Analysis of… finding creative responses to… the acoustic spaces and sound environments of Łódź

A collaborative project led by John Grzinich in cooperation with Muzeum Sztuki Łódź

April 1-10, 2012

Coordinated by Aleksandra Jach and Katarzyna Słoboda of MSL in the frame of Ekologie Miejskie

This project aims to understand the role that sound plays within the ecology of urban life, through a continuous series of analytical exercises and artistic interventions. Working with sound implies that all activities are context specific as sound is always intimately linked to space in which it occurs and the materials and actions from which it originates. The dimensions of these sonic possibilities are as varied as the architectural and social contexts of urban environments.

Some questions we addressed were; How can we analyze and address the increasingly homogenized sounds of urban environments from traffic and other forms of urban “noise”? How can we creatively respond to the effect of urban noise on the loss of character or identity of a place? What are desirable sound environments? How can we establish new codes or behaviors that help shape our sound environments? How can we adapt or modify existing the architectural to develop new acoustic spaces? How can we identify unique or characteristic social patterns that help shape the sonic identity of a place? What role does technology play in this process, specifically newly available and more affordable digital recording technologies?

The final performance entitled ‘POD NAD’ was developed by the participants; Aleksandra Chciuk, Sławas Lewy, Maciej Ożóg, Jarek Szewczyk

The ecology of urban environments is based on the relations of living organisms, the majority of which are human beings. As we are the dominant part of the urban ecology we must observe, reflect and react to every aspect of our behavior. No other medium presents the sensitivity of an ecology than sound and yet sound is one of the most ignored and neglected signifiers of our informative environment.

With POD NAD we aim to play with the balance of two distinct environments using only sound. To investigate the relation of these environments we will transmit sounds from one space to another and play with minute levels of feedback through holes in the membrane. The spaces in question are the Freedom Square of Lodz and an underground oval channel that lies just beneath the street surface, hidden from the eyes of everyday pedestrians. Through this performance we not only wish to understand the relationships of these two spaces, but also to engage the listening abilities of the performers and public as an interconnected system and thus question our own role in the urban ecology.

Full recording from POD NAD from inside the tunnel: POD NAD inside tunnel

and this is an audio/video work I created from our investigations of the city:

engraved glass eg.p018

new release available as a high quality CDr or BandCamp digital download

five spring chorus field recordings, made in the early hours of the morning in natural wilderness environments in Estonia. Simplicity, clarity and the richness of the sonic landscapes documented make this release a fascinating listen.

1. Ööküll forest house, small pond with frogs. Recorded June 28th, 2010 at around 1:30 am
2. Water insect and beaver territory, Räpina Polder. Recorded May 29th, 2011 at around 1:30 am
3. Diverse calls of the Emajõe Suursoo (Ema River delta). Recorded May 15th, 2011 at around 3:00 am
4. Quiet field with Corn Crakes on the road from Rasina. Recorded June 28th, 2010 at around 2:30 am
5. Noisy island on Meelva lake with Cuckoo chorus. Recorded May 21st, 2011 at around 3:30 am

Preview

available as a limited edition taiyo yuden disc, mounted on an A5 art card with accompanying A6 postcard and as a digital download.

This entry contains a variety of material documenting my two month residency at the Nida Art Colony on the western shore of Lithuania. The colony was opened in spring of this year as a branch of the Vilnius Academy of Art, which purchased the original building in the early 1990s, but invested recently in a completely reconstructed facility. The new building houses five residency studios for visiting artists and an array of guest rooms, kitchens and conference rooms to accommodate a variety of events, workshops and symposia.

For the focus of my residency I have proposed the following:

sound – subject / object – site

This two month residency concentrates on sound and the signification resulting from the merging of material objects, affects the elements and positioning within the landscape. By listening in to this process we expand the connections to our environment by taking the role of wanderers, seekers, collectors and instigators. Daily field excursions around the Curonian Split involves phonographic studies, short sound actions and temporary installations that become the basic frames by which to listen and document. The collected materials will be edited and composed into an audio/visual film along with an exhibit containing the physical objects. Collaborations were welcome to open this working format into a continual creative dialogue between objects, spaces and the local environment.

gallery of objects and interventions

several colleagues came for short visits to collaborate, namely Yiorgis Sakellariou, Evelyn Müürsepp, Max Shentalevs, and Andrius Rugys.

