Visitors enter a dark space and are confronted with recordings of thunderstorms and the sound of airplanes taking off, fragmented urban sound structures, singing deserts, and underwater or underground recordings. This more than four-hour-long programme is devoted to various approaches to soundscape composition and features works produced by several generations of composers and musicians – from acoustic ecology to extreme field recordings. The spatial aspects of sound are showcased in the compositions, and space is made audible by means of spatial speaker arrangements and multi-channel sound.
Featuring:  Alo Allik, Annea Lockwood, Barry Truax, BJ Nilsen, Éric La Casa, Gilles Aubry, Hildegard Westerkamp, Jacob Kirkegaard, Ji Youn Kang, Olivier Messiaen, Yolande Harris

Annea Lockwood
Thirst

Thirst

Annea Lockwood’s 6 channel electroacoustic composition, Thirst, counterpoints tension and serenity, swinging between Grand Central Station in New York at the ‘high tide’ of rush hour, and the Lebanese sculptor, Simone Fattal’s memories of her family home’s courtyard in Damascus – a place of sensory richness and peace. Such memories provide a refuge for the mind from the pervasive noise of crisis which surrounds us now. A Serbian song, sung by Kristin Norderval, threads through the piece.

Annea Lockwood (NZ) is known for her explorations of the rich world of natural acoustic sounds and environments, in works ranging from sound art and installations, through text-sound and performance art to concert music. She has written for a number of ensembles and solo performers, and created pieces for surround-sound installations like A Sound Map of the Danube.

Barry Truax
Chalice Well

Chalice Well

Chalice Well is a holy well situated at the foot of Glastonbury Tor in southwest England, thought to be originally the island of Avalon from Arthurian legend, and the site where Joseph of Arimathea placed the chalice known as the Holy Grail. According to legend, the Tor, a masculine symbol, is hollow underneath and the entrance to the underworld, guarded by the Grail. The well, on the other hand, is a symbol of the feminine aspect of deity, and its waters are believed to possess healing qualities. This soundscape composition takes the listener on an imaginary journey down into the well, passing through several cavernous chambers on its descent, filled with rushing and trickling water, including the chamber of the feminine spirit. The journey continues to the glass chamber, then to the gates of the underworld, only to be confronted by the image of the Grail, and finally coming to rest in the space where wind and water, the masculine and the feminine, are combined. Chalice Well was premiered in the Sonic Lab of the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) in Belfast, in March, 2009 on their 32-speaker rig positioned on four different vertical levels, above and below the audience.

Barry Truax (CA) a Professor in both the School of Communication and the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University where he teaches courses in acoustic communication and electroacoustic music. He has worked with the World Soundscape Project, editing its Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, and has published a book Acoustic Communication dealing with all aspects of sound and technology. As a composer, Truax is best known for his work with the PODX computer music system which he has used for tape solo works and those which combine tape with live performers or computer graphics. A selection of these pieces may be heard on the Compact Discs Digital Soundscapes, Pacific Rim, Song of Songs, Inside, Twin Souls, Islands, and Spirit Journies, all on the Cambridge Street Records label, plus the double CD of the opera Powers of Two. In 1991 his work, Riverrun, was awarded the Magisterium at the International Competition of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France, a category open only to electroacoustic composers of 20 or more years experience.

Jacob Kirkegaard
Sabulation

‘He tried thinking of something else. When he closed his eyes, a number of long lines, flowing like sighs, came floating toward him. They were ripples of sand moving over the dunes. The dunes were probably burned onto his retina because he had been gazing steadily at them for some twelve hours. The same sand currents had swallowed up and destroyed flourishing cities and great empires. They called it the ‘sabulation’ of the Roman Empire…’—Kobe Abe, Woman in the Dunes, 1962.
This piece consists of sound and video footage of the so-called Singing Sands or Booming Dunes in the deserts of Oman.

