Cedrik Fermont is a sound artist and an independent researcher based in Berlin. In his investigations he seeks to find sonic art in places that are not renowned in the canon. Places that have been left behind or ignored by the major art platforms and academic institutions. Fermont has different objectives when doing these investigations, one of the main objectives is to decolonize music and by so giving the righteous recognition to the original practitioners. Fermont in recent publications has explored sound cultures in South East Asia, focusing in electronic dance music and the underground culture surrounding it. He then presented his founding in western sound festivals like the CTM Berlin, with the purpose of educating the western artistic institutions.

In the online lecture, Fermont gave us an insight of his life and the problems that his practice conveys. From the economic and political problems of getting to distant locations, to culture and language issues when meeting with cultures distant to his own. He told us an anecdote that while in Covid times he did a journey across Africa with the purpose of investigating sound practices. Because of lockdown, he got trapped there and had to wait until the restriction where removed, stranded for weeks far from home. It was quite shocking to learn about his misfortunes, and it made me think about the ways the pandemic damaged sound art practitioners. It is worth reflecting upon this and take it in consideration in future projects, to confront or fix the problems related with sound arts.

Lucia Chung is an experimental sound and sculpture artist based in London. In her sound works, Chung has a fascination with noise and feedback generated by analogue equipment. One of her mediums of improvisation is no input mixing. This technique consists of using a mixing desk as an instrument, by connecting the output to an input of it and creating a feedback loop. This loop is then is modulated and altered to create a performance.

Above is a video showing Chung doing no-input mixing. For this improvisation Chung uses two mixing desks and then process the output through different pedal effects. The sound design Chung is able to create with this limited amount of gear is insane, the sound sources are so simple but the final outcome are powerful electronic drones and textures.

Havin a visiting Lecture with Lucia Chung was very interesting. I had heard in the past about no-input mixing but I never met anyone that actually does it. Noise music and experimentation has been a growing interest of mine. I have looked into artist such as Merzbow but I had never seen more contemporary artists.

Nicole Raymond a.k.a Nick Nack, is a Leeds based experimental turntablist and sound artist whose work encompasses different influences and themes. In her early DJ stages, she was deeply involve in electronic dance music scenes such as the dubstep scene. Originally influenced by the early British rave culture and the sound system culture. It could be said that Nik Nack’s work has now shifted into the experimental realm, exploring creative ways of using turn tables and vinyl, composing sound art pieces and performances. Her work has led her to meeting and collaborating with big names in the music world, like Madlib and Yves Tumor. Nick Nack won the Oram Award in 2020, and she’s a leading voice in promoting experimental turntablism across the UK.

Compass – Is a piece that I really enjoyed from Nick Nack. In this piece she uses atmospherical field recordings and manipulates them with her turn table and a delay pedal. By this she deconstructs the environment where the field recordings where taken, emphasising their rhythmic nature.

In the past, I just knew about Maria Chavez in the world of experimental turntablism so finding Nick Nack was a great thing for developing my knowledge in that field of practice. I would love to some day being able of use turntables in a performative way, either could be DJing or experimentation. I’m a great fan of vinyl and without a doubt is an area I have not indulged before.

The work of the Austrian sound artist Sam Auigner regularly follows the theme of hearing perspectives. The concept of thinking with you’re ears, instead of leading yourself from visual stimuli. His work is lead by collaborations with mediums outside the sound art canon, for example urban planning, architecture and design. His great talent has made him win multiple awards, from prizes of art organisations to residences at culture institutions across Europe.

As discussed before, Auigner work is deeply linked with architecture and urban design. His pieces are always set in out of the ordinary spaces, abandoning gallery spaces and opting for churches, factories and even public spaces like bridges. In the video below we can see a sound installation by Auginer where he explores the acoustic nature of the mythic and controversial Berlin venue, Berghain.

This installation is quite interesting because the sound is design to mirror the aesthetic of the place. Long industrial drones are played towards the walls of the venue, mimicking a sine tone test for acoustic measurement. The drones slowly increase in volume until a threshold where the sound violently cuts itself, leaving a resonating reverb tail.

I thought that it was fascinating targeting an installation to a specific building design, this makes sound interact in communication with space, resulting in a unique installation that could not be reproduce again in the same way. For a while now I have played in my head with the idea of contacting spaces or venues that are not linked with artistic purposes, and try convincing them to let me experiment in the place with a gallery. For the moment I have mainly thought of contacting churches, I will try contacting the priest that I interviewed for my audio paper to see if he is open to the idea.

