m looking forward to the lecture.

Post-lecture Reflection:

Yolande begins by saying that she finds when she shares her work she’s interested in how people can experience it. What are the many ways in which an idea can be realised?

She then shows us the first piece which is a silent film, the light going through trees In a rainforest and asks us if we hear anything despite the silence. She explains that sound is more than just things we hear in our ears. Sound in relation to the other senses is an important way of thinking. The sense of sight is quite sonic in this sense, as well as colour and weather.

She was trying to build instruments back in the early 2000s when she worked in a studio in Amsterdam. The second piece she showed us was Walk in the Woods 2, they were trying different images in contrast to the first one. 

She’s interested in how our perception of the environment can change and how this relates to the environment that we are in. The imagery blends and disappears into the forest. Overlays and disappears is the technique presented.

Another piece she did was in 2009, The Pink Noise, which is about the experience of noise pollution or sounds that were happening under the water. Pristine on the surface but under the water it was filled with noise. She dropped a hydrophone under the water to discover all the yachts and other boats had filled the ocean with noise pollution. Her installation was similar, a projected floor with headphones hanging to combine both her idea and installation into one. 

This leads her to be into noise pollution and underwater sounds. It can travel further than inland and at greater speeds. And because we can’t see it there’s a sense that it’s not there. It’s the case with so many things, to make something experienceable that’s an important thing for us to do, to enable us to experience things beyond our perception. This was the start of her idea of underwater sound. 

She was also working with the ideas of navigation, she was working with early GPS work. She’s been a sailor since a young age and being a sailor and being on the ocean has been very central to her life. She was taking GPS and GPS data and making it into different maps and sounds. Looking at old style navigation styles like the sextant, she felt it was good to learn this to contrast the works. 

Working with the sextant made her create the next piece Sun Run Sun, Frankfurt 2009.

She creates an instrument that takes GPS data and the distance from the sky, including the XY axis. And they were very basic sounds because the processor couldn’t handle a lot. You would listen and walk around with the device and perform with the sonified data. 

Displaced Sound Walks, 2012 Leipzig. This explored the idea of how sound can give us a sense of place and location. The idea is she has a set of binaural microphones and a Zoom Recorder. You’re getting a very good stereo impression. You walk around for 5 minutes on a route of your own choosing and remember the route you did. You come back and sit and listen to the recordings and not move. The final step is to listen to those recordings while walking in a different location to the recorded sound walk.

It sounds incredibly simple but the reaction is interesting. They’ll hear footsteps but there is nobody there. Suddenly a bus starts and the engine begins to roar but there is no one there. Things will happen like there are phantoms or ghosts in the environment. It creates an idea of how important sound is for us in our environment.

How can our conscious listening affect the world around us? She asks this is what this project looked into

How can learning to listen to underwater sounds transform us, and transform our relationship with the environment?

I think these last two questions she asked us before finishing her lecture hit me deeply. My project from the end of the second year titled Listen to the Thames explored hydrophone recordings near Richmond Lock and the amount of noise pollution and how far sound travelled up the river gave me a different outlook that I haven’t had yet. Also Yolande’s ideas of the importance of sound in our environment and to use the human species, how we use sound to guide us towards understanding locations, spaces and environments. Perhaps I can explore the many ponds in Stave Hill and see if the noise pollution resonates in the water as much as the wind turbine?

This is Antye’s bio.

AGF, poemproducer, Antye Greie-Ripatti is an artist & facilitator, sound recorder and music producer. she/her published more than 30 records, countless media projects and organizes sound interventions with others around the globe, initiated recon on rec-on.org and lectures around sound facilitation. 
 
Antye Greie-Ripatti calls herself online poemproducer, audio sculptress, performing and producing as AGF. She/her weaves deconstructed language, field recordings, low frequencies, disembodied voices, post-club aesthetics, interwoven a-rhythmical patterns into dense sonic feminist sonic technologies. 
 