From December 2-4 I gave a sound workshop for students from VMU in Kaunas. Thanks to Tautvydas and the Colony for coordinating this. The b&w photos are from Eglou Baltrušaičių.

Excerpts of 2 sound exercises:
exercise – open narrative exercise – open narrative

exercise – word association exercise – word association

This video is meant for the workshop students to illustrate how different type of microphones sound

Click here to view the embedded video.

changing seaside and lagoon of the Curonian Split

surrounding landscapes of the Curonian Split

In addition to all of this, I produced six episodes of a weekly radio show entitled the “Sound Seed Transmissions” on the local radio station Neringa FM. You can listen to all the shows here.

One from the archives… Tower guide wires on a mountain top in central Portugal resonating in the wind. Recorded in 2008 with a pair of contact mics while in a residency at Binauralmedia in Nodar.

‘sonic scratch cycles’ is the working title for a collaborative sound and drawing project between myself and EKU (Evelyn Müürsepp). The project is based on an ongoing series of collaborative site-specific actions recorded in different locations. Each location has its own spatial and material properties which are ‘translated’ into sounds and drawings. Each action is timed and lasts as long as it takes me to make one rotation around Evelyn, who sits in the center and draws what she hears. She wears a binaural microphone setup and listens through headphones as I improvise with activating the surroundings.

Ahja river bridge
This track is the companion recording to the drawing above which was done at a bridge crossing a local river.

Silo take 02
This recording was made in an abandoned silo tower in Mooste. Notice the rain.

‘sonic scratch cycles’ was first presented as an installation as part of a group exhibition at Kibla in Maribor Slovenia. The drawings were presented in the circular hanging structure with two speakers providing the binaural soundtrack. The viewer/listener takes the role of of the ‘actors’ or ‘translators’ who preserved and presented the evidence of their actions.

Residency: August 4 – 21, 2011

New Maps of Time is a project and workshop about mapping architectural structures and urban spaces using sound as a means to analyze and express actions within a space. This edition of the workshop focuses on the notion of personal narratives and the creation of ‘audible geographies’ through the process of exploring the sonic potential of Vienna. The workshop part is concentrated on collaborating with local guides who would show me around the town in an attempt to discover unique spaces, sonic effects and playable objects and structures. In return I share my interests in using sound to shape and form a different perspective through listening and developing simple site-specific activities and  interventions. Read the full project description…

Guides: For this edition I enjoyed working with guides for daily excursions around Vienna. The guides joined for however much time they had. Different guides joined for different days. The guides were friends or curious contacts who had an interest in walks, biking, wandering, psychogeography, urban exploration etc. Each guide showed some unique and interesting places in Vienna (parks, plazas, unique buildings or structures, abandoned or transitional spaces, rooftops, bridges, tunnels etc.). Excursions involved sound and/or video recording depending on what we found. Special thanks to the guides who took time to show me around: Tobias, Sari, Markus, Andrea, Rob, Elffriede, Uwe, Michael, Radmila,

Project timeline:

Thursday August 4th, 18:00 – Introduction and public presentation about New Maps of Time, Transforming Freedom Space in the MQ

Friday August 5th – Wednesday August 19th – field work with guides and collaborators, site-specific actions around Vienna

Saturday August 21st – presentation of workshop outcomes

click on the above image to listen to recordings made in Vienna

Residency hosted by Transforming Freedom and sponsored by X-OP

and below are two video documents edited from the material recorded in Vienna.

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘Vienna Sound Locations’ a sonic survey of various sites around the city, found while wandering and exploring.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This video shows a sonic effect of a concrete overhang that reflects the sound of water in the Wienfluss canal below. The masking effect of the water can be heard in the first minute although not in the second.

