The time of the white nights is quickly passing. In this part of the year I try to make regular excursions out into the countryside to record during the late evening and early morning solitude. One of my favorite places to visit is an embankment on the western shore of Peipsi lake (bordering with Russia). If the air is still enough, the subtly changing colors of the sky reflect beautifully off the surface of the water. The photos above are just a humble tribute to this magical display of light. On this particular night, it was so quiet, there was almost nothing to record sound-wise except for the occasional fish leaping up to catch insects. Below are two excepts from longer recordings made in the past month.

This first recording was made by a small pond in the forest. There are frogs moving around directly in front of the mics, but you can hear many soft sounds in the distance from the forest and a remote farm.

This recording was made after the traditional mid-summer day (St. Johns day or Jaanipäev), when the evening soundscape shifts dramatically from bird life up in the trees to cricket and grasshopper life in the grassy open fields. Unfortunately there are mosquitoes present nearly all the time and they seem to like the furry wind covers on my microphones.

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.

Here are several field recording made during a recent visit to Portugal. These recordings were made in several different spaces throughout the Convent of the Order of Christ, inside well preserved castle of the Knights Templar. When the castle opens at 9:00 there are few people in the off season. For the sake of discreetness I used the internal mics of the Sony PCM-D50.

Small chapel off the first cloister (sounds of cleaning women)

Convent small chapel

Main cloister (water fountain and bird sounds)

Convent main cloister

Third cloister (with circling sparrows)

Convent cloister with sparrows

John Grzinich “Continued To Be” 30:05

composed from field recordings and electronic sounds made January-March 2010 in Ahja Estonia, Kiel and Berlin Germany, Istanbul Turkey and Austin Texas.

original composition for webcast on Wednesday, March 24th 2010

World TB Day

To Be Continued… 24 hours of live music from all over the world on http://www.stazioneditopolo.it

With World Tuberculosis Day marked every year on March 24, advocates and supporters in the fight against TB are preparing to raise awareness on the disease. Among the most unusual events is “To Be Continued…” which will take place in Topolò, Italy. To Be Continued – or TBC (which in Italian is the abbreviation for tuberculosis) – will be a unique sound experience – an original concert that will last a full 24 hours starting at midnight and ending at midnight on the following day, and therefore covering the entire March 24 World TB Day.

During this uninterrupted 24 hour marathon, invited musicians from all over the world will play live music and mark the day with sounds and musical pieces. Every musician, from all four corners of the world, will have at their disposal a 30 minute window, and thus create a relay of sounds and rhythms. The event will be streamed through www.stazioneditopolo.it website. Radio Onde Furlane from Italy and Radio Zero from Portugal will simulcast part of the event. The music featured will be varied, from classical music to the Jewish-influenced klezmer, from ambient to experimental sounds, from jazz to ethnic music, all uninterrupted for 24 hours.

The initiative is coordinated by Antonio Della Marina, a contemporary musician and computer music composer, and by Moreno Miorelli, artistic director of the annual gathering “Stazione di Topolò/Postaja Topolove”. The concert is under the aegis of the Global Health Incubator, the ‘laboratory’ established in July last year in Topolo’/Topolove within the ‘Stazione’ event, to create links between the worlds of creativity and science.

ToBe Continued… is part of the initiatives sponsored by Stop TB Italy for World TB Day. The event has been made possible thanks to a generous contribution by the Lilly MDR-TB Partnership and the collaboration with XDevel Stream Solution and the Culture Centre of the University of Klagenfurt, that will provide the facilities for the coordination of the concert.

