[STR 016] WLD 2014 – Directions

From subtle to strong, the movement that sound represents is always a question of directionality, not just of axis, not just of traces around the space, but also of focus and attraction for the one who listens. Maybe sound is never going to any place, maybe is not being directed and there is not such thing as sonic routes, but it’s clear that we can draw lines with our ears and define aural targets around the sonic universe, not only for passively going around them, but contemplating the environment interacting with it in a particular state of awareness, curiosity or just because of that organized randomness that is present in any sonic movement, or accident.

Photo by Valentina Villarroel.

Releases:

1. Old greenhouse in Teno, by Atilio Doreste (Spain) – “The agricultural activity in the Teno Rural Park, as protected landscape, leaves traces of past human activities. We apreciate, close to the sea, in a desert and uninhabited place,  different degraded materials in a greenhouse that are blowing in the wind: fine canvas, wires, glass timbers, corroded woods…”.
2. Bio-Critical Incidents, by Mark Peter Wright (UK) – This track is comprised of four separate audio recordings and attempts to re-hear technology and self-presence as a creative form of disruption. The overall edit includes events and activities that fall either side of what commonly represents a field recording. Driving to a site, recording after accidently severing a microphone cable, tidying up the remnants of a broken mirror from a failed project, or simply positioning and preparing equipment to record. They document the silenced bookends that make up the field: the marginal, noisy, personal and abject moments bound into the immediate entanglements of recording and its elsewhere contingencies.
3. Walking in water, by Alyssa Moxley (USA) – Recording of walking along the beach as the tide was coming in just after sunrise in Koh Samui, November 2011. A small dog joins. Recorded with a Zoom H4N. Raw field recording with EQ.
4. Humedal lenga, by Valentina Villarroel Ambiado (Concepción, Chile) – Proyecto de documentación y registro de paisaje sonoro en humedal lenga (aves y hábitat) a cargo de Valentina Villarroel, músico experimental y ejecutora de trabajos de experimentación sonora.
5. Birdsong, by Peter Barnard (UK) – Incidental recording capturing the sounds of a bird singing outside while an opera piece plays on a radio – almost complementing each other by chance.
6. Private Water Wheel, by Christopher Livengood (Portland, USA) – Stereo recording of a small water wheel at Privacy Campground, Hancock, MA. The elderly owner of the campground built this wheel back in the 1970’s, along with a wind turbine, bomb shelter, off-the-grid electrical system, sauna, and a host of other impressive structures (metal statues, miniature train rides for children, a commemorative fountain).  The unique gurgling, belching, and screeching sound of the water wheel immediately evokes, for me, a distinctive sense of place; a private world created by a singular man
7. Space as Outline, by Lianray Pienaar (UK) – The idea that sound – as a constructive material – can regenerate our experience of a given space has influenced my decision to develop work for a specific location, and in my pursuit of a suitable unconventional/non-art space I discovered a disused railway tunnel near Old Warden (Bedfordshire, UK). This dark and uninhabited structure presented me with an unfamiliar, yet fascinating platform for a sonic intervention; documenting my investigation through photographs, videos and sound recordings.Tracing and overlapping visual intricacies within photographs has enabled me to translate the physical/structural information from the site into graphic notation. The graphic scores developed throughout this process are documents of musical ideas, which serve as a sufficient, but incomplete outline for a sound performance. My initial performance took place inside the cavity of the tunnel, as I felt it necessary to incorporate the sounds within the space they originated from.The composition exhibits my interpretation and rendering of the graphic scores on an electric guitar; creating a musical formation that is not structured or static. Using recordings of the performance and combining these with field recordings from the site, I have created a composition which captures both the found and the musical elements of the tunnel. 