Audio sculptress performing as AGF, poetess and media artist Antye Greie-Ripatti utilizes language, sound, feminist sonic technologies, politics & explores speech within the audible depths of anti-rhythmic assemblages @poemproducer  
 
AGF received the ars electronica award twice, including a grand prix. She converts poetry into electronic music, calligraphy and digital media, presented on records, live performances and soundinstallations, in museums, auditoriums, theaters, concert halls and clubs around the world. 30+ record releases under her belt. 

I’m interested to find out about her sound facilitation and what that means for her, how is she facilitating. As well as her poetry and the audio sculptress that is her. How does she use field recordings? What is a field recording for her?

Phonon-Swarming 11/22 w/ AGF

I listened to the first 15-20 minutes of this audio piece. I found the production really captivating and well-produced. The effects and automation, using voice and field recordings are very vivid and immersive. It had me hooked on the piece. I do wish her website had a bit more description for the piece, even though I enjoyed this I would have loved some context and ideas around what she is presenting. I will keep looking through more of her work.

AYLU & AGF feat Constanza Castagnet

https://rec-on.org/STRIKE!.html (Link for Audio)

I found this link on Antye Greie’s website and found it really engaging. I wish I could understand Spanish and have again the context. I see that the title discusses Listening political Sound Global. But what are the themes? The audio again is well-produced and I love the compositional elements. Perhaps in the lecture, Antye will discuss further her ideas and themes and issues in this work.

Post-Lecture Reflection:

Antye was born and raised in Germany behind the east wall. She’s never been formally trained, gone to school or studied. She lived in Berlin and now she lives on an island in the north of Finland for the last 14 years. She’s made a lot of records and she’s been thinking about CDs and things that you can put into devices. She’s made more than 30 records, and has a constant audio production practice, theatre, dance and composition for film are also huge interests of hers. Mostly she now works outside unless she can’t, doing things like fieldwork. In 2010 she started going outside and doing a residency performing music or compositions. At first, she was alone and then she realised it was more fun to do it with people than alone, she then read into the Manifesto of Rural Futurism. Beatrice ferrara & Leandro Pisano. Living rural has been part of her practice and work, overtime living in rural places and working in rural locations has become part of her practice. She then started doing a lot of sound camps and inviting artists over and organising students and sound camps for a week or 3 – 5 days and doing a lot of sounds works outside. Listening or experimenting with music in public places, in locations such as the forest or the sea and boats.

She works a lot with feminism and feminist sonic technologies. She works with covering forgotten women. Something that is constantly happening so she is constantly working on new editions, she’s worked on a sixth issue. Published, unpublished at the moment.

Sonic Wild Code. This is what she started calling these sound camps. In 2013 they did a sonic boat journey, with Ryoko Akama. They met on the island and decided to make a sound intervention and asked a local fisherman to drive them to a nuclear power plant near Finland and they were making a spell using the Geiger counter. She wants to work with others that have different skill sets.

She speaks about the current importance of her work, with this piece around nuclear power and energy and how important that is currently with the war in Ukraine, and the threat of nuclear war. And gas pipes being cut off.

She speaks about a project she did in Hanoi, Vietnam -in 2019 just before covid and there was lots of pollution and smog. They were protesting against deforestation and they did a silent protest around a tree.

She also did a camp where they built instruments for working outside, deep mycelium Is also a topic she’s interested in. 

In 2015 she heard about an artist called Kubra Khademi who walked around in a metal chest plate in Kabul and it shocked her and she googled the artist and found her online and offered her that whenever she wants to work with someone in sound she could write to her and would help, she also described her work as a feminist in Europe. She received a call from Kubra a year later and she had to flee and was lonely due to the outcome of her political art. They met in Barcelona, then they became good friends and worked on a piece called Zansuspension. 

