We had the good fortune during the recent Tuned City pre-event, to spend some time in the historic Sea Plane Hanger currently under renovation in Tallinn. The idea of working in the Hangar was initiated by sculptor Lukas Kühne who happened to walk by the structure on an earlier visit to Tallinn and hear some echoes emanating from inside. The particular acoustic effect of this site slowly developed into the notion of a ‘sonic landmark’ the general theme for Tuned City Tallinn 2011. While being a sonic landmark for us, the building is also a historic landmark on the national scale. It was commissioned by the last czar of Russia and built just before the communist revolution of 1917. The domes that make up the roof characterize a style of light freestanding concrete structures designed and built well before such forms were found in the modernist era. The fact that it survived two world wars and the soviet era is also rather remarkable. The hangar is now under renovation and will be turned into a Maritime Museum.

For the purposes of Tuned City, the unique arched dome structure of the hangar offered a great example of ‘aural architecture‘ with the possibility of artistic exploration and intervention. Below are some examples and clips from the pre-preparation events of May 18-29, 2010. The three examples shown here each take a different approach to working with the space, from the technical precision of Granchow’s ‘Crescents’ to the social improvisatory group process of Lukas Kühne’s ‘Sound and Form’ workshop. What is clear in the recordings is the effect the curved ceiling has on the impulse of the sound which comes out as a traveling echo that disperses throughout the space. What does not come across is how strongly the effect changes with the relative position of the listener in the space. The recordings below were made by me and are shorter excerpts from longer pieces by each author.

 

Raviv Granchow – Crescents

Raviv Granchow – Crescents

Thomas Ankersmit – site-specific performance

Ankersmit site-specific

 

Lukas Kühne – Form and Sound workshop

Lukas Kuhne form and sound

video showing the process within the space (sound quality is basic as this was filmed on a digital camera)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Report from the New Maps of Time sound workshop Calgary Canada

‘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. read more…

Workshop organized by EMMEDIA, artist-run project space, from April 20th – 23rd, 2010. Special thanks to Tomas Jonsson and the helpful crew at EMMEDIA for coordinating this event and to Eesti Kultuurkapital for travel support.

Click the image to see the Calgary Sound Map on Radio Aporee

Some notes… Calgary is a modern city that sprawls out on the plains of western Canada just east of the Canadian rocky mountains. On the surface the usual urban soundscape of car traffic and construction noise blankets the subtleties of the larger environmental context that could potentially link the city’s relatively close proximity to nature (there are few industrial relics downtown). An abundance of paths along the river and an active public life offer more space to more diverse aspects of navigating the city. This where I found some of the more unique elements explored during the workshop. There were two pedestrian suspension bridges over the river that are highly dynamic structures rich with sonic qualities. The pedestrian network downtown known as the +15 walkway system is a feature of the city that blurs the boundary of public and commercial space. A study of the bridges of the +15 system gave a different sonic and visual perspective than the standard street level counterpart. This can be seen in the videos compiled below.

The Sound Locations channel on Vimeo has 3 videos made during the workshop. All sounds were left as they were recorded (no effects or processing done during post production):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

B/W, 57 minutes
PAL HD, 16:9

filmed/recorded: 2006-2009
edited: 2009

concept, camera, editing: John Grzinich

additional sound: Patrick Mcginley

collaborative recordings made with: Patrick McGinley, Jim Haynes, Toomas Thetloff, Maksims Shentelevs, Kaspars Kalninsh, Eamon Sprod, Hitoshi Kojo, Evelyn Müürsepp

equipment and support: MoKS – Center for Art and Social Practice, Mooste Estonia.

Sound Aspects of Material Elements is a film that shows a specific approach to the artistic use of sound. It covers a 3 year period of the authors solo work and in collaboration with a number of close colleagues. The film documents the in-situ process of exploration and sonification of the landscape along with the numerous objects and structures found there using sound as a medium for interaction and activation.

As most of the sound recordings emphasize the use of certain materials (metal, wood, glass) in combination with natural elements (water, wind fire) the processes take on alchemical characteristics as we listen in. We see and hear aeolian metal wires in the wind, structures affected by fire, water, snow and the casual effects of human interventions in insect worlds. The sonic outcomes can be subtle and sometimes below our own perception so a variety of recording techniques are employed. Contact microphones are placed on surfaces shifting our attention toward the internal resonances of the materials themselves while mini microphones reveal spaces normally inaccessible by our ears.

With its minimal editing style and durational shots, Sound Aspects of Material Elements shifts our attention toward and extended view of time and place, of the ever changing micro-processes that hint to eternal growth and decay inherent to cycles of nature itself. The possibilities to intercept, shape, disrupt, recombine and capture the elements  through creative experiments is what this film attempts to document in he hope that it may inspire the viewer to do the same.

premiere screening April 17th, 2010 : CUFF – Calgary Underground Film Festival

DVD release info coming soon…

 

animate structures #4

Click here to view the embedded video.

this video features a set of specific locations where aspects of the land, abandoned structures and forces of wind come together.

