• to celebrate the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology;
• to raise awareness about issues related to the World Soundscape Project, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, World Listening Project, and individual and group efforts to creatively explore phonography;
• and to design and implement educational initiatives which explore these concepts and practices.

World Listening Day is co-organized by the World Listening Project (WLP) and the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE). July 18 was chosen as the date because it is the birthday of the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, who is celebrating his 80^th birthday this year. Schafer is one of the founders of the Acoustic Ecology movement; the World Soundscape Project, which Schafer founded in 1971, is an important organization which has inspired a lot of activity in this field. The culmination of the World Soundscape Project’s pioneering research into the sound environment is described in his seminal book, The Tuning of the World. Published in 1977, it gained international attention and defined many new terms and concepts in sound and ecology popularly used to this day.

WLP and MSAE invite you to participate in the 2013 World Listening Day, which will happen on Thursday, July 18. Other WLD events will be happening during the week of July 14^th-20^th. Here are several possibilities. You can—

• organize a soundwalk or a listening party when people play field recordings.
• organize a performance event that involves field recordings and other artistic expressions that explore our soundscape and how we can listen to our sonic environment.
• participate in a private / solitary way, by paying attention to your soundscape.
• facilitate an educational event that relates to acoustic ecology, field recordings, or a similar topic.
• Contact organizations that are participating in World Listening Day, to see if you can get involved that way.

The level of participation that happened during the first several World Listening Days was wonderful, and we look forward to the kind of participation we’ll be having this year. If you would like to participate in the 2013 World Listening Day, please email worldlistening@gmail.com, and be sure to include “World Listening Day” in the subject line.  You could also download the 2013 World Listening Day participation form here. Thanks!

It is a common knowledge that we experience places not only by seeing but also by listening. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, Barry Blesser and Linda- Ruth Salter take advance of his long career in audio engineering and her experience regarding space, and they examine auditory spatial awareness. They introduce the notion of aural architecture, integrating contributions from a wide range of disciplines such as architecture, music, acoustics, psychology, art and many others. According to them, when we think of architecture, we tend to visualize the properties of space that can be seen, especially boundaries like walls and surfaces. In contrast, aural architecture has aural boundaries. Moreover, the aural and acoustic attributes of a space have an influence on the moods and feeling of those who inhabit it. Searching for a certain high-impact space is easier than trying to construct it, since it is impossible to auralize a space that has never been experienced. So, it is obvious that we tend to listen to the unique voice of certain spaces but without realizing it most of the times.

But what happens when we leave our home? How we tend to aurally experience the city? The French philosopher and phenomenologist Jean- Francois Augoyard at the Centre de researche sur l’espace sonore et l’ environment urbain (CRESSON) at the National School of Architecture of Grenoble and lead soundscape researcher, makes an innovative approach. In his book, Sonic experience, a guide on everyday sounds, he introduces the notion of sonic effect, and he provides a sourcebook full of auditory examples with a distinctive architectural and urban context. Nevertheless, he clearly uses the notion of R. Murray’s soundscape and Pierre Schaeffer’s sound object. Augoyard believes that never before has the everyday contemporary soundtrack of urban space been so cacophonous, and he hopes to enrich our understanding of what it is to listen and the role sound plays to our environment.

Following the same path with CRESSON Bjorn Hellstrom, the writer of Noise Design: Architectural Modelling and the Aesthetics of Urban Acoustic Space, takes a structural approach to urban acoustic space. While most regulations adopt a defensive attitude towards noise, as unwanted sound, Hellstrom believes that urban noise, transient and immaterial as it is, makes public and private space less predictable and less monotonous, having a direct connection to transparent and fluid space, which is a central principle of contemporary architectural composition.

But is this transformation of the contemporary urban soundscape in the Western World, the result of major cultural and technological changes that took place in the beginning of 20^th century? Emily Thomson, in her book The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933, agrees that the dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened, were the result of the prevalence of a new aural culture. The new sound of the modern technology changed radically the experience of sonic space. This is a fact that you can visually notice for example when you experience the architecture of Boston’s Symphony Hall, which was built in 1900s and the architecture of Radio City Music Hall, which was built in the 1930’s. The architectural composition of these two stages is mainly the result of acoustics but its function changes entirely in these two cases.