Jacob Kirkegaard (DK) is a Danish artist who focuses on the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and hearing. His installations, compositions and performances deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain imperceptible. Using unorthodox recording tools, including accelerometers, hydrophones and home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard captures and contextualizes hitherto unheard sounds from within a variety of environments: a geyser, a sand dune, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself. Now based in Berlin, he is a graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany and has given lectures and workshops in institutions such as the Royal Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen and the Art Institute of Chicago. Over the last fourteen years, Kirkegaard has presented his works at exhibitions and at festivals and conferences throughout the world. He has released five albums (mostly on the British label Touch). Among his numerous collaborators are JG Thirlwell, Ann Lislegaard, CM von Hausswolff and Lydia Lunch.

Hildegard Westerkamp
Into the Labyrinth

Into the Labyrinth is a sonic journey into aspects of India’s culture. It occurs on the edge between dream and reality, in the same way in which many visitors, myself included, experience this country. Nothing ever happens according to pre-determined plans or expectations. Although travellers usually do reach their destination somehow, the journey itself – full of continuous surprises and unexpected turns – becomes the real place of experience. In composing this piece, I was challenging my own compositional process as it has developed over the last 25 years: just as India has challenged many of my Western Eurocentric values and turned them upside-down, so has this piece challenged my preconceived notions of the creative process. From the start I had the image of entering a labyrinth of a multitude of sounds and sonic experiences. I had made no plans for the piece other than letting the recorded sounds move me through a compositional journey into an unknown sonic labyrinth. Obviously my experiences of travelling in India and of recording the sounds played a significant role in the formation of this piece. But I could never be sure of where I was going and where I would end up. I worked on it continuously as if on a 15-day journey, where the journey itself became the centre of experience. The composition simply is a result of that experience.

Into the Labyrinth was commissioned by New Adventures in Sound with the assistance of the Canada Council and was realized in the Electronic Music Studio of the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Many thanks to Darren Copeland for giving me this opportunity to explore composition for 8-channel diffusion. I would also like to thank Savinder Anand, Mona Madan, Arun Patak, Veena Sharma and her mother Mrs. Goyal, Situ Singh-Bühler and Virinder Singh for taking me to the places where the sounds and soundscapes for this composition were recorded. Without their help and local knowledge I would have had a difficult time gathering them on tape. Many thanks go to Max Mueller Bhavan (Goethe Institut Delhi) for inviting me to India in the first place and giving me the opportunity to meet and work with those who have become my Indian friends. Listening to India together has deepened our understanding of each other and our cultures’ differences.
Into the Labyrinth is dedicated to my daughter Sonja, who courageously travelled through India by herself and emerged enriched from a labyrinth of new and complex experiences.

Hildegard Westerkamp (DE/CA) was born in Osnabrück, Germany in 1946 and emigrated to Canada in 1968. After completing her music studies in the early seventies Westerkamp joined the World Soundscape Project under the direction of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver. Her involvement with this project not only activated deep concerns about noise and the general state of the acoustic environment, but it also changed her ways of thinking about music, listening and soundmaking. Her ears were drawn to the acoustic environment as another cultural context or place for intense listening. While completing her Master’s Thesis she also taught courses in Acoustic Communication together with colleague Barry Truax in the School of Communication at SFU until 1990. Since then she has written additional articles and texts addressing issues of the soundscape and listening. She is a founding member and is currently active on the board of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE). as well as the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology (CASE). Between 1991 and 1995 she was the editor of The Soundscape Newsletter and is now on the editorial committee of Soundscape – The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, a new publication of the WFAE.

Gilles Aubry
Grrounding

Grrounding

Grrounding is a new live set by Gilles Aubry based on sound recordings collected at several European airports. The title refers to a dramatic moment of Swiss history, as in 2001 the national Swissair Airlines Company went bankrupt due to its corrupt management. The performance is an immersion into the broadband sounds of reactors and the menacing atmosphere of tarmacs. Aubry writes: ‘Grrounding is new chapter in my sonic explorations of specific spaces. While the inside of airports have become entirely controlled spaces with specific light and acoustic design, the few dozen meters that one need sometimes to walk from the gate to the inside of the aircraft provide a radically different experience. One can hear and feel the sound of airplanes, their size and movements, the air, the light, the temperature and the vastness of a place which has obviously not been conceived for pedestrians. As a frequent flyer I’ve recorded some of these moments and started to imagine how a longer stay there might feel like.’

