prele records has released a CD of revenant : topoló along with 12 page booklet of texts by the artists. Available from December 2008.

revenant : topoló took place on October 19th, 2006 in a forest near the border of Italy and Slovenia. participants in this action were yannick dauby, olivier feraud, john grzinich, hitoshi kojo and patrick mcginley (aka murmer).

Intro

Moss Slide

Burning Pain (with Marcus Williams)

Shallow Drift

Blind Array

Surface Tension

Retracing Faces (with Alio Die)

presented at Stazione Topolo 2003 | PostsovkoZ 3/Territories, Estonia

Equal and Distant Lines is one aspect of the larger Time [::] Frames project. Time [::] Frames investigates, analyzes and reflects on the process of living and working in a mobile context using the broad context of the current European cultural landscape. Equal and Distant Lines offers an experimental public viewing platform for expressing the transitory aspects of being a mobile artist. Space and movement are transformed and transplanted into an audio-visual experience… much of the material used as the soundtrack for this piece found its way on to a CD release with the same title.

for Stazione Topolo: “equal and distant lines” is a piece for returning, to scale the macro back to the micro. My return [to Topolo] is a dedication and expression of what one place can give an individual and what an individual can bring to a place. Through a mix and presentation of collected audiovisual materials of the past year I wish to return and build upon the idea that: there are no forgotten corners of the earth, we all affect and are affected. Video material was an in-camera film made on a journey from Sarajevo to Friuli Italy.

a semi-transparent screen works well with the evening backdrop

thanks to mbehrens for documentation

Resonance Ensemble installation. Stazione Topolo, Italy (7/99)
locally found objects like these ceramic roof tiles were used.

Resonance Ensemble has been held in Austin, Texas and at the Stazione Topolo’/ Postaja Topolove festival ’99 in Topolo’ Italy. Recordings of each action are archived and used in the studio for sound compositions.

A description of the Resonance Ensemble recording sessions this spring in Austin, getting to the mood of each gathering… by Seth Nehil (6.8.99)

Like a young child whose impressions are still forming, these sounds grasp at a sense of tactitlity and recognition, simultaneously eluding it. The crystalline iris-circles are open to deep emotional impressions, seeking out a new contact. These sounds carry their own weight – without the imposition of an internal progression. The processes proceed with their own momentum, moving us forward in time. Softening the skin of the inner ear, opening to the inner dynamics of wave-forms.

(2.21.99 evening)

We gathered in the empty lecture-hall of an uninhabited school building, the crisp echo of the room muted slightly by the presence of our bodies. The rows of empty chairs staggered upwards at a sharp angle – an implied audience. We passed out the plastic reeds and affixed large paper cones to them. We placed the four microphones in a rectangular fashion and distributed ourselves at varying distances. The wavering tones of the reeds pierced through the space like bleating animals or unquiet birds. Playing with vague rhythms, we overlapped and intersected the lines of wavering tones.

We are moving from an interest in specific materials and manipulations towards an interest in organization and acousticality. Organization is a self-producing, evolutionary structure, not an imposed hierarchy. Fields of intelligence and communication between people or sounds occur on a moment-to-moment basis. Influence builds, reaching a catastrophe point and giving way to a new trend which was implied by the one proceeding. Representations of natural processes are also the processes themselves in operation.

Each finding a container of various material – metal, plastic, cardboard, glass – we filled them with handfuls of bean. Tipping the containers created a wave of hushing pink noise. Dropping the beans from a height created pointillistic interspersions. We each travelled throughout the space, moving in relation to the microphones, in and out of proximity.

(3.14.99 evening)

We gathered at the house because of its quietude. The approximately square, unfurnished living-room led into a dining area with a low table, and a kitchen where food simmered. Closing the windows, we gathered in a circle, the microphones among and above us. Humming with closed lips, we started slowly and spontaneously reached a tone that resonated within the dry acoustics of the sparse room. Rumbling through the chest cavity and down through the limbs, up into the nasal cavity and vibrating the head, closed into the body by tight lips, yet resonating within the space of the room, passing through the air to interact with it. Cycles of silence and activity, inhalation and exhalation.

The concepts of consonance or dissonance have been abandoned, yet adjustment of pitch becomes an important element in the final stages of mixing – a fine tuning of the interactions of layers. Pitch has an active role in the defining the quality of moods, interlocking sound bodies into an embrace. Drops of dew in the sweetness of a kiss, as sound bodies merge into a revolving whole, take on mass and weight, begin to breathe…

see also the Sound Cellar Project

View the photo galleries from these events.

Also on that page is a gallery from Pushing the Medium ..3, held one month later in Friuli Italy. In continuing with the themes of the event, there was room the play in the mountainous area surrounding Topolo. I was able to spend time wandering the forests and making some spontaneous acoustic actions with murmer, Yannick, Olivier, Koz and others.