Electrical Walks is a an artistic project and concept created by the german sound artist Christina Kubisch. Basically, electrical walks is the concept of taking a walk with a pair of headphones that are design to detect electromagnetic induction, making possible hear all the electromagnetic sounds created by electronic technology, from mobile phones to electric stair cases. This concept is somehow similar to field recording and sound shaping, but it has the amazing capability to detect sound that are invisible to the naked ear. Virtual walks Oslo, is a project where Kubisch recorded different electrical walks around Oslo and then created an interactive site where people can see 360 degree images of the sites and hear both its normal ambience and its electrical sound (Kubisch, 2019). This creates different perspectives in which you can experience a place, making in a sense, visible the invisible.

I have used induction coil microphones that have the capability of picking electromagnetic signals before, but I have never experienced something similar as doing an electrical walk. I am tremendously curious of doing one and I wonder in how many ways could be used artistically. An idea that could be interesting is: instead of using field recording and ambient recordings to set an atmosphere in film, using electrical walks recordings to set the atmosphere of a scene in a movie.

ASMR or autonomous sensory meridian response is a sensory phenomenon caused by specific auditory and visual content that induces on the person experiencing them, a calm and relaxed state, similar to meditation (Lloyd, 2017) . In sound, ASMR can be triggered with specific pleasant sounds, for example whispering. ASMR can also be triggered by the repetition of a specific sound, that is in its nature very hypnotic. Recently, this phenomenon has become a You Tube trend, with millions of videos that oscillate in different forms and art styles.

Minimalism is a music genre that can create an ASMR, because of its repetitive nature and trance inducing capabilities. The composer Aimée Portioli, a.k.a Grand River, is a dutch-italian composer based in Berlin, that is known for her minimalistic structuralism and creative sound design. She did a performance with collaboration of Fact Magazine, where she exploited her trance inducing capabilities with a looping composition made with acoustic and electronic instruments. In the bio, the writer defined the piece as ASMR quality, created by the rich textures of its sound design (Fact, 2021). She uses sophisticated synths like the Buchla Music Easel and different Euro Rack synthesizers, creating a rich palette of sound.

My composition is deeply influenced by repetitive electronic music, because of its hypnotic nature. I always wanted to make my compositions trance inducing and have a calming effect on the listener. Unconsciously I’ve always wanted to have an ASMR quality on my compositions but I never quite achieve it. Reflecting back on Grand River’s composition, I think these qualities can be achieve with a creative and powerful sound design. As I don’t have the resources to get expensive synthesizers as the once she uses, I could start searching for sounds sources that are outside of my comfort zone. For example acoustic instruments as the ones used in her composition, and with them attempt to create an ASMR texture.

Lisa Busby is a Scottish composer, singer and producer of experimental electronic music. Her work is notorious for using unconventional composition techniques such as using non standard musical notation. Busby also uses a lot of literary techniques in her composition, mixing spoken word and poems with electronic beats. With these techniques, Busby achieves to create a narrative that caught’s the listeners attention.

Proposal For A Song is one of Busby’s pieces that I most enjoyed. Creating different textures with the noisy looping sound of vinyl and using beautiful melodies with her voice, Busby creates a really emotional performance. By using her voice the piece has much more intimacy and as said before it hooks you to a narrative. She uses a lot of experimental turntablism (Busby, 2019) in her work, I really liked this aspect of her work and I think I could implement something similar to mine. I could try to sample some of my personal favorite records and include them in my pieces, to try and make my pieces have more intimacy such as Proposal For A Song Has.

Another characteristic that Proposal To A Song has is an unconventional structure. The piece have different sections that are very un similar from the one before, but they fit well together. In my piece Behind The Window, I also approached a non conventional structure but the transition of every section are not as smooth as the piece by Busby. I could use her work for inspiration for my next piece to smoothen my transitions and that way create a successful non conventional structure. Attached below my piece Behind The Window.

With a Zoom H4n field recorder and some microphones I went to a near by park to do a sound walk. This was the first time I did a sound walk with a field recorder, in past occasions I used my phone to record but its sound quality was not very desirable. When recording I used headphones to hear what I was recording, I could hear the sound of my surroundings much closer, giving me a different perspective of experiencing sound.