Dock e.V. (Berlin) and MoKS (Mooste) presents:

TUNED CITY TALLINN

Sonic Landmarks – a sonic path through Tallinn
official program of the European Cultural Capital Tallinn 2011

4th – 10th JULY 2011 / Tallinn Estonia

“Most people would probably say that architecture does not produce sound, it cannot be heard. But neither does it radiate light yet it can be seen. We see the light it reflects and thereby gain an impression of form and material. In the same way we hear the sounds it reflects and they, too, give us an impression of form and material”
(Steen Eiler Rasmussen – Experiencing Architecture (1959)

Hear Tallinn with new ears! Buildings and architecture are usually described in visual terms. But it is often our sense of hearing which assists us in experiencing and navigating through the spaces of urban cities.
There is no sound without space and no space without a sound. In every day life we are surrounded by the sounds of diverse nature and various origins. Language, sounds of nature and civilisation – sound as a carrier of information or as a factor of disturbance permanently encircles our consciousness.

Tuned City Tallinn will undertake an acoustic exploration of Tallinn. The goal will be to identify and explore the sonic landmarks of the city which define its identity, shape its communication and transform the perceptions of its visitors and inhabitants. A fascinating cross-section of international artists, performers, scientists and thinkers will be brought together to present their ideas about sound and space. In addition, the public will be invited to participate directly through a series of workshops and sound walks and experience diverse site-specific installations, performances and demonstrations.

[1] WORKSHOPS

[2] SPEAKING WITH SPACE – CONCERT PROGRAM

[3] SONORITY OF PLACE – CONFERENCE PROGRAM

[4] SITE SPECIFIC PROGRAM

—–

WORKSHOPS

In close collaboration with our partner Ptarmigan (http://ptarmigan.ee), we are offering a series of workshops short before and during the event in July. Invited artists will each share their individual tools for listening to the city, and offer both a deeper insight into their artistic practice and a chance for the participants to become actively involved in the program of the event. And whether those tools be telephones, acoustic tubes, electronic transducers, radio waves or physical movement, the participants in these workshops will never hear the city the same way again.

These workshops are open for registration right now:

City sounds concerts / June 28 – July 3 2011
with Ici-Même (Grenoble, F)
http://www.tunedcity.net/?page_id=1881

Methaphones workshop / July 4 + 5 2011
with Unsworn Telecom (Stockholm, SE)
http://www.tunedcity.net/?lp_lang_pref=en&page_id=1472

12-tone filter / July 4 – 10 2011 (during the event)
with eyland 07, René Rissland, Jürgen Lehmeier (Nürnberg, D)
http://www.tunedcity.net/?page_id=1478

Tuning the City / July 5 – 10 2011 (during the event)
with Mads Bech Paluszewski (Copenhagen, DK)
http://www.tunedcity.net/?page_id=1715

framework radio – documentation and production / July 7 – 10 2011 (during the event)
with Felicity Ford (UK) and Valeria Merlini (IT / D)
on behalf of Patrick McGinley, framework radio (US / EE)
http://www.tunedcity.net/?page_id=1503

An overview can be found here: http://www.tunedcity.net/?lp_lang_pref=en&page_id=950

—–

SPEAKING WITH SPACE – CONCERT PROGRAM

07.07.2011 20:00
Charles Curtis (US) – Naldjorlak (by Eliane Radigue)

08.07.2011 21:00
Charlemagne Palestine (BE) – Schlingen Blängen (organ performance)

Click here to view the embedded video.

09.07.2011 21:00
Thomas Ankersmit (NL/D) – Saxophone and Synthesizer Improvisation

10.07.2011 21:00
Maja S.K. Ratkje (NO) – Electro-acoustic Vocals

Traditional and classical music often treat the performance hall as a tabula rasa to be inscribed with sound, and even improvised music can overlook the site it is performed within as an important factor. So what happens when a musician decides to play a duo with space as the partner?

Tuned City has invited four vibrant, innovative and influential contemporary performers to address the topic of sound and space through four individual music performances. Each artist has developed a special relationship over their career with their chosen instrument–the cello, the organ, the saxophone and the voice–which becomes like a spoken idiom to them. Using this unique language, the performers will engage in dialog with a variety of spaces, from the warm, wooden intimacy of a 14th Century horse mill to the cold, concrete depth of Soviet-era industrial structures.

