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.

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.

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.

A selection of my Location Sound Films will be shown in Sweden next month… unfortunately I will not be able to attend the event.

Full Pull 08 | Exhibition
Dan Spegel, Olof Broström, Iris Piers
Stapelbädden, Malmö, August 29-September 21

Next week I will be in Berlin for the Tuned City - Between sound and space speculation event which involves 5 solid days of conferences, exhibitions and performances. I will be exhibiting video material compiled from my ongoing Location Sound Films project. I have put together two short films, one based on recordings from Estonia and Portugal over the last 2 years and another from the Riga Sound Locations workshop we held last August. While this is just a small sample of the films I have made it should give people some insight into what I’ve been working on.

As for the rest of the event, there is too much for me to comprehend at the moment but Derek Holzer has just posted an interview where he gives a good rundown on the program highlights.

sound+video works DVD

During the spring and summer of 2006 a number of visiting artists came to take part in a residency or event at MoKS, an artist-run center in the rural south-eastern part of Estonia. My intention was to record the sounds as well as images of the events, collaborations and investigation which took place. For this, it is important to mention Hitoshi Kojo, Patrick McGinley, Fantomas, and the participants of PostsovkhoZ 6, for their participation and creative inspiration.

The Location Sound Film project has to do with a territory that falls somewhere between “performance”, “field recording” and “documentation”. It takes the usual idea of recording sound while adding the component of video. The following sounds and images were recorded simultaneously on a HD video camera. Little or no post-processing was involved other than the adjustment of equalization and sound levels. Various techniques were used to make recordings, some more clearly visible than others, depending on the type of sound captured. The main difference here being the use of a pair of stereo condenser microphones or piezo contact microphones.

Location filming has to do with observation and reflection on events in a recored space and time, looking at what induces and affects spontaneous interventions using sound and image as the evidence.

Location Sound Films have been shown at: Skolska28 (Prague), Eyeglass Shop (Portland), Võru Linnagalerii (Estonia), Tuned City (Berlin), La Pommerie (France), Full Pull (Malmö), Liquid Architecture (Melbourne)

List of works and times:

Baltic Ferry – contact microphones on a boat railing (03:15)

Ant Hill Activity – contact microphones in an ant hill ( 04:20)

Tree in Coastal Wind – contact microphones on a tree (02:38)

Jars and Fire – stereo microphones in glass jars (04:02)

Metal Door Tones – contact microphones on a metal door – with: Patrick McGinley, Hitoshi Kojo, Fantomas (08:44)

Bowed Piano Wires – stereo microphones – with Hitoshi Kojo (12:09)

Bowed Metal Objects – stereo microphones – with Hitoshi Kojo (04:33)

Bowed Metal Structures – stereo microphones – with: Patrick McGinley, Fantomas (07:37)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rusted Wheels – stereo microphones – with: Patrick McGinley, Hitoshi Kojo, Fantomas (05:24)

(Un)Stable Structure – stereo microphones (06:12)

Phone Tower Cables + 250% – contact mics on wires ( 12:28)

Phone Tower Cables 02 (05:22)

Phone Tower Cables 03 (05:40)

Sound Cellar: Directed – stereo microphones – with the participants of PS6 (06:10)

Sound Cellar: Non-Directed – stereo microphones – with the participants of PS6 (08:15)

Other videos on Youtube.

Last spring I started to document my sound recording activities with a video camera (many times recording the audio directly to the camera). This material eventually developed into the Location Sound Films project. After collecting a wide amount of material from field recordings, natural phenomenon, found objects and site-specific activity, I started to try and figure out what to do with it. Some of the videos made their way into live performances while others were used in installations. To give some idea of what this material looks like I am posting one here. This one I’ve termed “Ant Hill Activity” because that’s just what it is. This was recorded in south Estonia while on a roundabout excursion (it was not planned). I’m posting this video especially in response to some people asking Steve Roden what his recording of ants in Norway sounded like.

Recording: Ant Hill Activity

Jacob Kirkegaard – AION
John Grzinich - Location Sound Films

Friday, Feb 16th: Opening of sound/video installations at Skolska28
Saturday, Feb 17th: collaborative presentation/workshop at FAMU

Friday Feb 16th was the opening of the ‘In the Landscape’ exhibition at the Skolska28 gallery. The two works exhibited were my Location Sound Films installation and Jacob Kirkegaard’s video and sound work AION. For me this installation was an experiment to see how well my collection of films and sounds blended together while playing randomly. I divided the material over 3 DVDs which also included black silent tracks for dynamics (an equal chance to see/hear nothing and something). For the most part it worked, especially having sounds come from various speakers placed throughout the space. The opening went well and started off with a meditadive atmosphere as people drifted in and and sat quietly for over an hour watching and listening to both the works. This was followed by yet another intensive period of attention as Jacob and myself each performed live. As usual, I’m never sure how to generate this kind of attention by public audience, but its a pleasure when it happens.

The next day Jacob and I offered a lecture and colleborative sound workshop at FAMU. A number of Czech and international students showed up for this. The lectures gave a general introduction to our work along with an overview of our current projects. We were fortunate to see some Jacob’s trip into the zone of radiation around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. That afternoon we took advantage of the good weather and made a short excursion with the students to collect sounds. We decided to focus on different methods and devices used to record sound including; MiniDisc recorders, an ultrasound detector, an accelerometer and a few voice recorders. Its rare to have such a range of hi-fi and lo-fi devices to play with. The students seemed equally interested in testing all of them. One unique discovery included some mysterious sounds from the earth above some graves in the cemetary in Vysehrad. Its always nice to watch people find new experiences in listening to the world. Afterwards we returned to the sound studio to analyze some of the recordings. I should thank Milos Vojtechovsky of FAMU and the Skolska28 crew for their generous oganizational efforts.