The result of this journey is that; the connection between soundscapes and architecture is not a new but an ancient one. While the soundscape of the world changes, as R. Murray Schafer has stated in his book that introduced the notion of soundscape, modern man should learn to inhabit a world with an acoustic environment radically different from any other era. I believe that contemporary architects should stop designing for people without senses and focus on real space rather than space constructed by bits!

References:

Blesser, Barry and Linda-Ruth Salter. Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?: Experiencing aural architecture. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007. Print.

Auguyard, Jean-Francois and Henry Torgue. Sonic experience, a guide on everyday sounds. Quebec: McGill- Queen’s University Press, 2005. Print.

Hellstrom, Bjorn. Noise Design: Architectural Modelling and the Aesthetics of Urban Acoustic Space. (Doctoral Dissertation, School of Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology, KTH) Gotenborg: Reproman AB, 2003. Print.

Thomson, Emily. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004. Print.

Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Vermont: Destiny Books, 1977,1994. Print

Picture sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enraged_Musician

Second photograph is courtesy of Alex Stogiannis; Stockholm’s central station January 2013.

http://bicycleresearchproject.blogspot.gr/2013/01/18-emily-thompsons-soundscape-of.html

But then just last week I was walking around a lake in Minneapolis on a rare Spring-like day. Everyone was out. Beneath the conversations and laughter of joggers, walkers and cell phone users I heard an intriguing, tinkling sound like bells. The ice on the lake was finally melting and breaking up into small crystals which were being pushed together by the wind. These collisions caused a delicate chiming that was even more delightful for being barely audible.

In some aspects, such as its subtlety and bell-like quality, it reminded me of the sound I had intended to focus on in this blog: the suikinkutsu, a musical device found in Japanese gardens. In February this year I finally tracked one down in the Taizo-in Zen temple in Kyoto. I was in Japan for a revisit after 30 years, but on my first visit I hadn’t even heard of the suikinkutsu. I read about it in 1995 in David Toop’s book Ocean of Sound. He wrote that after listening to this minute sound “all auditory senses are heightened”. I wanted to hear this for myself.

And so at last, after a long walk to Taizo-in and some searching in the temple garden, I was listening to a quiet but resonant “bing!” and then “bong!” near and below what appeared to be a hand-washing basin. After recording these gentle sounds for a while, I finally realized  that it is the act of washing the hands that plays the suikinkutsu. The device consists of a pot buried upside down with a hole at the top and a small pool of water, usually on a bed of gravel, inside the pot. The hand-washing basin collects water from a bamboo pipe and lets it drip through the hole into the resonating pot. Once I began to let water pour through the hole, splashes started to bounce off the sides and streams of pure, rich tones rang out in the pot.

Apparently it is quite rare nowadays to find a suikinkutsu without a bamboo listening pole to amplify the sounds, but I was lucky in my choice of Taizo-in temple as this was a quiet garden and no pole was necessary. Apart from enjoying the variety of sounds produced, I really like the fact that the suikinkutsu (often translated as “water koto cave”) is discreet and surprising and the device is hidden from view. It is, in a sense, a sound maker that is played by accident and that gives a different listening experience to each person.

(To hear a suikinkutsu, I recommend John Levack Drever’s recording, also at Taizo-in Temple.)

*   *   *   *

Viv Corringham is a British vocalist, sound artist and composer, currently based in the USA, who has worked internationally since the early 1980s. Her work includes audio installations, music performances and soundwalks. She is a 2012 and 2006 McKnight Composer Fellow through American Composer Forum and has received many grants and awards. She has an MA Sonic Art from Middlesex University, London, England and is certified to teach Deep Listening by composer Pauline Oliveros.