8. Near the Celtic Cross at Cill Ronain Harbour, by Anthony Kelly (Ireland) – This recording was made at 10.40am during a busy August Sunday morning at the junction near the Celtic Cross, Cill Ronain harbour, Inis Mór, one of the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway, Ireland. Locals talk, English and Irish language is spoken, whistling can be heard, bicycles, cars and tractors go by, an Aer Aran small plane flies overhead and gulls can be heard from time to time. There is light wind. Recorded (48k, 24-bit) using primo microphones to Zoom H2 Digital Recorder. Microphones fixed to bag and mounted on low wall.
9. Abandoned Railway Bridge, by Sala (Lithuania) – Recorded on abandoned Soviet era railway using contact and conventional microphones. windy day with drizzle. This is some kind of compositional work as includes multilayering (tracks recorded at the same time) and eq.
10. Dry wooden branches music for birds and wind, by James Kwi (Ireland) – Recorded and played 1.6.2014 in Virginia Forest, Co. Cavan, Ireland.
11. The Hush We Hear in the Air Still Holds (live), by Leanne Cunningham (England, UK) – This piece presents a live recording of the installation space, The Hush We Hear in the Air Still Holds. The installation space was an ephemeral space that generated sound works from sculptural elements. The sound works presented within the installation explored a sense of spatio – temporality – a documentation (field recordings) of visited locations including Mexico City, Krakow Poland, and Scandinavia. Three different pieces are brought together in order to exist as one composition, a composition built up of time and motion conveying a sense of geographical location.
12. En la incierta ribera, by Montserrat Rodríguez (Spain) – Stereo sound composition made from three field recordings taken during a series of walks along the bank of the Ter River (to north of Catalonia), close to its mouth at the Mediterranean Sea, in fall 2013. The piece talks about being in solitude but serenity, listening and watching life on the river, always bearing in mind the noise currents and wind stoking the reeds and rushes, and listening to the other side with rumors of voices, bricks, sounds of birds, doves, ducks, gulls, coots and some stilt … like listening through an old walkie-talkie all items …
13. Little Owl, by Nikos Sarikakis (Greece)
14.  Stockton x broadway, by Escht (USA) – Recorded walking around chinatown in san francisco. i made a few loops around the area before deciding to linger for a while on the corner of Stockton and Broadway.
15. Skillern Tract—Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, by Walker Wooding (USA) – Observation deck soundscape.
16. Walking with Pica Pica, by Marta Amaro (Portugal) – Soundwalk in a farm in search of Pica pica, a bird from the Corvidae family. As i was walking they escape from tree to tree trying to look for shelter.
17. Dawn chorus Lac de la Liaz, by Simon Lebel (France) – This is a raw field recording recorded early morning at the “Lac de la Liaz” in France.
18. Wind turbines at Serra do Alvao, by Nuno Morao (Portugal) – In late September 2008, I was working as sound director in a documentary shooting in Northern Portugal. At some point, we wanted to shoot the sunset at the top of a mountain (Serra do Alvao), and I was left alone to do some sound recordings while the rest of the crew (3 other people — low budget films…) was doing some car-travelling shots some kilometers below. I found myself in the middle of a large wind farm, its turbines buzzing and blowing. It was a truly magical moment: the wind calling, some nearby sheeps grazing, the sun slowly setting, and my ears amazed by the privilege of being in such a marvelous place at the right time. I hope some of it passes on to you, dear listener.
19. Ribblehead Viaduct, by Tariq Emam (UK) – Recorded binaurally at Ribblehead Viaduct in the Yorkshire Dales; this piece exploits the stereo method capturing two unique sounds whilst still pertaining to that sense of place beneath the 400m-long viaduct.
20. Dog at Finse Meertje, by Leon van Bokhorst (Netherlands) – We took a short holiday to get some piece and quiet in Drenthe – The Netherlands. While walking in the forest just outside Uffelte, we stumbled upon a beautiful lake called ‘het Finse meertje’. We sat down for a while and watched our dog examine the area.
21. Melbourne train crossing, by The Doll (New Zeland) – Recorded on a Nokia C101 brick phone.