The work at hand, “Habitats”, deals with habitats, areas and living spaces. In this particular case, these spaces were created from a pool of acoustic field recordings I realised while in Finland in Spring of 2007. Over the course of the past year, I have, for various reasons, increasingly been absorbed by the sounds emited by nature. The piece researches the interplay between natural elements on the one hand and passages I arranged at a later stage on the other. It deals with directional hearing and of course with the vast array of bird voices – as well as the silence one can detect in between all of these different sound sources.

Listen to excerpt:
http://www.3leaves-label.com/files/habitats_excerpt.mp3

150 copies, CD-R, 3L002, 2010

Photos: Anne-Berit Riek
Identification (Birds): Patrick Franke
Translation: Tobias Fischer
Layout and Design: Àkos Garai
Recordings: Lasse-Marc Riek

3LEAVES:
http://www.3leaves-label.com/index.html

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Today I volunteered a research project of Natuur en Mulieu Federatie Utrecht. In this Provence of the Netherlands there are several so called ‘Silence Area’s’ These nature reserves are open to the public. NMU wanted to know up to what level silence is respected in these area’s. Because of my interest in natural silence I was more than willing to participate in this project. For my recordings I regularly visit this kind of places which are more near to my home. From my own experience I know that silence in these forests are an illusion. This because your are allowed to enter some of them by car. Planes are flying over and of course the visitors to these places, and especially the dogs, are far from quiet.

I was asked to do my monitoring in a weekend. The days on which most of the visitors to these places make their visit. So when I left home today. Which was a beautiful sunny early spring afternoon. I was a bit prepared to bump into some other people. But I wasn’t prepared for the enormous amount of mountain-bikers I saw upon arriving. It was a bit hilarious. A moment I thought I got involved in a cycle-cross competition. An other sound that was very dominant were the almost continuously passing airplanes. So next week I will be there on a Saturday and see what the difference will be.

Recorded using: Sonosax SX-R4, Schoeps CMC MK8/MK4, Rycote suspension

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Lately I did a lot of testing to get better / more realistic sounding recording. At this moment, to my opinion, the Jecklin disc method gives me the most satisfying results. BUT the difference in stereo image (in comparrison to my mid/side set) is most noticeable when using headphones. So my question to you all is. What do you think your audience is using for listening to your material? Do you anticipate on this?
My idea would be that more and more people are most of the time using mp3-players to listen to music/sound. Does someone know if there has been done some research on this?

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1. Listen to Africa

Enliven the dialogue about the sounds of the natural world – especially important within the digital age.

Join in and become part of the growing global community of people who listen to – and appreciate – the fragile, remaining ‘creature chorus’ that forms the increasingly rare ‘Voice of the Natural World’. From birders to biologists, amateur naturalists to professional bioacousticians, nature recordists, musicians, and those who simply love to listen to BIOPHONY of nature, we WELCOME you to participate in the conversation. Your efforts to help advance the understanding and appreciation of natural soundscapes helps keep them vital — and valued — for today and tomorrow.

The Soundscape Support Team is dedicated to helping preserve, protect, and promote natural soundcapes for science, art, and outreach.

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“Growing Up With Shanghai” is a series of soundwalks with young Shanghainese who were born and raised during the rapid modernization of their city in the 1980s and 1990s. These recordings capture not only their most intimate memories of the locations where they grew up, but also the progress and growth Shanghai has undergone in the past 30 years. The current sounds of Shanghai can be heard behind the dialog and also serve as an audio document for future generations of Shanghainese. All dialogue is in Shanghainese or in their local dialect.

In 1978, China began its road to reform. Today we can see its tremendous result- and this is only the beginning. The ‘soundwalkers’ in this project were born between 1978 and 1985 in the Municipality of Shanghai. As Shanghai matured during these reforms, so did they in their own lives. ‘Hidden’ within their memories, they reveal small and indirect references to how these locations looked and felt. The city of Shanghai is alive and changes and grows just like any living thing- becoming stronger, more intelligent, and more beautiful.

Like sound itself, this project can be experienced and interpreted on many levels. On the surface it may just be a field recording of street sounds in another language, it could be everything I mention here, or something totally different. Whatever you get from these recordings, transcripts, and photos is exclusive only to you and your imagination. I hope that it makes Shanghai less intimidating and familiar to you and that if you do come, you try to experience a more intimate side of Shanghai by following one of these on your own.

A book of transcripts and photographs of each walk is available to further enhance your experience and to totally immerse you in each location. With this book, you are able to understand their stories as well as navigate through the routes that were taken on that day. The first edition will be a limited edition print of 200 books. The entire project was recorded, designed, printed, and hand-numbered and packaged in Shanghai, China and is truly a piece of Shanghai in your hands.

This project is not another tour guide. It shows the reality of Shanghai through sounds of the city and its people. Through the memories of its inhabitants and the imaginations of others, the city of Shanghai extends to beyond its boundaries to wherever you are.

I hope that you enjoy your experience of this project and that one day your imagination leads you here.

Listen with headphones.

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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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1. Call for work: Ear to the Earth 2010

Chris Watson journeys to the South Pole for the forthcoming David Attenborough series “The Frozen Planet” (BBC, 2011). Here he reports back with his experiences…

A Journey South

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1. Chris Watson

“THE SOUND OF INSECTS – Record Of A Mummy” is not a film adaptation of literature, but rather the cinematic rapprochement of a fictional text.

X’s dramatic monologue is not addressed to anyone in particular. It is neither descriptive nor retrospective, but deals entirely with the moment. There is no lamentation, no self-pity, no sentimentality. On the contrary, a subliminal self-irony even emerges at times. The text is unobtrusive; it suggests no morals and refrains from measuring value, thereby rendering its impact very direct.

X’s lack of origin and history, his anonymity is analogous to the general alienation of the human being in a global world; the interchangeability of the negligible “characteristics” of his personality corresponds with the attitude towards life in an out-and-out materialistic society. He only becomes a vital, tangible individual – for himself as well – with his extraordinary capacity for suffering and the monstrous masochism of his act. Suicide by self-imposed starvation is an extremely intimate way to die, X wrote in his diary, because one is preoccupied with oneself for such a long time.

Ultimately, the nameless man’s manner of dying also constitutes the most radical form of renouncement: a total retreat from the hustle and bustle in an achievement-oriented society, the unmitigated refusal to consume, to partake in the haste of this life.
The underlying criticism of today’s materialism is palpable. Shimada clearly demands that one take a stance on the unique potential of life. The absence of any comment on the part of the author offers no solace or reconciliation whatsoever, leaving instead the answers to such vexing questions entirely to the viewer.

Therein lies the profound provocation of this story for me; it arouses not only compassion, but above all the need to object – without moralising – and to affirm the value of one’s own personhood as well.

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As of today Fieldcore is a participant of the United Nations Climate Neutral Network. More info about the goals of the Network can be found here

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Yellow-casqued Hornbill

The Listen to Africa expedition is a two year journey by bicycle to record some of the sounds of Africa – from oral histories and music to soundscapes and wildlife; recording and publishing sound seems an appropriate way to communicate from a continent that has so much to say and is so rarely heard outside of its own borders.

While we have no fixed ideas about the subject matter, the Listen to Africa website will inevitably reflect the interests of the team: human rights and humanitarian welfare, wildlife and environmental protection, music and citizen journalism. We are also keen to work with African people and groups along the way, especially in local and community radio, podcasting and blogging. If you work in these areas, and if you’re interested in working with us, we’d love to hear from you.

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1. How does your audience listen to your material?