In the previous 12 months, work has been presented at Around Sound Festival, Hong Kong 2013; Tempo Reale Festival, Florence, Italy 2012; Soundworks, ICA, London, UK 2012; Her Noise Festival, Tate Modern, London, UK 2012 and Deep Listening Institute, Kingston, NY, USA 2012.

Articles about her work have appeared in magazines and books: In the Field (UK), Organised Sound (UK), Musicworks (Canada), Playing With Words (UK) and For Those Who Have Ears (Ireland). Recordings are available on Innova, Deep Listening, Emanem, Slowfoot, NoMansLand, ARC Music, MASH, Slam, Rhiannon, Jungle Records, SSWA, Move, Artship and Third Force.

www.vivcorringham.org

My curiosity about connections between sound and architecture made me take a different path, so I researched musicians who have taken an interest in the city and architecture as a source of inspiration. Iannis Xenakis was a genius who used his personal memories of crowd, demonstrations and battles that took place in the city of Athens, during the German occupation in the Second World War, as a row music material, a true war soundscape. Using his own words “The whole world has observed the sonic phenomena regarding a large politicized crowd of hundreds of thousands of people. The human river recites a slogan with dissent rate. Afterwards another slogan is heard from the head of the demonstration and is transmitted until the end, by replacing the first one. So, a wave of transition starts from the head until the end of the demonstration. The clamor fills the city, the inhibitory power of the voice and the rhythm is the highest that could ever be. It is about an event particularly bright and beautiful regarding its own ferociousness. Thereafter, there is the conflict between the protestors and the enemy. The perfect rhythm of the last slogan decays in a vast crowd of chaotic screams that are transmitted until the end of the demonstration. Let’s imagine additional to that the bursts of the machineguns and the whistle of the bullets that add their intonation in this complete disarray. Then, very quickly, the crowd is dissolved, the sonic and the visual hell is succeeded by an explosive calmness, full of despair, death and dust.”  (Iannis Xenakis, 21).

 Iannis Xenakis’ studies and his profession as an architect and engineer (these two were considered to be almost the same by Greek Universities in previous decades), as Makis Solomos marked in his book about Xenakis, affected deeply his music in terms of practical mathematics and a holistic spatial notion of sound.

But can the opposite also be true? Can we find examples of architectural structures that are affected mainly by sound? As an architect and a theorist Juhani Pallasmaa stated in his book The Architecture of image: Existential Space in Cinema, since the 1970s architects have fervently sought connections with other art forms—such as seeking inspiration in painting, sculpture, literature and music. Architects’ interest in infusing their work with echoes of other art forms indicates that the architecture has become uncertain of its essence and future course.

Searching deeper in older historical periods, such as 1950s, I came across Steen E. Rasmussen’s classic architectural theory book Experiencing Architecture. Steen E. Rasmussen, a Danish architect and urban planner, acknowledged that “It is possible to speak of hearing architecture.” He believed that sound is a major factor of architecture—even if many of us could say that a building does not produce sound, and therefore cannot be heard. But isn’t this also true about light? A building does not radiate light, yet it can be seen. Rasmussen concludes, “Though you cannot hear whether or not it is good architecture, neither is it certain you can see whether it is good or not, you can both see and hear if a building has character.” (Steen E. Rasmussen, 224).

And as I continued my journey exploring contemporary architecture, I came across the work of Peter Zumthor, a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize, whose work I have always admired. As he claimed in his book Atmospheres, “The Sound of a Space” is one of the nine aspects that concerned him in order to generate a certain atmosphere in his buildings. He believes that interiors are like large instruments that collect sound, amplifying and transmitting it somewhere. According to Zumthor, that particular sound of his spaces has to do with the shape peculiar to each room, with the surfaces of the materials they contain and the materials that have been applied.

But do we tend to associate certain sounds with certain rooms? Do the spaces speak? To be continued…

References:

Σολωμός, Μάκης. Iannis Xenakis: the Universe of an Idiosyncratic Creator. Αθήνα: εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2008. Print.

Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in Cinema. Helsinki: Rakennustieto Publishing, 2007. Print.