Gilles Aubry (CH) is a Swiss sound artist and musician living in Berlin since 2002. He uses environmental recordings, computer programming, surround sound technology and improvisation to create live performances, sound installations, CDs and radio pieces. His work is informed by personal investigations on formal, perceptual and anthropological aspects of sound production and reception, including auditory perception, cultural acoustics, space representation and history of sound technologies. Recent realizations include Berlin Backyards (2007, audio piece awarded at the Phonurgia Nova Competition’07), Modulor (2008, sound installation at Singuhr Galery, Berlin), Outside of the Plane (2008, sound installation for the Cairoscape Exhibition, Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin), Planes (2009, sound installation for the Laptopia Sound Exhibition, BatYam Museum, Tel Aviv) and Les Ecoutis le Caire (2009, audio piece premiered on Deutschland Radio).

Éric La Casa
Les Pierres du Seuil

Les Pierres du Seuill

Composed between 1998 and 2001, Les Pierres du Seuil (the stones of the threshold) is a series exclusively based on field recordings. Parts 4 and 5 are one continuous movement of water sounds. From the rumour of a storm to lightning – a space symphony of rain (part 4). From a subterranean spring to the powerful North Sea – dynamics of fluids into landscapes (part5).

Éric La Casa (FR) is a sound artist who lives and works in Paris. For fifteen years or so, his musical practice has been a series of experimentations / improvisations with the sonic locale. As it passes through his microphones, the site of the survey – everyday life – is transformed into a site of play. The dimensions of the real world generate sonic representations whose proportions found another perspective on the world. The propagation of sound in a locale is a complex vibratory / undulatory phenomenon which involves acoustic measurement just as much as it involves aesthetic appreciation. How to account for the size of things by their sonic properties? Beyond technical protocol, listening becomes tied up in the surfaces of the world. Recordings, sonic readings, open out into a musical form which reactivates a perception of that which surrounds us, whether visible or not; a reinjection.

BJ Nilsen
Solid Curtain

The sounds produced by thunder have been categorized into recognizable terms. Claps are sudden loud sounds lasting 0.2 to 2 seconds. Peals are sounds changing frequency or amplitude. Rolls are irregular sound variances. Rumbles are of long duration but relatively low in frequency. Close-in lightning has been described first as a clicking or cloth-tearing sound, then a cannon shot sound or loud crack/snap, followed by continuous rumbling. BJ Nilsen presents a performance based on these sounds.

BJ Nilsen (SE) is a sound and recording artist, who has released works in various constellations since 1990. His works focus on the sound of nature and its effect on humans, field recordings and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound, often electronically treated. He has worked for documentary film and television and as a sound engineer.

Yolande Harris
Fishing for Sound

A sea of spatial connections between phenomena underwater, in themind, and from outer-space. The performance weaves sounds fromscientific analysis of marine environments, sounds used inpsychological treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, and sonified data from satellites orbiting the Earth. All share in a mass of background noise, sounding in the contexts of environment, memory and information. Listening in these spaces is like fishing for sounds.

Yolande Harris (UK) uses her performances, installations and instruments to investigate how we use sound to relate to our surroundings, both architectural and ecological. Her current research/practice considers the musical potential of sound worlds outside the human hearing range, through underwater bioacoustics and the sonification of data.

Ji Youn Kang, Alo Allik, Olivier Messiaen
WFS programme

Wave Field Synthesis is a specific technique for spatializing sound, which only recently became available to composers. The array of 192 speakers plus 8 subwoofers, built for the Game of Life Foundation, provides a platform for composers to experiment with spatial sound. This system is installed in the Small Hall in the Paradiso, where compositions by Ji youn Kang, Alo Allik, and Olivier Messiaen can be heard.

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