 

just some of the materials and textures to be found in the areas around the headlands.

Travel support provided by Eesti Kultuurkapital.

It was a busy week in Berlin but one of the nice surprises was a visit to Teufelsberg, a former NSA ‘listening station’ that has been abandoned since the wall came down. This small complex of buildings sits on top of an artificial mountain of rubble left over from the second world war. A group of us went to listen to something else, the space itself. Actually there were multiple spaces that included some old concrete military buildings and a series of geodesic domes, which I imagine, must have housed the surveillance equipment. The highest dome, sits at least 7 stories up, has a fiberglass shell that offers many sonic possibilities with its unique acoustic properties. The video below is composed of a few clips I filmed (in very windy conditions) while the sound is excerpted from a straight recording of a 40 minute improvisation of 5 people. Special thanks to Natalia for suggesting this and for Dusan to drive us out there in the snow.

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘tendencies of infinite expansion’ looks at the finer qualities of flow dynamics and of materials in the solid, liquid and gaseous states; observing transitional air and noise fields of slowly shifting layers and changing densities. For me, this experiment marked another phase in an ongoing audio/visual investigation of movement patterns in thermodynamic systems. Small particles of dry ice were placed in various temperatures of water to see what characteristics it took on within the rapid phase change.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Workshop Dates: 9-13th October 2009

Festival Dates: 10-16th October
in collaboration with FAMU, Skolska28, Open EYE project, Four Days in Motion festival, Biennial Vesitges of Industry

online: Radio Aporee Maps | Prague Favourite sounds

Site-specific sound actions:

Museum of former Sewage Plant – Piece for 10 underground channels: mp3 file

Passage way in central Prague – Komedie Pasaz action with multiple mics: mp3 file

Stromovka Park in Prague – Clapping action with multiple mics: mp3 file

 

Video gallery on Vimeo

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Over the past year I’ve been developing a workshop concept that involves a whole range of ideas. The workshop known as “Mutopia” started somewhat accidentally last year at MoKS summer symposium AVAMAA when I decided to collaborate with Tero Nauha, a researcher and performance artist from Finland. We both had our own workshop plans but combined them to form something new. The outcome was more than we expected and therein was one of the core ideas, to create something that is collaborative, all inclusive and provides conditions for open exchanges. What follows is a general frame for the efforts of the participants to be coordinated. As I describe on the new Vimeo page:

Mutopia is a process oriented workshop environment that explores collaboration, collective creativity and open forms of authorship. This is done through social and environmental research, exercises, games and the use of mixed artistic media such as sound, collage, text, performance etc…

The videos here are composted aspects of the process but should not necessarily be considered the only “results”. The outcome is more the subjective experiences of the individuals who participate and contribute.

The collaborative aspect is essential. I’m trying not to steer a particular direction for the group and avoid the format and product mentality. The videos came out because of the possibility to layer the different processes into some composite form but other outcomes are there. Some of the texts hold well on their own as well as the readings of the texts. This is the importance of understanding the strength of subjectivity, that each participant sees their own contribution in the whole, where collective authorship is the prime motivation once people open up and get inspired. the narratives come directly out of the process and in fact are multiple.

I’m interested in being much more of a guide for the processes and mediator of the ideas than an artist who shapes the world around me to “fit” certain ideas. With each step of the process we break to desire to determine goals allowing indeterminacy to take its course.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mutopia locations:

Mutopia 1 – AVAMAA MoKS Summer art symposium – 8.2008
Mutopia 2 – X-OP symposium, Macao Portual – 4.2009
Mutopia 3 – AVAMAA MoKS Summer art symposium – 8.2009
Mutopia 4 – Polymer Culture Factory, Tallinn – 12.2009
Mutopia 5 – Jelgava University, Latvia – 12.2009
Mutopia 6 – X-OP symposium, Tomar Portugal – 5.2010

New video up. This is a straight forward sound mix made in my backyard using both live mics and contact mics. No post-processing or composing was done. A higher quality version is available on my Vimeo page. The video was from hand held material recorded on a panasonic digital camera.

The Location Sound Films installation will be exhibited during the Liquid Architecture festival in Australia. The festival is one of the largest events of its kind showcasing sound related art and experimental music in seven cities across the continent.

Details for the exhibition is as follows:

Alan Lamb | Rosalind Hall | Dale Gorfinkel | Peter Blamey | John Grzinich
11.07.09 – 25.07.09
Opening: Saturday 11 July 3 – 5pm
West Space Gallery – Melbourne

Special thanks to Camilla Hannan for helping set this up and Eamon Sprod for continued support.