Rasmussen, Steen E. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1959, 1964. Print.

Zumthor, Peter. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhauser, 2006, 2010. Print.

Picture sources:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kunsthofpassage_Dresden.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Expo58_building_Philips.jpg

http://littlespeakeasy.com/?p=318

In London The Neo Futurist Collective headed by myself performed Cartet to a dedicated sound art audience braving the cold in Soho Square with a reporter from classical music station BBC Radio 3 recording the proceedings. Thanks to my fellow performers Harry Ross, Peter Faulkner and Kay Aplin who did a sterling job in interpreting my score!

In Como, Italy just outside Milan, Marsiglione Arts Gallery commemorated the occasion with a special exhibition dedicated to Russolo’s work. The gallery are  specialists in the work of Russolo and hold a large archive of his paintings. The exhibition continues until April 6th.

In Amsterdam, Professor Russolo and his Noise Intoners picked up some extra performers en route on their noisy bicycle ride and gained media useful coverage on local TV and radio.

You can watch the video here.

In Devon UK, Joe Stevens organised a series of radio broadcasts live from DIVAcontemporary. You can listen here and watch on YouTube.

I also heard of events in Paris, Brussels and Chicago. If anyone has documentation of these or any others,  please post links in the comments.

I’ve hinted at it in previous posts and here it is… The lost recording of Luigi Russolo performing his own “Art of Noises” manifesto, probably recorded at the Milan apartment of FT Marinetti on an Edison Phonograph.

The recording is followed by an interview that I did for Onda Italiana confirming the authenticity of the work.

Listen to the recording here on Soundcloud.

Dear Fellow Recordists and Noisemakers!

Monday 11th March marks an auspicious occasion – the 100th anniversary of the publication of the “Art of Noises” manifesto by futurist artist Luigi Russolo. With the manifesto and the concerts that followed, Russolo, an Italian painter, opened our ears to the use of noise as musical material. Without him the entire history of 20th century music might have taken a different course.

On March 11th 2013, The Neo Futurist Collective and Fruit for the Apocalypse will celebrate the 100th anniversary with a short guerrilla performance at 7.30pm GMT. In a Central London location (whereabouts to be announced on the day at 5pm GMT) we will perform “Cartet” – a Quartet for Car Engines, Horns and Radios in homage to Russolo’s call for the celebration of urban noise. Announcements will be made via Twitter:
@apocalypsefruit
@artofnoises

Also on March 11th we will be revealing to the world a recently uncovered recording of what appears to be Luigi Russolo himself declaiming a short section of his manifesto. This potentially historically important recording is particularly poignant because most of Russolo’s instruments and scores were destroyed or lost during the intervening two world wars. All that is left is the opening 7 bars of the score to his noise symphony “Awakening of a City”.

On the same day in Amsterdam at 13:30 (CET) Professor Russolo and His Noise Intoners will be staging a 1 hour bicycle parade with klaxons and Manifesto pamphlets. See his web site for details (http:// www.russolo.nl).
Onda Italiana will be broadcasting an interview and performance excerpts from the Professor in Dutch, Italian (and a little English) along with the recently uncovered Russolo recording, plus interviews with experts discussing the newly discovered recording.

Today is an auspicious day! One hundred years ago today, futurist artist and musician Luigi Russolo published the Art of Noises manifesto as a letter to fellow composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. It is a document that has resonated down the last century and still has revolutionary potential today.

“We must replace the limited variety of timbres of orchestral instruments by the infinite variety of timbres of noises”. (Russolo  March 11th 1913)

In this one sentence we can see not only a call for a radical re-imagining of musical practice, but the beginnings of field recording as a compositional art form and the genesis of an idea that would eventually lead to acoustic ecology. The “infinite variety of timbres of noises” referred to not only includes human noise making, but that of the biological and geological worlds in which the human is present.

And so, Happy Birthday “Art of Noises”  - watch out for more posts today detailing the various events and happenings that are happening around Europe to mark the occasion.

