Hiroki Sasajima / SUIKINKUTSU
Suikinkutsu is recorded in "Stalactite grottos of Nippara" at Tokyo Okutama.
"Suikinkutsu" is a decoration of a Traditional Japanese garden.
"Suikinkutsu" is usually put in the Japanese garden, however, it is unusual for it to be put in stalactite grottos.
Drop of water to run down from stalactite at random plays these metallic sound.
Sound echoed with a bottle buried in the underground, amplifies it more by the grottos.
It is a particle of the beautiful sound that is meditative in deep quietness...
Hiroki Sasajima
Mark Peter Wright / INANIMATE LIFE (a catalogue)
Inanimate Life is an ongoing audio catalogue, initially conceived whilst making a series of field recordings along the North East coast of England in 2006. For anybody who has walked, swam, sat or indeed attempted to record in these exposed conditions, they will be all too familiar with the experience of blustery coastal winds. During one such excursion I stood for some time watching and listening to seagulls drift on unseen and unheard thermals of air. I became fascinated by the intangibility of wind and its effect on physical objects. All around me seagulls were supported, pulled and caressed in suspended flight, sand was shaped and whipped into the air, coastal marram grass trembled and Victorian hand railings wailed.
This inaugural installment features some of natures most complex and vibrant audial worlds; including the creaking roots of wind blasted heather, the playful gusts that animate giant oak trees and the wailing drones that resonate along wired fencing.
Inanimate Life examines these delicate thresholds in our environmental, auditory perception and unveils a world teeming with sonic activity. The catalogue offers a moment to settle upon these events and in doing so, settle the ear upon the elusive, often fleeting phenomena of sound.
Mark Peter Wright
Scott Sherk / THE TRANSPARENCY PROJECT
I have become very interested in the ambient sounds of interior spaces. As a sculptor I am aware of space as a plastic medium, but also acknowledge the difficulty (and mystery) of its intangibility. The sounds in this recording are of energetic, social activities within a long corridor-like space with a high cathedral ceiling. It is an arts building designed by architect Phillip Johnson in the mid 1970’s. I like the resonance of the hard surfaces and the way the sound bounces around eventually obscuring the sources of those sounds as an aural cloud takes shape.
The piece reaches a crescendo with the arrival of a crowd. When the group departs, we are left with the space and, finally, the sound of the space, itself.
Scott Sherk
Rod Cooper / ACCEPTING THE MACHINES
The landscape is not a new theme in the arts and music is no exception. No matter what themes an artist uses to draw attention to their work and ideas to the audience, the dominant message is still about the artist. Wether or not the artist succeeds in communicating external ideas via their transmissions to the audience, is open to much interpretation. For me Accepting The Machines was about combining many musical thoughts that would other wise have stayed as singular ideas or sonic experiments locked into a particular aesthetic or style.
There are many landscapes in these recordings some rural, some urban. Sites include my home in Melbourne, Australia, where I recorded in an empty factory shell, my back yard, workshop and studios. My beach house on the coast of southern Victoria provides me with access to an estuary system, rivers, forests and farmland.
Because I work across many art forms such as sculpture, painting, music and instrument building, its easy to categorise each separate practice, a system which I use to help me adapt from one body of work to the next.
I ask myself, "what is the connection between these different folios?, the answer is my mind". So I then ask myself another question, "why do I make up rules about how I should express myself? Shouldn't I just enjoy the freedom of expression with out making up rules or following codes pf practise?" To truly follow one's instincts is not easy. Teaching influences, learning and study effect this process also.
Building portable instruments that I could carry into any potential recording location was a good decision for me during the creation of Accepting The Machines. Their simplicity and crudeness changed the way I played to the microphone, less musical and more intuitive. Playing onsite rather than overlaying separate recordings from the studio environment and landscape puts me into a different state of mind. You have to cope with the landscape where everything is not at your fingertips. It has taken me a while to appreciate digital technology; having a preference in the past to work in a more acoustic dominated aesthetic, even though I experiment with and love electronic sounds.
My main instrument is a tubular frame that holds a Styrofoam box resonator against a long steel wire and spring. The frame is hammered into the earth and the wire or springs are stretched out along the ground or attached to an existing structure. Sound travels into the styro box via these resonating materials. I also use small amps and tape decks to transmit electronic sound and vibrations through the box walls.
Anoher instrument is an 8 meter long vertical aeolian string, again with a foam resonator.
I may stay in one place for hours or return repeatedly until I capture the moments I am working toward, when the winds, birds, branches, surf and noises are all working together. The computer helps me do the rest.
Humans are not only species on the planet to make music.
Rod Cooper
Lasse-Marc Riek / HABITATS
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.
Lasse-Marc Riek
Ákos Garai / PILIS
Pilis is a sacred place. Bound north we leave the big city Budapest behind and we find ourselves surrounded by wonderous mountains and natural habitat. The Pilis mountain is located on the right bank of the Danube between Budapest and Esztergom. Its highest peak is only 756 meters, however, the scenery is picturesque. The beauties of nature, the fresh forest air, and the presence of positive energies this area are sought by many visitors. A big portion of the area is protected as a National Park, with numerous bicycle and hiking trails. In April 2009 I began my hike from the highest point of Pilis, and descended slowly.
I was accompanied by a charming stream of clear water all the way. As we walk through the forest and listen to the sound of the small stream, with each step, we arrive into different worlds and see, hear, and perceive the surrounding nature accordingly. I could not describe why "there and then": when I felt like, I stopped, sat down and recorded the sounds of the stream and the environment. Later, when I listened and selected these field recording tracks at home, I decided that I'll compose various computer generated layers in addition.
In time, these layers transformed into sonic thoughts in brackets inspired by the original field recording tracks and the wonderful memories of the hike. This was the birth process of a flowing, self re-creating and re-analyzing, yet coherent composition. A relentlessly meandering and laughtering auditory flow: a second hike to the Pilis.
Ákos Garai