soundculture

Радиожурналисты-авторы-подскатеры-гении-констататоры-документалисты!!!
Все-все-все, кто хочет отправить свои программы на конкурс Prix Europa и стать крутым как, например, Йенс Яриш (его программы "Лайфстайл" и "К.: сцены проституции и наркомании" можно слушать ) и даже лучше (что несомненно) – эта информация для вас!!!!! 

Если вы чувствуете, что вам есть что показать серьёзному фестивальному жюри, то нужно сделать несколько важных вещей до 20 июля:

1.       Заполнить специальную анкету на сайте фестиваля.

2.       Отправить звук и сценарий своих программ (на языке оригинала и в переводе на английский) по адресу, указанному на сайте.

Помните, что радио-номинация представлена в двух категориях: радио-драма и документальная радио программа. Мы очень надеемся что вы не сидели без дела и программу имеете :)

Всю информацию о требованиях к участникам конкурса можно узнать на официальной странице Prix Europa. Сам фестиваль пройдет в Берлине с 17 по 24 октября 2009 года.

Кажется, что это сказка. Так там всё красиво, ярко, загадочно, но на самом деле это интервью с Юстейном Гордером, автором книг "Мир Софии", "Апельсиновая девушка", "Дочь циркача", "Рождественская мистерия" и др.

Леной Упоровой

Elements is a series of performances in the domains of audio, incorporating practices of deep listening, field recording techniques, phonography and microphonics; with a particular ear to the elementary sound sources of our sensory world.

In the 2008 version of this performance tour, two sound practitioners from different landscapes, but with a common fascination for discreet environmental sounds, join together to form an onstage presence exploring different types of performance spaces in four different European cities.

The focus of these performances is basically to share listening experience with diverse tools and methods, but fundamentally with the ear. Sounds will be organised in multi-channel atmosphere, within an ambience of empathetic listening to the minute and fragile sound objects from our very own environment.  



 

29.10.08 Berlin: Tee und Kunsthaus Tschaikowsky

30.10.08 Dresden: 7.stock 

31.10.08 Hamburg: Hörbar

07.11.08 Arhus: CAVI

About: Lasse-Marc Riek

The work of Lasse-Marc Riek is an assemblage of the most diverse styles and techniques. His interdisciplinary productions are shaped by elements of the fine arts, phonography, environmentalism, performance, sound-art and conceptual art. These productions are situated in a tight relationship with one another. In the domain of Phonography Riek's focus rests on acoustic ecology and bio-acoustics by means of field recordings of both society and nature.

About: Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is an audio practitioner; he works with field recording/ phonography, sound design and new media; also involved with restoration, digital archiving and preservation of sound; his sound-works involve found sound collected at deep and cognitive listening of environment followed by digital manipulation and audio engineering; work with sound generally focuses on audio essays, sound narratives and mixed-media installations within an open framework of new media art; addresses issues like sound and environment, sound memory, acoustic ecology and lost/endangered sounds; in a specific context his sound practice is intended to reflect on defined space/place/locale/area as sonic constructs.

 Audio here

I am currently working in a project ‘Sant Lorenzo’ with students and teachers from a school of photography; I am recording ambient sound from an old and historic area in downtown Firenze for installation with still images. The project is about the personal ways to look at a given space, which has certain documentary value. The images will be looped on nine large monitors on the wall, and sound will reproduce the essential atmosphere in a multi-speaker set up within the installation space.

Recording sound (or image) in a given space demands more than mere documentation when information is personalized. Every sound object has a narrative which goes beyond the texture; on recording the narrative should be captured in order to go beyond documentation. When I started to record in the area I realized I will be lost at the surface of sounding space which has multiple and intertwined narrative of complexity. To record the space I need to come closer to it. Simply, I allow myself to fell in love with the sound-space. Photographers already dismantled their tripod and heavy analogue cameras with footage of their images association with this place. The entire space is left for me to record sounds that reflect on my senses.