Read more: http://www.tunedcity.net/?lp_lang_pref=en&page_id=1268

Buy Tickets: http://www.piletilevi.ee/est/piletid/tallinn_2011/muusika/?show=22397

—–

SONORITY OF PLACE – CONFERENCE PROGRAM

This series aims at drawing correspondences between ‚architecture‘ and ‚sound‘ to a more primary relation between notions of ‚place‘ and ‚practices of listening‘. In other words to underscore an interplay between the sense of being ‚situated‘ and the intentionality of what is being ‚heard‘. It is from within this primary level of interactions that a sense of ‚sound‘ as well as a notion of ‚site‘, and by extension ‚architecture‘, are derived in the first place. For the current constellation of talks and presentations a particular emphasis is placed on an understanding of listening, not a biological constant, but rather a ‚practice‘ that both shapes and is shaped by various contexts. In this sense every mode of hearing is understood to be distributed across a diversity of practices and disciplines.

Talks and presentations as well as pertinent artist projects and presentations included in this Tuned City event draw upon recent developments in such diverse fields as urbanism, art and architecture history and theory, philosophy, sensory history, sensory ethnography, archaeoacoustics and musicology, getting closer to what may be at stake in auditory models of ‚situated-ness‘. One common approach, shared by the various practitioners, understands the ‚sonic imagination‘ to be an operative mode of thinking. It is this mode of thinking that potentially engages the social, aesthetic and even ethical, political implications of an attentiveness to the sonority of place. Please have a closer look:

http://www.tunedcity.net/?page_id=1378

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SITE-SPECIFIC PROGRAM

To properly explore the sonic effects possible within the cityscape, it is often necessary to move beyond the traditional model of the seated conference- or performance-audience. For Tallinn 2011, we aspire to present a selection of innovative and fresh sound experiences across several specially-selected locations in the city.

Taking place each afternoon, the Site Specific Projects are a modular series of parallel programs featuring soundwalks, performances, installations and interventions. These projects involve the audience in a new way of experiencing sound and space through the use of sculptural, graphical, musical and sonic means. Some of the projects are designed for a small group of people, keeping the experience of the project both participatory and intimate. Such projects may be offered several times during the Tuned City event. Other projects may only be offered once within the context of the conference program, and some may require registration to keep the audience within a certain size. Please check the project descriptions at our website for more information:

http://www.tunedcity.net/?page_id=1446

Gallery #1

Gallery #2

Sponsors

June 11-12, 2011, Helsinki Finland

Organized by Äänen Lumo

Led by John Grzinich and Patrick McGinley

Temporal Soundings was a unique 2 day workshop and overnight retreat that took place at Galleria Oksasenkatu 11 and the surrounding urban area in central Helsinki. The focus of the workshop was on the temporal aspects of sound recording and site-specific sound activity combining found objects and spatial interventions. The program of the workshop revolved around working with and analyzing two contrasting times of day, midnight and mid-day. Using these two times as a frame, we looked at the natural soundscape, found materials and physical spaces as ‘sonic potential’ for human intervention. This involved a range of activities from passive listening exercises to more active explorations using improvisation and game play. The focus developed into working within an hour long session at opposite times of the day, midnight to 1 am and noon to 1 pm by 3 separate groups in different parts of the city. Several concise 5 minute field recordings were made by each group that explored both active and passive approaches to interventions within specific sites. Following these ‘magic hour’ sessions we listened back to the recordings to analyze the temporal aspects of the sounds, events and actions that were documented.

The following recordings are excerpts from recordings I made in collaboration with two of the participants, Kikka and Joel. The first half of each track was from the evening and the second was from the same location approximately 12 hours later. See what differences you notice while listening.

Passive field recording, small marina

Small intervention, tree and park sounds

Site-specific action, playing the Sibelius sculpture

Special thanks to the participants for their enthusiasm and energy and to Otso and Juuso for their exceptional organization.

During the week of April 11-17th, I spent the week in an area of Nuremberg known as Muggenhof, as part of a mini-Tuned City event. Our base was a building known as the Quelle, an extremely large facility that for many years, housed the distribution of goods from the Quelle catalog mail order company. The company has since closed so the building remains largely unused. We were very fortunate to have access to such a facility for the workshop.

