A CATASTROPHIC SILENCE

A Catastrophic Silence: Field Recordings Vol. 2

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:29:00 -0500

AAIR.fm has released the CD soundtrack to the Catastrophic Silence Summer School at the AA. It will be going on sale here in Montreal at the Canadian Centre for Architecture very soon. They are for sale in the AA bookshop immediately and will be available for order from the AAIR website.

Unit 5

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:38:50 -0400

Mariam Abonomai
Naz Atalay
Vincente Boguszewski
Joanna Brenden
Jennifer Robin Caras
Jihoon Hyun
Sarah Khalaf
Eleni Kousouri
Theodore Koustos
Quinntin Kwok
Gilberto Pedrosa
Thellius Zamprogno
Gabriel Villalobos

23 Skidoo [View Fullscreen or Embed Via NFB] Julian Biggs, 1964,...

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:11:00 -0400

23 Skidoo

[View Fullscreen or Embed Via NFB]

Julian Biggs, 1964, 8 min 12 sec

((Beacon)) [View Larger or Embed View Vimeo]

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:15:00 -0400

((Beacon))

[View Larger or Embed View Vimeo]

"Right now, the average daytime decibel level in Cairo is 85 dbA, the equivalent of standing fifteen..."

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:05:33 -0400

“Right now, the average daytime decibel level in Cairo is 85 dbA, the equivalent of standing fifteen feet from a freight train. A freight train 15 hours long. Everyday. London is only slightly quieter.”

- New York Times

Photo

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:05:11 -0400

Soundscapes of Disintegration (Audio Only) …Or of the...

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:44:00 -0400

Soundscapes of Disintegration

(Audio Only)

…Or of the fragmentary, Of that which remains, Of what is no longer.

Mariam Abonomai | Vincente Boguszewski | Jennifer Caras | Quinntin Kwok

[View Larger or Embed via Vimeo]

Soundscapes of Disintegration: Or of the fragmentary, Of that which remains of what is no longer.

Solitude is the state of initial confrontation with this manifold that we must endure – the alienation we sense at this particular moment has not been an unfiltered indifference we’ve been lead to accept and assume on behalf of the people that once surrounded us; but at this precise moment, following a stark realization, due to a chain reaction of the elements.

Our bewilderment surpasses our capacity, as an individual, to affront it, to deal with it, this experience as an aftermath of the amplitude of the phenomena itself. Nor is the evident failure of humankind in its acquired cognizance of science –built in order to prevent and withstand such unanticipated and astonishing forces through a rational, collective effort– none of this is any longer, ever an issue, for now the we has become I, despite the undeniable seamlessness of a total lack of prevailing identity, a loss of sense of oneself altogether.

Given my relative absence of power in this context, that of which I am obliged to unravel and grapple with in this instantaneous shift in sensibilities; I am forced to sever with all that is past, and understand that in spite of myself, now the only essential focal point of my immediate existence is that of survival. No, the absence of my potential, as that of those apart of my race – not to mention others, has become, in fact, real.

“Solitude or non-interiority, exposure to the outside, boundless dispersion, the impossibility of holding firm, within bounds, enclosed –such is man deprived of humanity, that supplement that supplies nothing.”

Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster.

Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1980

Disillusionment and ethereality have surrounded me; I have re-discovered myself to be found in a nonsensical cave of isolation. Hollowness of the cell that holds me, if not to further the metaphor as to say that I am a prisoner of this blackened room, my sense of orientation has been altered. I am at a fitful loss before the natural state of panic that sets in, aroused by the scene that I apprehend in front of me, before me, in opposition to the window. An opening, it is no longer a window. I should cease to search for structure.

Have I ever before sought out the dynamic loose-ends of chaos in the most nonsensical, primitive sense of the term? No, never before this particular moment. This is not the unequivocal aftermath of the event of war, but far more sinister, for the ecosystem of the planet has been affected. I do not know how many hours I have to live through the pain of my recognition and awareness of this impeding reality.

Why do I sense and tactically and audibly withstand a metallic screeching noise? What is the spectrum of the indefinite, rhythmic booms I am forced to ascertain yet undergo while gazing upon the horizon? Are there others caught beneath the acidy mist of the rubble? The rust of our existence is now reflected upon the metal; a weltering, and pressing, inasmuch as lengthy agenda for the various processes of corrosion.

The depths of the original, bass-filled boom I hear within this vast lapse of time –I am nonetheless quite sure of it, unmistakably audible from many hundreds of kilometers away– it is prevailing and dominant, exponentially invasive ; its supremacy and thrust have taken away my own primal scream. Silence in the surrounding cell. Though, hollow, weak echoes fill my perceptions.

Staid emptiness, no, this thought is unfathomable. Even in spite of this state of affairs, I find myself truncated, brought to the final limit. That is, located within a denial and negation of possibility for the human condition caught as it is into the extension of the future.