In the last three years, she has been doing other work, thinking about composition, position and sound. She speaks about how grateful she is for having grown up in attempted socialism in the east Germany wall. She understands a lot more now and has greater context. Her intellectual work comes from a communist background, raised as a Marxist and being freed from the wall in Berlin 

The camps have been each different, every time she was a participant or a curator. Sometimes a university would be called or a festival wanted to do a workshop with them. When she did camps where she lives she had a grant. 

All the artists loved it or she seemed that they did, they were really close, you eat together, you talk about sound, You build things, you go somewhere.

She lived in a city all her life and then spent years touring and being in clubs. She got older and had a kid and now she has started to be not satisfied with being in clubs or night spaces. Or playing music at 3am and everyone is drunk and doesn’t care. If I want to keep doing music my whole life I want to learn and I don’t want to just be at a nightclub. After the pandemic, she loves that you can change your practice and listen to music in the morning. She was happy to move out of the city and live in nature more, first, she thought she could do these performances in the forests. It’s not satisfying to perform like that and it’s more of a collective practice with others, that has helped shape its success.

I found Antye’s demeanour and work to be captivating, and I do think this connects with my work well. The idea of sound and sound artwork representing pollution and the possibilities of field recordings somehow helping and bringing awareness to climate issues is presented in this lecture and my own work. I also found her sound camps something I would love to go and experience, similar to murmuration by Jez Riley French and Christ Watson who also run camps every year with an idea of exploring locale and environment though field recordings. I want to maybe try what she said about performing in other spaces that arent the night club, perhaps fight against the noise pollution in Stave Hill with my own sounds? Am I just contributing to the disturbance?

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.

Johann Diedricks’s bio is:

Johann Diedrick is an artist, engineer, and musician that makes installations, performances, and
sculptures for encountering the world through our ears. He surfaces vibratory histories of past
interactions inscribed in material and embedded in space, peeling back sonic layers to reveal hidden memories and untold stories. He shares his tools and techniques through listening tours, workshops, and open-source hardware/software. He is the founder of A Quiet Life, a sonic engineering and research studio that designs and builds audio-related software and hardware products for revealing new sonic possibilities off the grid. He is the Director of Engineering at Somewhere Good, a 2022 Future Imagination Collaboratory Fellow at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, a 2021 Mozilla Creative Media Award recipient, a 2020 Pioneer Works Technology resident, a member of NEW INC, and an adjunct professor at NYU’s ITP program. His work has been featured in Wire Magazine, Musicworks Magazine, and presented internationally at MoMA PS1, Ars Electronica, Somerset House, and multiple NIME conferences, among others.

Initial Thoughts:

He seems to be a very technology-based artist. I can see he finds coding and software engaging towards his practice and I’m interested to see how he does this and what uses software and technology offer him. I’ve been creating electromagnetic microphones and recently found a different stereo model that uses PCP boards and circuitry instead of just soldering cables together. I have also been interested in circuit bending and using that as well as seeing pure data patches from second years. Perhaps this can influence me or guide me in a certain direction.

GOOD VIBRATIONS MOBILE LISTENING KIT

The Good Vibrations Mobile listening Kit is a creation by Johann, it has an amplifier, headphones, a fanny pack and a contact mic. The idea is the user places the contact mic on places of interest to listen into the living thriving city that functions 24/7. The fanny pack also allows handsfree listening. I think this is a cool idea although $180 for a bag with an amplifier and contact microphone is a bit extreme. I’m more curious about his ideas behind what a good vibe machine is and his thoughts behind creating this piece of equipment.

Harvester

The harvester is an open-source portable sampler that Johann created. It uses raspberry pi and pure data to run the brain behind the processing and he’s also run workshops on how to make this machine. It has a built-in speaker and microphone to sample live and listen also. You can use the 10 buttons as a scale to play the samples musically. I think this is interesting for me. I wanted to make my own sampler and thought about it but perhaps I didn’t know how to. Pure data seems like a really good way of doing so. Really cool machine.