The workshops focused on a wide variety of topics from recording techniques and microphone types to perception of sound and using architecture as an instrument. Because of the relatively low turnout of participants everyone worked together sharing knowledge and experiences.

The following recording was composed from a series of sound actions that intended to highlight the acoustic qualities of seven different spaces in the Quelle. For each recording the same set objects and structure of action was used. In this case 4 metal waste baskets found in the building were dragged evenly from corner to corner by 4 people.

Other aspects of the workshop included sound recording theory and practice overview led by Derek Holzer. This led to mapping and recording of sounds throughout the Muggenhof district by participants of the workshop. A ‘sound map’ was then made using the Radio Aporee Maps interface and presented at the end of the week. Click on the image below to see the map.

The scale of the Quelle building is impressive. One can spend hours wandering the 5 floors, much as I did. A survey of the Quelle spaces can be seen and heard in this video (please use headphones):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Special thanks to Carsten, Rene, Jurgen for helping organize this, the city of Nürnberg for support and especially to the participants of our workshops for their time and energy.

Report from the New Maps of Time sound workshop Torun Poland.

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘New Maps of Time’ is a project and workshop about mapping architectural structures and urban spaces using sound as a means to analyze and express actions within a space. This edition of the workshop focuses on the notion of personal narratives. Rather than work with a group read the full project description…

This workshop concentrated on collaborating with local guides who would show me around the town in an attempt to discover unique spaces, sonic effects and playable objects. In the end I worked with 5 guides who were very helpful and engaged in the process of exploring the city through sound.

click the map above to listen to the sounds on Radio Aporee Maps

Click here to view the embedded video.

Workshop organized by Krzysztof Gutfrański, and hosted by the Center for Contemporary Art Torun, from April 4th-9th 2011. Special thanks to Krzysztof Gutfrański and the helpful people at CSW for arranging this workshop.

The Sound Map of Tallinn project involves the research and production of a guide to the city of Tallinn from an auditory perspective. Working as an interdisciplinary group (Anthropologists, Architects, Urbanists, Artists), the initial phase involves researching the sonic qualities of the urban environment including its spaces, flows, characteristics and cultural life. We will be asking if a city has its own sound and if so, what defines this sound and how does this shape its identity?

The second phase will be to translate our research data and transform it into a visual language that reads as a map. This map, with its symbols, diagrams and text, must act as a guide to both the permanent inhabitant and the casual visitor, who will hear the city in a new way by tuning in and listening with open ears. The final form will be printed and distributed freely during the event of the Tallinn 2011 European Capital of Culture.

The Sound Map of Tallinn is being conducted in the frame of Tuned City, a platform which proposes an examination of the relations between architecture and sound. The project draws the traditions of critical discussion about urban space within the architecture and urban planning discourse, as well as its strategies and working methods, into the context of sound art.

Below is a gallery of images from the Sound Map Visualization workshop weekend held at MoKS and was led by Andreas Töpfer and Carsten Stabenow.

projected partners and sponsors: MoKS, Tuned City, Tallinn 2011 foundation, Dept of Social and Cultural Anthropology Tallinn University, Eesti Kultuurkapital

‘revenant : zeltini’ 01:05:07

unfathomless 05 CD

site-specific session with: Eamon Sprod (Tarab), Max Shentelevs, John Grzinich, Kaspars Kalninsh and Felicity Mangan

recorded November 15, 2008 at Zeltini, Latvia

mixed the following months from 4 synchronized binaural recordings (or ‘multi-naural’ as I refer to it).

‘revenant‘ is an ongoing project with open membership that focuses on site-specific acoustic actions. All sounds originate from materials found in-situ, and from interactions with the space itself.

Zelitini is a former Soviet military base located in the forests of Northeastern Latvia which is now abandoned. This particular base housed missiles from the Soviet nuclear arsenal that needed to be stored in large horizontal bunkers. On this visit we arrived rather late and found that most of the bunkers had been locked up. As it grew dark and cold we decided to set up in the last open bunker to record as we new it would be our only chance to collaborate in this unique space.