While recording, there was a local table tennis match occurring near by me. I approached it and did a recording of it, later on I edited the track and added some compression (recording attached below). The final outcome was very interesting, by hearing the recording you could be transported to that exact moment. Field recording has the capability of capturing an atmosphere. This concept inspired me to use field recording in my sound compositions and this way create new atmospheres and new sonic experiences.

“Structures Sonores” is the concept of creating sculptures that can also be used as musical instruments. This concept was created and developed by the Baschet Brothers, two french artists and musicians at the start of the 1950’s. Francois Baschet was a sculptor and musician, his brother Bernard, was an engineer that made the design’s possible. Their concept of their work was to make sound, visual art and social implications intertwine in a single object. The Baschet brothers also performed with the instrument they created, making a performance that was at the same time sculptures, expanding the creative ranges of sound art performance.

In the following link there is an article and video published by 4:3, Boiler Room’s underground film platform. In the video we can see a collaboration performance between the Baschet brothers and the musician couple of Yvonne and Jaques Lasry, performing in one of their sculptures in french television. https://fourthree.boilerroom.tv/film/les-structures-sonores-lasry-baschet. The sculpture/instrument displayed in the video are made out of different tubes that create sound when they are rubbed, he uses water in his hand as a lubricant to create specific pitches and change the timbre of the sound (4:3, 2020) .

The video above is an extract of a documentary of the Baschet brothers, made in 2003 by Eric Marin. In this video the Baschet brothers explain how they were inspired to create the concept of structures sonores and how it is a counter exploration to electronic synthesis. They argue that electronic synthesis is not the only way to experiment and create sound, and that acoustic structures have the potential to create unimaginable sounds that can be comparable to those of electronic synthesis. It is really obvious the influence that the french sound art movement has on the Baschet brothers and how their ideology counters the german sound movement. The concept of musique concrete is deeply embedded on the Baschet brothers (Structures Sonores Baschet, 2017).

Jessica Ekomane was the first visiting practitioner of the 2020 UAL Visiting Practitioner series. She is a Berlin based sound artist and musician that has released her own music in record labels and worked in different sound exhibitions around the world.

Multivocal (2019) – Is Jessica debut LP that was released by Important Records. This piece was inspired by Györgi Ligeti “Poème Symphonique” performance, were Ligeti displays 100 metronomes playing at different BPM’s. Multivocal consist of two melodies in different scales that mirror each other but with a difference of a millisecond in tempo. As the piece progresses the two melodies drift separately creating ever changing polyphonic rhythms, but at the end the both melodies unite in unison as in the beginning. Jessica used Max MSP for this piece and used a digital metronome to create the both melodic lines. It’s intended for a quadrophonic speaker set-up and in the piece Jessica uses different psychoacoustic techniques as compositional development.

Comedown (2020) – This piece was performed in the 2020 Berghain sound installation. The purpose of this piece was to mock and parody the concept of EDM and the popular music industry. In this piece Jessica used different techniques that are characteristic in EDM, she chose to use bass drops and risers without any compositional coherence, by this demonstrating EDM simplistic and superficial ideology. Berghain is a Berlin club that plays music like Techno and IDM, these both genres can contain characteristics that are antagonist to EDM, so the piece suited perfectly to the place were it was performed (Jessica Ekomane, 2020).

Citizen Band (2019) – CB radios were used to interfere communications between truck drivers in the US and record them. Then with those recordings, Jessica created a sound collage that was played in national Austrian radio. This piece has a personal influence from Jessica because her father is a truck driver. Another feature that had the piece is that it exposed the racism used in the truck drivers daily conversations, exposing how big racism is and how normalized it can get to be.

The following video is from the national sound archive of Mexico (Fonoteca Nacional de México, 2014). I chose this video for my introduction because I was deeply interested in the concept of preserving sound as a cultural patrimony, specially from Mexico that is my native country. Their archives contain recordings of historic moments in Mexican history, from speeches of famous presidents, to songs and tales of the soldiers that fought in the Mexican revolutionary war. This place is the best example of how sound can be used not just for music or art but as a way to preserve history and continue a cultural heritage.