However, the act of recording sound (or image) is prone to kill the moment of perception. That’s how photography and phonography are equally processes of perversion as they deal with dead moments, if not the recording becomes art by reconstructing meaning of the moment. A handy digital camera can surely register a live moment faithfully (?) into a static image; space based arts like photography thus can record mere surfaces if not it transcends its objective spatiality into the plane of time by memory association, subjective feelings and creative strategy. Analogue camera might have more advantages than digital ones in recording a space with micro-details which reflect emotional involvement in further depth. May be image practitioners can shed more light on it.

In case of sound recording, space becomes time on a recorded track. That’s why sound recording is a time based art. Sound may transcend the time plane when it is installed/ reproduced in an acoustic space depending on how the recording quality represents depth. Deep listening is the process in hearing a space in a personal perception but in recording is much more difficult when it tries to avoid surface capture and kill of sound objects in recording process. While working on my recent assignment I try to find a way to practice deep listening which not only involves spending time in the area and quantitatively capturing sound on recorder, but concentrating while trying to feel the microcosmic world of sounding details that the space offers.  

The experience is useful to me in formulating a similar but quite an ambitious project ‘a landscape in metamorphoses’ for still image, digital video and sound environment, starting early next year.               

In the downtown Florence a few enormous buildings are abandoned, with the confusion of 
civic authorities what to do with them at the backdrop of urban development. One of them
has been proposed to be reconstructed as a place for art installations. Today early morning a 
few local artists/curators visited the place to have a look as the building was opened after 
20 years; I went to record the sound-space for them to be used as reference. 
Its really a huge building, with over-ground 4 storied, and underground 3 storied, in total 
area almost half of a football ground, with no people, only left-over of rejected construction 
materials, quite an interesting place for recording in audio and images. Before I arrive, 
already few photographers started to work with middle and large format cameras on tripod.

I started working with listening intensely to the space and soon observed that the sound-space 
is quite scattered in zones of sound and to record them I have to be within the zone, obviously 
forgetting my very own presence. Last month, while recording inside Dali Museum I also felt 
that, a sound-space essentially combines a number of zones, which are separated by specific 
sound envelops. A painting speaks out in sound not from the visual content, but also from the 
space it covers, for example ‘soft self-portrait with grilled bacon’ sounds quite bizarrely of 
air-conditioners, cheap digital camera shutters, and hisses of people. 

Here in this Florentine building, soon I set out for darker corners for quiteness, and while 
exploring the underground, found an area in the farthest basement of the building immediately 
reminding me of the zone in the film Stalker; a large foreground of silence and water 
dripping in the background; the whole roof is water-leaking and the ground is covered with 
ancient fungus drowned in water. The floor is vibrating with a complex band of low 
frequencies, and whole space sounding of water dripping on water. 

My religion is Hearing and I only belong to the space I can hear. From this believe I prefer to grasp the entire sounding-space with a formidable effort. Here the space can be covered wholely from watery ground. Slowly I lied down on the floor just like Kaidanovsky to find the optimal position to hear more and accommodate sound in my whole perception; it brings me closer to the grounding of the sound sources. I discovered that the 'sweet-spot' lying on the floor and started to hear sound that are reflected on water and going further towards the wall for reflecting back only to form an endless row of gentle, mellow reverberations, which I couldn't hear otherwise. 
I didn’t understand when silence appeared behind me and reminded me to put on my binaural microphone. 

the image is of a zone from Tarkovsky's Stalker, arguably one of the most profound films having discourse on space; the image instantly connotes to a person's association with space, rather than the mere narrative involved.  

Globalization is a term which becomes an all pervasive idea that touches from micro to macro, real to imaginary and theoretical to practical aspects of life. Media as a communication tool, production ideology and consumptive item has both unconditional and conditional nexus with the state of globalization. There is an active network of media in motion across the world which can be termed as the ‘globalised media map’ to study shifting coordinates, hubs and nodes of activity.

