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Sound Pieces

LISTENING HOUR Thursday 16, 2015

Andrea Polli (USA)

Walking on Taylor Glacier (7:57) is a soundscape recording on a glacier in the Dry Valleys, and Taylor Glacier (3:20) combines the soundscape with glacier data sonifications and scientists' voices.


Stijn Govaere (Belgium/New Zealand)
B’aakal (9:15)

This work is based on field recordings I made in the forest around the ruins of the Maya city in Palenque. Palenque (or B'aakal in Yucatec Maya) was a Maya city state located near the Usumacinta River in the Mexican state of Chiapas that flourished in the 7th century. After its decline, it was absorbed into the jungle. Today, the discovered area covers up to 2.5 km² (1 sq mi) , but it is estimated that less than 10% of the total area of the city is explored, leaving more than a thousand structures still covered by jungle.’’


Paul Michael Browne (UK)
Server Sound (0:53) 

The relentless sound of a data server whirring away in the corner of a busy office. Never switched off, this hypnotic and maddening sound is an omnipresent feature of the modern office environment. 


Benjamin O’Brien (USA)
OSCines (6:08)

OSCines focuses on the process of translating melodies found in birdsongs. The nightingale belongs to the clade Passeri also commonly known as Oscine, from the Latin root oscen meaning “a songbird.” Its birdsong is composed of a wide range of whistles, trills, and gurgles, which create a rich and vibrant melodic contour. Nightingale and clarinet samples serve as source and target materials (interchangeably) for spectral information collected via signal-processing detection systems. OSCines explores the alignment and collisions of distinct timbre features and melodic topologies within the virtual aviary of the stereophonic speaker space.


Nichola Scrutton (UK)
Lateral (11:15)

Originally created for High-Slack-Low-Slack-High – a suite of audio works relating to the Clyde River curated by Minty Donald for GI Festival of Visual Art – Lateral was made as a live, site-specific installation set in Dixon Street, Glasgow. Subsequent to that event I created a fixed medium version of the work.


Stephanie Loveless (CANADA/USA)
Cricket (3:08)

Cricket, Tree, Crow is a quadraphonic sound piece in three movements that investigates the voices of the cricket, the crow, and the maple tree. All sonic material in the work is based on vocal mimicry of the sounds produced by members of the species themselves. The piece is driven by the desire to explore the boundaries between human and nonhuman subjectivites. In trying to mimic sounds that are not natural to the human vocal apparatus, I am interested in the friction, or encounter, between non-human voices and my own. By studying recordings of crickets, crows and maple trees — in slowing them down, parsing their frequencies, and matching my voice to theirs as closely as I can — I hope to open myself to their respective worlds.


Leonardo Santiago (MEXICO)
Parque Nacional Sierra del Lacandón (4:48) 

Between the borders of Mexico and Guatemala there is a shared extensive jungle known as the Sierra del Lacandón National Park, sorrounded of wildlife and vegetation. In this sound recording we can distinguish a pack of Howler monkeys and various birds that transport us to this earthly paradise. Recorded in February 2015 .


Pablo Sanz (SPAIN/IRELAND)
Limnee (10:00)

Limnee is a piece based on hydrophone and above water recordings made in ponds and subaquatic environments at multiple locations in Spain and Slovakia between 2007 and 2012. Commissioned by Brussels-based ACSR (Atelier de Creation Sonore Radiophonique) for Silence Radio (http://silenceradio.org) in 2012. Curated by Etienne Noiseau and Irvic d’oliver.


LISTENING HOUR Friday 17, 2015


D. Edward Davis (USA)
siren test (2015) (8:10)

siren test (2015) presents a field recording (made by the composer in September 2014) of a “Full-Volume Test” of the emergency alert system of the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant in New Hill, NC. The musicians engage with the 560Hz drone: anticipating it, imitating it, and echoing it.

siren test was performed by yMusic (Rob Moose, violin; Nadia Sirota, viola; Andrea Lee, cello; Alex Sopp, flute; Hideaki Aomori, clarinet; CJ Camerieri, trumpet) in March 2015 in Durham, NC.


Camilla Hannan (AUSTRALIA)
As the Bough Breaks (7:00)

As the Bough Breaks is made up of recordings from around my house and recordings of a dam in the high country a few hours away. 


Brendan Rehill (IRELAND)
Aran of the Saints (5:02)

Recorded over three days on Inisheer Island, off the west coast of Ireland, 'Aran of the Saints' aims to present the acoustic ecology of the island in a way that reflects it's complex literary, religious and natural history. It was winner of the 'Ballyhoura' prize at the inaugural HearSay International Audio Festival 2014.


Jen Boyd (USA)
Golden Gate (10:16)

The recording underneath the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco was done with binerauls. The sounds of the cars driving by sounded like a giant toy piano.


Edmund Mooney (USA)
Now more than ever we are all jupiter’s moon (9:47)

This piece I made last year in Chicago using a homemade radio telescope for all the sounds except the voice reading wikipedia. A radio telescope is a device which can be tuned in to a number of ultra high short wave radio bands in order to hear specific background radiation. It is directional so you can point it at Jupiter which helps because a lot of the interstellar radiation that we get is from Jupiters moon which is the one that captures most of jupiters massive ionosphere radiation. You can make a pretty cheap radio telescope with a thick coper wire in a specific sized circle jammed into a coaxial cable and then into a short wave radio. You can also use a hacked satellite tv dish which is better because it's tuned already. You can hear all sorts of radio frequency chatter and emf emissions with it. I just took a feed from the radio to my recorder and away I went. It's pretty hard to hear Jupiter unless you're at the right time of year which varies every year and also it helps to be not in a city.


Melissa Deerson (AUSTRALIA)
Dawn Chorus: Notes from a Stationary Expedition (7:08)

Made in 2014 as a partial record of an overnight Stationary Expedition undertaken at Testing Grounds community garden and art space, Melbourne, a long abandoned but recently revitalised piece of land in the centre of the city. At dawn, nearing the end of my activities, I conducted simple, ad-hoc recordings of the ambient sounds as I circumnavigated the site – my footsteps, radios softly playing classical music, and the ever-present roar of huge trucks, often full of live animals, thundering past. This was combined with a composite field recording made, also at dawn, in a bushland area not too dissimilar from how this urban site would have once been.


Hildegard Westerkamp (CANADA)
Beneath the Forest Floor (17:23)

Beneath the Forest Flooris composed from sounds recorded in old-growth forests on British Columbia's westcoast. It moves us through the visible forest, into its' shadow world, its' spirit; into that which effects our body, heart and mind when we experience forest