Inconclusive Responses (12:17)

Composition produced from recordings made during the ‘New Maps of Time‘ workshop held in Prague, October 2009. This track is a remix of field recordings and improvisations we made at Skolska28 Gallery, Stromovka Park and the Dul Mayrau coal mine museum. Special thanks to Milos V for coordinating this and to the participants for their time and energy; Eliska S, Matěj G, Lucie P, Stanislav A, Matej K, Lucie J. Released in honor of the ‘praha – favourite sounds of‘ CD our now on Engraved Glass.

Introduced Species (12:31)

This track is a remix of an improvisation we made in the former sewage treatment plant in Bubeneč. Participants included Milos V.,  Eliska S, Matěj G, Lucie P, Stanislav A, Matej K, Lucie J.

Again, be sure to check out the ‘praha – favorite sounds of‘ CD out now on Jez Riley French’s Engraved Glass label.

Sound Seed Transmissions was a radio show I hosted as part of my residency at Nida Art Colony and was broadcast on the local radio station, Neringa FM: http://neringafm.lt/

The Sound Seed Transmissions show focused on sound and artists who work with unique and different contexts, drawing their inspiration from nature, natural materials, found objects, temporary installations and self-made instruments. The show was meant to be a type of “stories from the field”, presenting a mix of short interviews with artists and a selection of field recordings and/or compositions.

Below is the full archive, all 6 shows:

SST #1 – 16.11.2011 – Introductory show with Greek sound artist Yiorgis Sakellariou in dialogue with John Grzinich discussing their ideas and methods for field recording.

SST#1

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SST #2 – 23.11.2011 – The second radio show was entitled the “Secret Life of Wires” where I presented my long term fascination with resonant wires as instruments and objects in the landscape and played a number of recordings over the years.

SST#2

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SST #3 – 29.11.2011 – The third radio show we explored the idea of “Sonic Traces“, how physical processes not only leave marks but also reveal something in the sounds they make. The guest was visual artist Evelyn Müürsepp from Estonia. Evelyn and John talked about and played pieces from their collaborative sound and drawing project “Sonic Scratch Cycles”.

SST#3

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SST #4 – 7.12.2011 – The fourth radio show explored the idea of “Instruments of Place“, or making sound through the construction and manipulation of objects, materials and devices and other creative means. The guest was Maksims Shentelevs from Latvia. Max and John talked about and played pieces from their self-made instruments and sonic investigations of places.

SST#4

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SST #5 – 14.12.2011 – “The Sounds of Nida” was the title of the 5th show. My residency was coming to a close and this show reflected on my discoveries and experiences in Nida. Neringa FM host Linas Ramanauskas offered to interview me and we I played various recordings made during my residency.

SST#5

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SST #6 – 21.12.2011 – The 6th and final SST show was a special solstice edition entitled, “myths as public dreams, dreams as private myths“. The guest was Andrius Rugys from Vilnius. Andrius and John shared their recordings and discussed experiences from the field working with attentive ears.

SST#6

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.

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

‘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.

Images and a recording from the opening performance at Kibla on August 26th, 2011.

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.

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.

Special thanks to Veljo Runnel for leading an excellent workshop on Nature Sound Recording, sharing his experiences from the last 10 years and extensive knowledge on bird species. The group spent one early morning and one full evening out in the field, analyzing and collecting sounds. We then listened to the recordings that were made an identified the animal species that were heard. Comparisons of different recording setups were helpful to in defining both aesthetic and scientific approaches to the sounds that were captured.

read the full summary of the workshop on the MoKS blog

listen to this mix of four recordings I made during the workshop

1. creaking tree and morning birds by the Ahja river
2. lone Tangmalm’s Owl (Karvasjalg kakk) in the forest
3. Spotted Crake (Täpikhuik)
4. Morning chorus near Ahunapalu with Cranes

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

This is an unedited binaural recording of the mechanical room controlling the ventilation system of the Center of Contemporary Art. We were allowed to access the space and I could do this short walk through the different ‘zones’ of the basement. Toward the end of the workshop we made a blindfolded ‘soundwalk’ through the building to get and idea of how the ventilation system adds to the sonic environment.

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.

‘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)

26:18, listen or download via soundcloud

‘recurring incursions’ was composed in the last days of 2010 using recordings made during the previous year. No synthesis was used in the process. All sounds were analog and acoustic in origin. Some sources come from collaborative recordings. Thanks to Evelyn Müürsepp for playing tonal wood blocks in the forest and to the participants of my sound workshop in Istanbul.