Today I went across city of London, near by St Paul cathedral, in search of churches where I could find a priest to interview for my audio paper. After a deep thought I decided to shift the topic of my essay, focusing in contrasting DIY sound practices from the individual and the collective. For the collective I thought of spirituality and it’s connection with calmness. I decided to go to a Christian church and interview a priest that could give me an insight to what he thinks in the relationship of spirituality and calmness, and how sound can be the medium between them. I chose a Christian temple because Christianity is the most popular religion in the UK and I thought that it would connect better to what the individual might say. The interview took place in the church of Holy Sepulchre, where Reverent Nick Mottershead accepted to talk with me. Interestingly the church is considered as the national musicians church, making the practices of the temple deeply connected with sound. I went through my questions with the reverent and I got excellent responses, the reverent is quite an extraordinary man and he treated me with the finest attitude. We discussed the themes of my investigation and it seem that he was really engaged with the topic, as the church has a lot relevance with music he told me that he has indulge in ways of using sound as a medium of health and expression.

At the end of the interview I unfortunately turned of my microphone but we continued talking. He told me that in a near future the church was going to organise some sound practices, specifically creating a labyrinth inside of the church where the people passing through it will have to guide themselves through the sound and music of the church. He also invited me to come to that event and participate or even document it, he told me he was interested in my work and would like to read works of mine regarding the subject.

Without a doubt that has been the best interview I have ever made and I feel so grateful of that experience. Even though I consider myself an atheist I would like to get more in contact with the spirituality realm, to investigate its relationship with sound. Reverent Nick is a great contact to orientate me in that field of practice. The pictures below are from the church where the interview took place.

Last Thursday I attended the MA Sound Arts postgraduate show that took place in a very interesting venue called Dilston Grove, an old church converted into a gallery space. In the show, I experienced both sound art pieces and performances from the MA course students. I was deeply impressed by the pieces displayed in the gallery and I thought that every artist featured in the gallery was extremely talented. A few pieces stood out for me, the first one can be seen in the picture above, it consists of a digitally animated ball displayed in a screen and a microphone hanging from the ceiling in front of the screen (the microphone is not very visible in the picture). The microphone was connected to the visuals parameters of the animated ball, when anyone approached the microphone and talked to it the video would react to the sound source, creating weird alterations to the ball. It was a quite interactive an amusing piece of art and I found it very interesting how visual stimuli would make people change their voice when interacting with the microphone.

The picture above is another piece that I found interesting. It consisted of a turntable playing a vinyl of one of the artist of the gallery, what made the piece interesting was that people where invited to play with the velocity of the turntable, creating unique tempo alterations to the original composition of the record. A speaker was connected to the turntable and it spat the content of the vinyl to the open atmosphere of the gallery, fusing with other sounds made from the other pieces displayed in the gallery.

Finally the picture above displays my favourite piece of the gallery. This piece combines visual art, sound art and textiles into a single interactive piece. The cloth that can see in the middle between the two speakers, display a distorted map of the world, in the back of the cloth different movement sensors are attached to section of the map and then connected to a theremin that is hidden behind the curtain. Then the signal of the theremin is sent to a Pure Data patch that modulates and sequences the retrived signal into complex sound synthesis. In the bottom section of the piece a small screen was allocated in the ground displaying the Pd patch. The piece related to imagery of water and space, focusing in the textures and connotations behind maps.

The space and venue of the place where great factors in making my experience in the show very special. Every sound produce by each individual sound pieces resonated in the tall walls of the building, creating a thick texture of surround sound. I would argue that the sum up of the sounds made from the individual art pieces with the natural space of the gallery created an independent art piece it own. When focusing in each individual piece I notice how almost all shared an interactive interface, this made the exhibition accessible to any visitor. From what I learned from that exhibition I would say that Sound pieces in contrast with visual art, embrace an individual conjunctive experience, allowing for a communication and interaction between person and art.

Rebecca Lennon is a London based artist that blends together different forms of media like video, sculpture and sound to create pieces of heavy symbolic meaning and aesthetic . Her work takes the form of video and sound, to create multichannel audio visual pieces in galleries, she is extremely flexible across the field of contemporary art.

One of Rebecca Lennon most common compositional tools is the voice. She explores how rhythm, timbre and texture of a voice can shape an art piece and express its themes and concepts. Communication is an important focus in Lennon’s work, she investigates the role of the voice in communication and expose psychological pathologies that are hidden in the structure of the way we communicate.

Liquid i – Is a multichannel sound and video exhibition piece that took place in a primary school in Nottingham. In the gallery a massive screen was positioned in one of the back walls of the space, in the screen a video art piece was played. The video displayed several images and short videos of different symbolic elements, that where placed in an ambiguous narrative. The videos showed images that had a connotation to liquid: mosquitos drinking blood, a fish spitting water and some performers mangling water in their mouths. Sound mirror the images, emulating the rhythms of the mosquitos or the texture of water flowing. All the sounds where created using the voice and then being edited to create complex rhythms. Spoken poetry was also a part of the soundtrack, hinting the themes of the video, with symbolic words and phrases. The correlation of audio and sound in Liquid i refers a lot to the theories of Michel Chion, added value and sincresis are currently happening across the exhibition, making the audience get deeper into the world created in that space. Place and space are carefully chosen in Lennon’s work and always in someway the space takes a place inside the narrative and themes of the piece. For example this piece was exhibited first in a primary school and then in an old abandoned church, everything except an art gallery. This could represent some of the concepts in the video, for example a fish out of the water to an art piece outside of an art gallery.