Reviews

An ongoing project with open membership, that is what Revenant is about. On their second (?) CD, we find John Grzinich again, but with four new members, Maksims Shentelevs, Eamon Sprod, Kaspars Kalninsh and Felicity Mangan. The five of them went to Zeltini, a former Soviet army base in Latvia and they looked for some stuff to create music with, as this is another angle of Revenant. Find material on the site, and play that as it were instruments, using the space as its concert space or studio. Again we are not told how this was recorded or edited, but for about fifty plus minutes we hear these five persons moving through the bunker space, toying around with the various objects they found in this space, like glass, stones and metal. This is done in a musical manner, through means of improvisation. Not a random scattering of debris, but listening and interacting with each other and creating music with non-musical objects. There are overtones to be found here, which are hard to place (wind? somebody blowing a pipe?), which add a nice textural tone to the proceedings. Maybe like the previous one, this is the natural element that is being used here. I am not entirely sure. The only reference I could think of is the recent work of Jeph Jerman – closely miked acoustic objects being played, but then in the large resonating bunker in Latvia. Not the most easy listening one around, but surely some great music has been captured here. (Frans de Waard on Vital Weekly)

Revenant (I can’t help but think of some especially powerful and frightening figures from Doom) on this occasion, November 2008 in Latvia, consisted of Maksims Shentelevs, Eamon Sprod, John Grzinich, kaspars Kalninsh and Felicity Mangan (though Grzinich writes: “‘revenant’ is an ongoing project with open membership”). No instrumentation is mentioned and, further, there’s a notation on the sleeve stating, “Final piece edited from 4 synchronized binaural recordings”.
Perhaps it’s the cover imagery, maybe the former-SSR setting, but it’s quite tempting to hear this dark, brooding music as inhabiting a Stalker-like environment. There’s an oppressiveness, a dank aspect wherein one thinks of cold, clammy surfaces, algae-covered wall, ancient heavy machinery. The two overriding sounds areas are a blurred, metallic kind of drone, as though there’s a sputtering engine at work somewhere down the dark corridor and the clanking of light metal objects, linked like chains, skittering across the foreground. Small rhythms emerge: soft-mallet taps with a vaguely gamelan feel, as though at least one of the devices lying around still functions. Some faint voices then, rather surprisingly, a jew’s harp, strumming away in a loose rhythm, verging on a melodic fragment, a hapless fellow traveler in the sewers. This continues for the final 10+ minutes of the work, some increasingly violent clatter alongside, until the sounds skid to a conclusion among the chirps of mechanical beetles and sloshing water.
The work is almost static, in a sense, minor events drifting in and out of focus; again, one thinks of the lengthy water-covered floor shot of Tarkovsky, though the focus here isn’t quite so sharp. (Brian Olewnick on Just Outside)

Revenant is an open-membership project carried on by a number of specialists of location recording, in this occasion the quintet of Maksims Shentelevs, Eamon Sprod, John Grzinich, Kaspars Kalninsh and Felicity Mangan. The environment inspiring this release is an abandoned Soviet military base in a Latvian forest, comprising large horizontal bunkers where missiles were once stored. One of them – the only that hasn’t been shut yet – was used for a semi-transcendental experience in which the participants spread around the place in almost total darkness, “feeling my way through the space by hand and by ear” as noted by Sprod. As always in this sort of venture, we have to divide things. On a side, the value of the product as a document of a unique event, obviously higher for those who lived it. On the other, audiences at home trying to find elements of interest in something that risks sounding as a thousand of products of comparable origin. In this case, the professionalism of the people involved and their ability of determining the building’s responsiveness and its inherent musicality made the difference and – although I wouldn’t say that the album is really special – a good part of the resounding materials is sufficiently evocative to justify the need of spinning the disc several times to look for additional details and psychological hints. At any rate, let me be very explicit: in this house, stretched frequency auras and baffling resonances will forever be preferred to rustling noises and “scrape, rattle ‘n’ roll” incidents, of which there’s no shortage here. (Massimo Ricci on Touching Extremes)