New Maps of Time sound workshop/residency Istanbul Turkey

‘New Maps of Time’ is a project and workshop about mapping architectural and urban spaces using sound as a means to express actions within a space. read more…

Workshop carried out in the frame of my X-OP residency at Apartment Project, artist-run project space, from February 8 – March 8, 2010

click the above Istanbul Sound Map to hear the recordings in Istanbul on Radio Aporee Maps

Some comments… It was both a pleasure and an adventure spending a month in Istanbul exploring the rich and often noisy environment of this great metropolis. The workshop went as well as could be expected especially considering how busy people are, making it a challenge to work continually as a group. Regardless, having a chance to collaborate with a diverse range of artists, musicians, architects and designers was always enjoyable and productive. I am thankful particularly to Muharrem Yıldırım, Onur Güngör, İdil Tunga, Natali Arslan, Nurgül Öztürk, Cansu Tolunay and Fulya Uçanok for taking time to share in our explorations of the city and work collaboratively in the process of sound making and recording. It’s also important to mention the generous efforts of the Apartment Project team for hosting and coordinating this workshop.

Some of the activities included in the workshop this month: building microphones (contact mics, hydrophones, binaurals), various city excursions to Maçka Park and Karaköy, trips to Burgazada and Heybeliada (islands), and a trip to Santralistanbul (Bilgi University campus). We concentrated on a wide range of activities as well, from passive analysis of soundscapes and acoustic architecture to active engagement with certain locations through objects and materials we found there. The gallery below is a small overview of these activities (photos by: Enise Gökbayrak, Onur Güngör, Muharrem Yıldırım and myself).

 

The Sound Locations channel on Vimeo has 6 videos of collaborative efforts made during the workshop. Here are a few highlights:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘Islands’ a 14 minute film documenting trips to the Adalar (Prince’s Islands)

Click here to view the embedded video.

From January 23rd to 29th I gave a workshop for Art Pedagogy students in Kiel. The theme was based around ‘sound installation’ yet we went through many of the basics of the behavior and properties of sound as well as perception and social aspects of sound. I want to thank Pipe Lange for organizing this and Hannah, Annika, Nadine, Yasmin, Charlotte and Ramona for their participation. (photos by Lange and Grzinich)

highway bridge in Kiel near the university

Highway bridge knocks from traffic: bridge sound kiel mp3

Kiel harbor on a winter day

Kiel harbor sounds, ice, waves, ferry, planes, birds: Kiel harbor sounds mp3

Galata Bridge and market tunnel

Spice Bazaar

Santral Istanbul, former power station ambience

Sounds of the Istanbul Biennial

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.

Formica aquilonia or Red Wood Ant is a species of ant commonly found in the area where I live. The ant colonies are easily recognizable by the large mounds that they build out of debris from the pine forests they inhabit. The mounds also tend to be clustered together. I’m not sure what is the relation between the mounds, but the activity between them can be so frequent that “ant highways” or noticeable paths form on the forest floor. Ants are in the Family Formicidae meaning they give off formic acid when defending a territory through biting or spraying. Formic acid happens to be highly corrosive to some piezo transducer materials. This I know because one of the contact mics I used to record the ants was unprotected and went bad after about 15 seconds after I placed it on a mound.

The recording method here is something of an intervention and is not scientific in any way. If anything it is quite a provocation for the ants as I place the mics on the surface of the mound. They take it as a foreign object (which it is) and attack it. So the sound is a combination of biting, scratching and walking on the contact mics. To add some variation I used two different kinds of piezos and attached some thin brass wire to the discs. I do my very best not to harm the ants or their mounds especially since they are under a mild form of environmental protection due to threats from pollution.

contact microphone intervention with formica aqulonia – red wood ants (3:26) mp3 file

and here is a video I made about these ants:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I finally managed to visit a curious location in a forest in south Estonia and discovered that it indeed was one of the former soviet nuclear missile silos. As I’ve seen, most missile bases were mobile launching pads for missiles that were stored on trucks in bunkers. In this location the missiles were actually stored vertically in silos. It is likely that these bases were armed right up until the time of Estonian re-independance in 1991 when the soviet army pulled out. As you can see in the photos the site is being excavated and will eventually be filled in (I assume). Not having much time, I only managed to record the sound of stones dropping into the water at the bottom. The silos were quite deep and very resonant as you can hear.

stones tossed into an abandoned soviet nuclear missile silo (2:13) mp3 file