Post Lecture Reflection

Johann starts his lecture with a project around oil spills and environmental damage. Gallons of oil slipped into the river between queens in New York, in 1978 it was discovered, and since 2010 it has been a government-protected site. Many environmentalists have tried to fix it but the site remains ruined. Through other factories and cars constantly adding to the pollution it’s a lost cause.

He’s interested in the cars that drive past, the whoosh. The resilient wildlife that still makes this marshland home. Crabs, jellyfish and the occasional seal. Cacophonous calls of birds show the wildlife isn’t dead after all.

Serene waters is a sound work that works with field recordings and uses them as storytelling. Music and hydro-phonic field recordings are the main elements within this piece. It explores the past and present future of the location. Boating through the creek, and walking in the area. He then plays us the entire piece and it’s 13 minutes long. He says the piece is important to help us connect with the land and place and situation.

Johann Diedrick was always into technology, he was in a gifted class when he was a child and got to test technology at a young age, and this has enhanced and led to his love of technology in his professional life. He uses technology to teach and work. He’s an artist and engineer.

He is interested in sonic encounters. He shares his skills in workshops and open-source software mainly. He’s also interested in moving away from the screen. He wants to highlight that interacting with technology can be expressive. Using your body as an example and not just sitting down with a mouse and keyboard, which is how typically we use technology. He shows us a musical interface, that uses the body as a tool. He made a piece called Me and You in a Vacuum with it.

He then started a company called a Quiet Life. He makes musical instruments and hardware. One is called the Harvester, it allows you to record the sound around you and play them back on a musical scale. As well as a synth. It is a spatially aware instrument using gyroscopes as a way of adjusting parameters. He wants to allow people to engage with technology in a playful environment. Using the harvester is a way of doing so. He envisions a world where expression is a great way of having better well-being and using the Harvester as a means to an end.

Through performance and installation, he gets rid of the screen that is so associated with sound practice. The harvester is the tool for him that disconnects the grid of the screen, the DAW, and the grey-black box and into an interface that invites mess and play. A heads up and play let us move around and lets us play with our bodies. It’s always unpredictable.

Glass Salt group is a collaboration with a fellow friend of his.

In one collaboration they were both engaging with the extremely high-frequency electromagnetic radiations produced by pulsars, celestial objects that are rapidly spinning and which emit gamma rays from their poles! They used recordings from scientific observatories as rhythmic inspiration (“cosmic metronomes” and as “traditional” field recordings.

At the very end of the lecture, I asked him this question. “You use field recordings in some of your work. What is a field recording to you? How would you define it? The second question is, do field recordings become a catalyst to action/activism/change. Or wellbeing for yourself?”

He replied.

“It’s an artefact of an activity. The activity itself is important, the act of going out and walking and slowing down. Noticing sounds.”

He isn’t invested in putting field recordings on a pedestal. But field recordings do make him explore the environment. And it encourages him to get into extreme and strange situations and wanting to do the field recording helps facilitate this. Field recordings lead him to situations where he wouldn’t have been before. It’s not about the recordings and using the environment in performative ways. But the reason why he engages in field recordings is a practice in the first place.

As well awareness is a difficult thing to attach to field recordings. Because we come in contact with one-dimensional replications of the actual source through listening back to field recordings. He’s unsure about using field recordings as a way to expose or promote activism. For example, using fuel to go to the antarctic to get this field recording of melting ice.

I enjoyed it very much the lecture and found his answer to my question to actually challenge my ideas of field recording. I might use this quote in my research project and perhaps attempt to make the harvester for my portfolio? Or design my own sampler?!?!

We can start with Felix Blume’s bio. Which is.

Félix Blume (France, 1984) is a sound artist and sound engineer. He currently works and lives between Mexico, Brazil and France.

He uses sound as a basic material in sound pieces, videos, actions and installations. His process is often collaborative, working with communities and using public space as the context within which he explores and presents his works. His practice involves an extended understanding of listening, as a way to encourage the awareness of the imperceptible and as an act of encounter with others. His work incorporates the sounds of different beings and species, from the buzzing of a bee, the steps of a turtle or the chirp of a cricket, as well as human dialogues both with natural and urban contexts. He is interested in myths and their contemporary interpretation, in what voices can tell beyond words. 