Robin Fox’s Giant Theremin was set up in the forecourt of the MONA FOMA venue, Princes Wharf on Hobart’s once industrial waterfront. Standing at seven metres, the Giant Theremin (YouTube video here) is sculptural and material in the form of a pyramid made of oxidised steel with a long mast protruding from the tip on which sensors were mounted. As a musical instrument, with an industrial aesthetic, it is played by movement around it. Play multiplies through wordplay: playing an instrument playfully. As interaction triggers diverse sounds, strangely reminiscent of other sounds like whale song, other musical instruments and electronic pulses, there is a concomitant change in the surrounds and the people who use it. In a joyous feedback loop, laughter among its users is one of the sounds that the theremin generously generates. As people dance, step and jump around it, sometimes trying to sneak up on it, the calls of the Giant Theremin ululate through and around the waterfront, distinct yet interlaced with the sounds of traffic and shipping. For those accustomed to the auditory environment of the waterfront, there is something new and strange here, a calling out or announcement of difference.

On the mezzanine level of Princes Wharf, Vicky Browne and Darren Seltmann’s Synchronic Lines provides a distinct experience of enclosure. Geometric sound pods enclose listeners in a unique and intimate auditory space of their own making. Users can shape the auditory space using a console to alter pitch and tempo of electronic sounds. Stepping out of the larger space of the wharf into these cocoons of sound is like stepping into an ‘other’ inner world of nuance. Without the cocoons, as small architectures, the sound of Synchronic Lines would dissipate and the listener would be straining to find them among the rattling cacophonies of the cavernous warehouse structure. When in the darkness of the pods, the listener is immersed in sound. Through their reliance on instrumentation, sculpture or architecture, Ong’s divide of “sight isolates, sound incorporates” becomes apparent. Occupying the pod or playing the theremin, as physical objects, is not incorporation. Sound touches.

At Glenorchy, out of town on the way to MONA, an arts sculpture park has recently been opened along a stretch of regenerated waterfront. Susan Philipsz’ The Waters Twine (Vimeo video here) is the first commission at GASP! Based on a 1929 recording of James Joyce reading Finegan’s Wake, the strains of this multichannel work drift along a recently built boardwalk that spans the bay, emphasising its tidal flows. Composer Hazel Felman set the Joyce recording to music having been guided by the pitch of his voice. This sonification of the spoken word and poetic language, using a vibraphone, results in a gentle motion of watery sound that merges with the surrounding speed and hum of traffic from the nearby highway and the lapping of water in this littoral zone. The large black swans seem lulled by it as they flock and rest on the glassy waters within earshot of the speakers. As footsteps mark their own tempo along the boardwalk the listener is more aware of their presence. The listener is welcomed into the fold of listening openly and carefully: to be present and to experience sound in its plurality. (See also this YouTube video of Philipsz’ Turner Prize winning work, Lowlands.)

The auditory worlds created by each of these installations merges with and disrupts other auditory worlds, and the listener not only explores their listening in sound, but sound within sound. This becomes more acute as sound based works are introduced into spaces and places in ways that alter them, encouraging other ways of interacting with and experiencing those spaces and places.

Everyone’s favourite flaneur is next to take the stage. Des Coulam is a British recordist based in Paris, well known in the sound community for his passionate and pain-staking dedication to the collection of Parisian soundsmarks. Photography we are told is a great point of reference, with its ability and immediacy to capture the unexpected, and Des quotes both Robert Doisneau and Robert Capa amongst his inspirations.

“The sound themselves tell you how much they need to speak”, is Des’ sound advice to us recordists. And Parisian sounds certainly have a lot to tell us. Among the extensive catalogue of Soundlandscapes, countless absorbing themes emerge: people, streets, protests, national celebrations, literature, architecture, to list but a few. Des’ tireless recording work becomes even more fascinating when we are told that it was never planned out at the onset, but allowed to develop and grow organically in its own time. Coulam is also keen to stress the importance of the conservational aspect of his work, stating that he often imagines as a listener a PhD student in the future researching an aspect of Paris, and being able to explore the sounds of our current present.