Sound elements can be as varied as a piece of music, song, spoken word, ambience, effect, electro-acoustics and noises. These elements are scattered within all forms of media: old and new, analogue and digital, creative and consumptive or nostalgic and futuristic. A certain movement of these sound elements from a localized state (creative/productive end) to a globalised state (consumptive end) is observed if we study the phenomena of media convergence worldwide. For example a ‘traditional’ song from one part of the world floats to another through internet and recieved as a ‘folk’ number; or a piece of field recording is transmitted over media curation as a work of audio art. The major question is how a ‘local’ sound element is losing its characteristics or holding its identity over a ‘global’ shift and in the process how they are received and accepted in the widest end of audience reception.

In this paper I would like to study and measure this phenomena i.e. travel of sound elements in media network across the globe and furthermore wish to raise questions and formulate dialogue over the contemporary issues of identity, convergence and difference in global media.

Outline of my final thesis for semester 1: New Media/Sound Media 

x posted to 

tumbani

Every city has a specific sound identity, which is different from another. Citysound is a search for this quintessential character in its soundscape. Citysound is an anthology of soundscapes about cities and urban landscape. A number of cities are located to record environmental sound extensively from the cityscape through a selection based on aesthetic possibilities of available sounds, for example, a wide sonic variety, frequent unexpected aural juxtaposition, documentation of disappearing and new sounds and spatial associations. Eventually the sounds are shaped up using sound design tools to reproduce as soundscapes. Each of the designs try to represent a city with its quintessential aural colour, texture and quality; each of the reproduced soundscapes are on a constant effort to suggest the city's aural personality by describing specific sound fixation within a backdrop of a moving city sound environment.


x posted to

tumbani

Ghats are the city’s reaching points to water. A ghat is essentially the jetty, but more than being a mere meeting point of people and ferries, it’s an organic association between people and river that each ghat accommodates. A metropolis survives its urban claustrophobia if water touches its body; a city by a river or sea is livable as water absorbs sweat and neurosis of city life. Ganga is the source of sustenance for Kolkata..

The series of ghats around river Ganga in Kolkata suggests a vibrant and active sound environment. A wide depth of field of sonic variety can be perceived on an alert sound walk on these ghats. Sounds from moving trains on the circular rail crossfades with steamer siren from river and steamer siren gets merged with bells and chimes from the kali temples. Frequent unexpected aural juxtapositions and silences are observed within audibility. Sound from nearby tram lines and busy traffic intrudes into sonic actuality of blind alleys. A continuous and ancient sound of Ganga river gets layered with new building constructions.

Sounds collected on recording media have been reproduced again to represent a locale and its acoustic anthropology within a changing cityscape. This is to be observed that recorded everyday sound can powerfully evoke local detail and document soundscape of city in a microcosm. 

Preview: http://www.sendspace.com/file/elqfqr

As we continue listening to more accurate sound fields, there are birds, airplane moves through the clouds, and so on. In case of a subjective approach to follow different sounding objects around us, our hearing will lose some or give attention to some particular sounds. If an omni-directional microphone replaces this hearing with a given depth of field closer to ear, it will record all the sources together to form a soundscape of this given space within this given time. While reproducing we will be surprised to understand the perspective of aural depth, will be able to hear more from our surrounding. The soundcape will serve as a linear representation of a vast field of environmental sound, a collective of sound elements scattered within the active aural space around us. 

Only two things required, one microphone and a recorder...
(and an interested pair of ears off course)

Once we get conscious of the sounds happening around us, we will find pleasure in hearing. It’s a matter of giving attention, and in the process getting out of our own closed selves. It’s such a wonderful feeling to hear surrounding audio world; a layer of different textures, tones and depth of field. When I write this text I hear for example, the most prevalent sound from laptop fan, in the range of immediate perspective this is the closest one other than my own breathing and sounds from keyboard. As the depth of field of hearing goes beyond this proximity, sound from distant traffic intruding into a perceived silence of this room, but there is no actual silence in a given space if not completely alienated/insulated from outside; a constant hum or so called room tone exists in a much lower frequency than laptop fan, hiding itself as a sound source if not consciously located of its sounding presence.

It’s a matter of pointing out the sources of sound, to give focus and locate different sounding objects with a simple effort; otherwise sounds continue to stay off our conscious level of hearing, eludes of the happiness of hearing and connecting ourselves to the world…