His sound pieces have been broadcasted in radios from all over the world. He has been awarded with the “soundscape” prize (2018) for his video-piece Curupira, creature of the woods and the “Pierre Schaeffer” prize (2015) for his work Los Gritos de México at the Phonurgia Nova Awards. His film Luces del Desierto was awarded with First Prize of International Short Films at L’Alternativa 28 (2021) and Grand Prize Video Art at Côté Court (2021).

He has participated in international festivals and exhibitions as Thailand Biennale (Th), Tsonami Arte Sonoro Chile (Cl), CTM Berlin (De), Berlinale Forum Expanded Exhibition (De), Rotterdam IFF (Nl), LOOP Barcelona (Es), Belluard Festival (Ch), Sonic Acts (Nl), Lisboa Soa (Pt) and Donau Festival (At). His work has been presented in venues as Museo Reina Sofía (Es), Centre Pompidou (Fr), Domaine de Kerguéhennec (Fr), Fonoteca Nacional Mexico (Mx), Ex Teresa Mexico (Mx), CCCB Barcelona (Es), Musée Réattu (Fr), among others. 

Works by the artist are held in the collections of Centre National des Arts Plastiques (Fr), Universidad Autónoma de México (Mx), Klankenbos (Be) and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (Mx), among others. 

Initial Thoughts:

I’m curious about his use of sound as “basic material” and what that means to him. I’ve been thinking about sound as a material also recently and considering how I can use this to my advantage within my work and with my research project. Another part that interests me is the topic of listening and he claims his practice is “an extended understanding of listening” which he considers is a way of encouraging others to be aware of their surroundings. I’m also curious about his location which is between Brazil and other places, being Brazilian this is something that perked my ears up. As well as his use of field recording. I’m hopeful something within this seminar will give me inspiration towards my portfolio project. But first I’ll do some research and thoughts about some of his work.

Suspiros:

Suspiros is a sound installation and performance organised by Felix. He was interested in communication through sound and a deeper listening practice as well as the ecology of the lagoon. Felix ran workshops with children in Zapotalito. Workshops on listening and other aspects of sound, they also created ocarinas with the children for them to reply back to the lagoon. Felix placed a group of ocarinas within the lagoon, this allowed for a call and response from the children to the lagoon. I think this sort of installation and work really helps us connect with nature on a more spiritual level and physical level. Listening to the sounds of our environment makes us feel more connected.

Rumors from the sea, Thailand Biennale

Rumors from the sea is a sound installation in Thailand. Felix uses bamboo sticks usually associated with seawalls to stop sea levels from rising and putting villages underwater. Felix used these bamboo sticks to turn them into flutes and to create a singing ocean. As if the ocean was a monster communicating about climate change with every wave that created noise within the bamboo flutes. Felix also ran another workshop with local children and schools to create a short video where the students created their own bamboo flutes and sang back at the installation. Creating another similar conversation of call and response to the earlier piece. I think the usage of materials associated with something negative like rising sea levels and then using it as the main material for an art installation that is sonifying the ocean is clever. I also enjoy the thought of getting local people from the area to get involved in the performances. This can add another layer of meaning towards the piece. Almost as if Felix is the translator that helped enable the people to see their issues in another format.

Post Lecture Reflection

Felix starts by saying he’s a sound engineer for film something I’m also interested in, he was working and living in Brussels and Belgium. He was recording direct sounds with the camera and all the other sounds such as wild tracks and ambience. He was able to record for his own sound library as well as for film while on the job.

He started sharing sounds on a free sound platform. It is a sharing platform because in a way it was important for him to share sounds and not be the only one. He enjoys listening to sounds and using the platform to discover other sounds. This reminds me of Locus Sonus except that it’s not live. The idea of sharing things with people who are far away is something he finds fascinating.