His passion for the sounds and for the city is contagious, and I believe it is because his work not only speak of the sources, or their recordist – it also communicates a subtext of sheer joy in the use of the medium, and stands as a celebration of life in its sheer breadth and variety.

Next we have a world of words to explore with Salomé Voegelin at the helm, who engages in the practice of phonographic writing. Salomé has never visited Hong Kong, she has ‘perhaps seen it once in a postcard’.  As Chair Daniela Cascella puts it, she is the Ghost to Peter’s Guest and Des’ Resident.  Through the Soundwords blog, Salomé shares the intimate thrill of discovering a space through other people’s subjective descriptions. As we listen to the written words being read out and occasionally performed, we become active participants in a process of interpretation, imagination and invention.  The end result is quietly affecting, as everyday subjects such as a harbor, or rain against a windowpane become surprisingly intimate, as seen for the first time through the eyes of a stranger.

During the Q&A, the issue field recording: craft v. art inevitably raises its head (what took it so long?). In response to the question from the audience ‘when is a sound craft, and when is it art?’, Vogelin delivers the Puzzling Throwaway Comment Of The Day when she casually replies, just a little too quickly: ‘you just stick it in a gallery.’ Unfortunate? Poorly judged? Certainly surprising, coming from an artist working with words and until this point painstakingly accurate and deliberate in her definitions.

There is some additional teetering on the brink of a semantic quicksand as a couple of dense questions on methodology and definition are eventually resolved by Peter Cusack, with a candid and rather refreshing: ‘(beat. deep breath.) I don’t know how to answer that.  I just don’t think about that.’, raising another interesting point in the space between the question and the answer.

Helen Frosi’s curated listening session comes at the perfect time. True to its tagline – sharing emotions, it refocuses audience, speakers, chairs and organisers beyond approaches, language and definitions back on why exactly we are all here in the first place. Comfortably enveloped in the dark, we are treated to Retracings, a series of sound and video recordings centered around calendar-based traditions, customs and religious rituals. Be it religious services, marching bands or semi-pagan rituals, these collective sonic gestures are shared moments that bring a community together, and this is exactly what they achieve once again in the dark of the auditorium.

–

Following the lunch break is an exciting and tightly packed afternoon programme.  First up is Christina Kubisch, whose biog puzzlingly tells us she ‘belongs to the first generation of sound artists’  (uhm, really? For a contemporary of Luigi Russolo and Pierre Schaeffer Kubish looks suspiciously young…) Back within more realistic time spans, it is truly fascinating to be guided through the development of Kubish’s outstanding work with electromagnetic induction from the 1970s, which later developed into her well-known Electrical Walks.  Kubish’s presentation is thoroughly engaging and though-provoking, particularly when she discloses how even the world of electromagnetic waves is now sadly globalized, with only ‘twelve or so’ recognizable sonic identities from bank machines from around the world. Humour is infused throughout her presentation, in particular as Christina recounts some unusual run-ins with security attendants, and we even go behind the glass to share in the thoughts of a particularly confused sales assistant at a train ticket counter.

Davide Tidoni’s charmingly informal style is next, supported by a windows presentation deliberate in its lo-fi look and feel.  While disappointingly the quirky swiftly deflates into some tedious reading along to the presentation text on screen, this is fortunately mitigated by Davide’s sheer enthusiasm for his research practice, inviting us to reflect on the fact that ‘the body is our first interface’ and that we cannot, no matter how much we try, ever adjust our own subjective levels of sensitivity. And that there really is no transparency: by just being there, in the field, we are altering it both with our presence and with our perception.  Davide concludes with a passionate call to what he defines as ‘the cultivation of the sensitive’.

Concluding this session is Jana Winderen, which takes the reins with a presentation on her underwater sound recordings, uncovering what lies beyond our audible perception as well as our own experience as a species.  Her recordings – collected in Belize among other international locations – also occasionally raise the point of how man’s intervention projects such as oil drilling brutally threaten these unique environments, making a case not only for the obvious (their endangered status), but also for their melancholy transient state.

