I was invited by Prof Mark Joyce, a great teacher from my undergrad of many years ago, to work with a collection of amazing students for the Urban Studies Conference at NUS Yale University Singapore. Over three days we explored listening to the urban, acoustic ecology, class and gender in sound, recording, composing and performing the soundscape of place and creating a combination graphic score and sound map. The workshop culminated in their performing a graphic score, through voice, then bringing their voices into a granular synthesis application on an iPad and improvising together. So chuffed at what they accomplished over such a short period. I have a sample of their performance and images below for listening. If your browser won’t access the Soundcloud file just link directly to Soundcloud from the window below.
Final Performance
Article published in Dark Mountain Blog
Wind Turbines Spain
The sounds of modernity are increasingly moving into natural habitats. With an influx of technologies designed to utilise and extract material from nature, the natural soundscape is becoming masked by the mechanical and technological. This article addresses an experience of listening and recording which took place in the summer of 2015, within two different natural landscapes: the southern region of Iceland and the north eastern region of Spain. The field trip exposed a significant keynote sound within each space; a sound produced by renewable technologies. The sounds produced by these technologies, wind farms and hydroelectric power stations were significantly louder than had been expected. This lead to a personal critique of how to determine if certain sounds within a natural environment can be critiqued, even if they are noisy, because their impact on the landscape is less harmful than other types of energy technologies. To read the rest click here.