Its interesting to see audio-visual techniques used to build up a gallery piece because it helps consolidate all the senses in a single space. In the future I want to attempt designing my own sound gallery and inspired from Liquid i, I think I will have to think about a visual aspect in my gallery, and how it connects to my sonic intention.

Introduction: Explain relationship of sound with calmness, introduce ideas and references to artists that have worked with this theme (Deep Listening, Ambient Music and Sound Walks). Then set contextual approach- DIY, Anti-materialization of the practice and unconscious tendencies. This segment will be mirror by an ambient music texture that I will compose.

Present stages: every space where my interviews will take place will be presented by a calm field recording of the place. This is important to create a better description to the listener.

Interviews will focus in these questions but each subject of the interview will have a unique set of questions, to get a wider perspective of fields. Questions will include: Have you ever notice sound in this space? does the sound of this space makes you calm? Is this calming activity a common practice in you’re life? Do you think about sound often? Why do you practice this activity?

Three interviews will take place:

1st Random sound walker of a park.

2nd Meditation Guru (active listener).

3rd Sound performer.

Conclusion: Analyze the relationship of each interview subject to their surroundings and background. Pinpoint of the natural relationship of the practice, how sound affects the unconscious. Explore importance of the practice and which are the limits.

Structure:

Introduction (ambient music)

–

Interview 1- random listener(Set field recording first)

–

Interview 2-Meditation Guru (field recording comes after interview)

–

Interview 3- Performer (Performance field recording)

–

Conclusion

Hart’s work focus in the intersection or mix between sound arts and visual arts such as paint. Painting and fine arts are the backbone of Hart’s creative processes but because of its early influences with music and sound, he is aware of the concrete sound that surround his works and finds a way to experiment with it.

A recurring symbol in Hart pieces is the bicycle, the object has a deep significance in Harts upbringing and he often associate new themes to the bicycle. Rhythm is one of the main points of focus regarding the bicycle, he compares it to the rhythmic nature of a vinyl player, another object with great symbolic value for Hart. In a search to further understand objects, Hart translates image to sound and sound back to image, finding correlations between the physical forms of such objects. From this theory of form translation, Hart has further advance his practice to creating interpretations from experiences, more specially social phenomena, searching justice. Referencing the Black Lives Movement manifestations in front of the white house in 2020, Hart closely listened to the ambience created by the mass of people and its rhythm. Then represent such noises in paintings that are build up in abstract shapes and textures, to pay tribute to the nature of sound. His painting don’t fail to express and describe the anger and frustration of the communities affected by racial injustice and discriminations in such manifestations and correctly express the atmosphere of the event.

Hart has a variety of paintings in the sound painting series and has collaborated with sound artist to develop this practice. He has lately explored generative practices, coming up with the idea of improvising improvisation.

The idea of translating forms of art resonated a lot with me, the concept reminds me a lot to the interaction of the physic world with the human mind and body. How we as humans explain natural phenomena through different cognitive modes, for example using analogies as techniques of communication. It speaks of an invisible language that surround every form of expression and that its interactions between these forms have endless capabilities.

The title above is the name of a research article taken place in the US to explore the relationship between health benefits and natural parks, more specific in national parks. This study has a scientific methodology and concludes with actual data calculated by complex data meta-analysis techniques, cross sectioning from data of studies of several parks across the country. This article is quite different to other sound research articles I had read in the past. I had focused more in art orientated research and experimentation, that focus more in empirical knowledge and art aesthetics. In the other hand this article is scientifically based and its analysis is very methodological.

The article evidences that listening to the sound ecology of a national park can bring health benefits. The study demonstrated that when noise pollution levels are low and a wide variety of natural noises dominate an ecology, an individual can reach calming moods by a reflection of the non-threatening environment.

An important objective of the article is to demonstrate the importance of the sound ecology of a place and that it should be taken into consideration in natural conservation projects. The article explains that it is really easy to disrupt the sound ecology of a place and that in some recordings done for the research of the article, they found out that even in natural reserves, traffic noises could contribute with over 80% of the sound ecology. The article also highlights that it is proven that audio pollution can have damaging effect on health.

After reading this and learning the health benefits of a natural sound environment, I decided to focus my field research to natural areas across London. This will increase my chances of finding people that actively practice their own DIY sound practices. I also want to ask to these people if they think that sound can create health benefits, to see if their practices have health as an objective.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/14/e2013097118