As we hurtle towards the final session of the Symposium, thoughts and ideas are well and truly competing with each other for space in our collective mind.  There is a lot to absorb and digest in a very short space of time, and there’s more to come.  Udo Noll drops in virtually via video-link to illustrate the concept and practices of his Radio Aporee project, a perfect example of a truly global ‘field’ of practice, that is also open-source, accessible and engaging.  Udo aptly blends his technical, scientific and engineering skills with a commitment to making these skills (in the form of user-friendly platforms) available to others. All in an effort, as he puts it, to ‘reclaiming the field’ from increasingly present, looming commercial and advertising forces.

I sit thoroughly engrossed through Zoe Irvine’s presentation of her project Magnetic Migraton Tapes.  What begun as a simple observation of magnetic cassette tape ‘breaking free’ at the end of the 90s, discarded by the side of the road or waving attached to lamp-post, triggered in her the curiosity to find the stories within. This salvage process of patient re-spooling progressively led Zoe on a creative journey to the Sangatte Red Cross centre for asylum seekers, where it really comes into its own by becoming equally about narrative as about the social and the political.  Most crucially, however, the process is fun and engaging: we relish the anticipation as Zoe plays back a quickfire round of tapes, only providing us with the locations where these were found- a sonic treasure hunt, a collage and an invitation for the imagination all rolled into one.

Ximena Alarcón’s work also deals with engaging audiences, but with a thoroughly different approach. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening techniques, Alarcón utilizes sound and the virtual world to shorten the distance between migrants and  their respective countries of provenance (in project that included Leicester-Mexico, and London-Bogotà), and asking of her participants to consider ‘how do you sound in Mexico?  How do you sound in Britain?’. Although the transmission process can add its fair share of mishaps such as feedback and acoustic deformation, Ximena assures us that what is established is not merely a technical connection, but that ‘empathic moments of energy’ are also generated.  What comes across a little less clearly is the approach to the second project, entitled Migratory Dreams, where dreams are shared in a virtual space between people in different locations. As the presentation doesn’t dwell on the detail of just how this two-way communication is delivered- by way of improvisation, free association, performance? and in what ratios in relation to each other? – we are left to wonder whether such intimate sharing can actually successfully work in practice.  Or perhaps it simply aims to re-enact the sharing of a common experience, but as a long-distance call.

Francesca Panetta is the final speaker of the day and indeed the Symposium. Special Projects Editor at the Guardian’s Audio Department, Francesca has also developed an extensive experience with ‘Sound AR’, or augmented reality platforms for sound experiences.  20 years after Janet Cardiff’s early soundwalks the game has inherently changed, as both public and artists are mercifully no longer restricted to linear narratives or forced to walk at the same pace as the storyteller.  HackneyHear is such one contemporary productions, a GPS-reactive smartphone app that immerses the listener in a creative actuality of sound, interviews, music and specially commissioned material. This layered audio experience is innovative in its active sensing of changes in the listener’s position and actions, which it reacts to by pausing the narrative, cross-fading to a different layer, or fading out.  What this work celebrates is ultimately giving the power from the developer into the hands of the audience, and the audience seem to definitely want more of it: there are already similar projects in development, Panetta anticipates, for Soho and King’s Cross.

And so we come, breathlessly and with literally no time to spare – not even for the Plenary session that must regrettably be cut out of the programme – to the end of the first In the Field Symposium. Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle wrap up proceedings. And as the audience trickles its way out and towards the pub, with somewhat sore lower limbs but in the afterglow of two inspiring days of talks, we can only agree that the huge amount of creative energy and enthusiasm developed in this room must be harvested and built on. Through new work, new collaborations and the further nurturing of what is an increasingly tight and supportive community of field recordists.

- La Cosa Preziosa
@lacosapreziosa

With special thanks to the Symposium curators and organisers Cheryl Tipp, Cathy Lane, Angus Carlyle and Joel Cahen, and to Dan Godston of the World Listening Project.