Working as a sound engineer and sound recordist lets him go to many countries if he wasn’t there for work. This is also something I am really keen on doing, to travel and work and listen to different environments that are difficult to go ordinarily is a dream of mine. Before he started working he wasn’t really travelling and this act of sharing was what got him hooked.

After a while of sharing sounds, he thought that sharing alone wasn’t good enough and that he should share the sonic experience of the place he was at as well as the sounds.

He shares with us a sound of Patagonia a short excerpt. He explains what we can learn and understand from the field recording he’s taken. The farmer, the sheep the location. 4000 sheep are trying to communicate. He thought the communication between voice and animals together interests him. The idea of not needing to understand the world is a theme that he enjoys. He explains how he wants to process and mix and edit the recordings to enhance his sounds, and use the sounds in a small sound piece.

He did a few radio sound art projects, and in 2014 he thought about whether he could create his own projects. He recorded a project and audio of the city of Mexico. The audio of the piece is Mexican sellers on the streets and markets and he spent time with them and convinced the sellers to allow him to record them. He also recorded some protests from the Mexican people. The piece was used in an installation and other collaborative works. They asked him to present his work in installation and radio.

Parallel to this work, he was south of Chile recording himself running in a desert recording a can walking. He’s made 35 more short videos now. In most of the videos, there is a distance between the sound and the video. The video is zoomed away but the sound is concentrated towards what the mic is recording. The point of view and point of listening is the same usually and in his work, he attempts to change this. I think this idea of separating the audio proximity from what the visuals are presenting is an interesting dynamic between what we are usually used to. I had a similar idea in my second year for my installation work to create a piece of audio that is a large juxtaposition to the visuals, for example, a beautifully captured scenery but horrible traffic noises and vice versa and seeing the outcome.

Another short video he made was a one-shot which was a young man whipping a bullwhip, the other of a young man running throw a mine in Bolivia, following a shot in Istanbul turkey. The contact mic on a tortoise was another shot. A walking tortoise with a contact mic placed. Another short video of someone walking in the salt flats, with the focus on the feet but the shot is a wide angle.

He did a project around the environment and flooding in Indonesia. He discovered that people use bamboo to obstruct waves from creating floods in their area. He made a flute sound with the bamboo, create a hole with a flute and once u lift it out of the bucket it moves the air and plays the flute.

He then created a wall of flute bamboo sticks around a pier in Indonesia. He tuned the multiple flutes and made sure they were harmonious amongst the pier. He wanted to sonify the relationship between the use of bamboo as a way of protecting their land and giving it a voice. The sound was very different depending on the size of the waves and the tide. 

His idea is to listen to the sound installation within the platform the bamboo and the wave. The combined sounds are not just what the flutes are playing but the sounds of what is going wrong. When you are listening you are listening more to the soundscape than just the flutes playing. 

Another project he did was in the amazon rainforest. He took his gear to the amazon rainforest, and he decided to go to a small city and ask if he could stay at a small village and record as he wanted to go on a field recording trip. He met a few people and found a village that wanted tourists there, so he was the first tourist to visit. He arrived there and took his microphone, they asked him what tourists wanted to see and do in the village and they took him into the forest multiple times. He asked what he could record and what was important for them, he wanted their opinion of what sounds are important to the villagers. So they spent hours in the forest taking care of him and observing him and the way he was listening and working. Eventually, this led him to begin interviewing the local villagers and finding out about a mysterious amazonian monster. He then created a short video with interviews and sounds around it.

I found Felix’s seminar to be of my interest. Field recordings, listening, environmental issues. I’ve been currently reading environmental sound art book and I find the connection between meditative listening, field recording and environmental sound arts to be almost in unison. For my portfolio work, I’m doing something completely separate but perhaps in the second part of the hand-in when I have to submit two pieces of work. I can create something alongside these ideas.