The exterior world neither can nor shall offer me any further hope for sustenance, nor nourishment; it may have otherwise provided me with a gradual or continual ascension towards the reassurance of my needs; that to be found in the promise of solace, polarized in context by an eventual offering of the opportunity of creation – or re-creation. All of these possibilities have been unilaterally annihilated in one false movement in this unequivocally incalculable oblivion of dynamic chain reactions that has come to truth.

I am the organic body that has been reduced to absorbing the fleeting experience of the imminent spatiality that surrounds us. The content of my metabolism shall not withhold the omnipotence of the past event. I see gasses lifting. Vegetation has not weltered – I gasp at the revelation – it has entirely disappeared. My conscience can no longer distinguish that of which I once knew of the vast landscape laid out now to my dismay. I can only hear a torrid of water. Oceans of dampness. Yes, however, seeping in towards me from which direction? Chemically, elementally speaking, this is has surpassed all logic.

The labyrinth of chaos has set in. Set somewhere amongst –and not within- moral, phenomenological, existential, physical, apocalyptic chaos. No solutions are to be found. All science that may have proved to be a resource in the past has lost its source, its basis for understanding, and therefore for a plan of action practical enough to provide an attempt at pragmatic immediate and long-term solutions.

I am left only to assume the overlapping yet contradictory breadth of the soundscape. Only that I find I can measure. Whether fluidly threatening, as it is ominous and potent, the permeating sound provides me with a sense of inevitability of the reaction and counter-reaction within the earth’s natural ecosystem. The prognostic is bleak. Only the imminence of a vast and total silence of the future provides me with a sense of the environmental organization to be.

All of it has relinquished me to a critical loss within my heretofore crucial reference to structure. The only sense of limit that my cognitive mind shall prove capable of accepting at this particular time is the memory of all that was once rational.

Given that I can neither visually, reasonably, intellectually– accept– nor withhold all of this terror, given the landscape before me of all that which has been lost, an spectacular event of mere coincidence with my lifetime, in essence; while only the sound and the way in which it shall lead to program a sensation of the inevitability of death – never has the impression of personal trauma been so unmistakably linked to the ultimate catastrophe.

Victimization no longer has its place.

“(…) the overwhelming overturning of nothing. – Which breaks, by the smashing of a pane (behind which one rests assured of perfect, of protected, visibility), the finite-infinite space of the cosmos–ordinary order–the better to substitute the knowing vertigo of the deserted outside. Blackness and void, responding to the suddenness of the opening and giving themselves unalloyed, announce the revelation of the outside by absence, loss and the lack of any beyond.”

Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster.

Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1980

A Social Silence A future London grows quiet as social...

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:52:00 -0400

A Social Silence

A future London grows quiet as social connections break down...

Eleni Kousouri | Thellius Zamprogno | Theo Koustos | Jihoon Hyun | Joanna Brenden

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4 Seconds Imagine a future London super-saturated by sound. Naz...

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:31:00 -0400

4 Seconds

Imagine a future London super-saturated by sound.

Naz Atalay | Gabriel Villalobos | Sarah Khalaf | Gilberto Pedrosa

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AA RADIO: PETER CUSACK

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:11:00 -0400

AA RADIO: PETER CUSACK:

Lecture by Peter Cusack, Senior Lecturer Sound Arts & Design at the London College of Communication. Peter talks through his own projects exploring the sounds characteristic to different cities and the role these sounds play in the lives of the city inhabitants.

Peter Cusack: Soundscape Resources

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:38:00 -0400

ResonanceFM www.resonancefm.com

London’s first radio art station and the original inspiration for Your Favourite London Sounds. Broadcasts on 104.4Mhz in Central London and on the internet.www.l-m-c.org.uk/

London Musicians Collective

For ordering “Your favourite London Sounds” plus LMC info, monthly concert calandar, LMC archives and much more.

London’s official noise strategy and related

The Greater London Authority’s Ambient noise strategy can be found here

http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/strategies/noise/index.jsp

Highlights of ‘Sounder City’,

Londons final Ambient Noise Strategy are available for download free of charge here.

http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/strategies/noise/downloads.jsp

The site also has downloadable examples of ‘Sound-Conscious Urban Design’ from London, Paris, Seattle, Hong Kong and more.

London noise maps and noise mapping information

www.noisemapping.org/

. See the traffic noise levels in your local area shown in beguiling colours.

Children’s concentration at schools under the main Heathrow flightpaths news item. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4603189.stm

London Green Maps

www.londongreenmap.org

Acoustic ecology and phonography sites

Phonography.org

www.phonography.org

- the essential field recording site. Its email list is constantly full of practical information and open discussion by those most active in the field. Phonography is documentary sound recording with an ear towards the aesthetic and creative possibilities of environmental sound.

World Forum for Acoustic Ecology

www.wfae.net

the overal organisation for studies in acoustic ecology. It’s site has a comprehensive selection of links, writings and information. There is also an email list and extremely useful monthly newsletter.

The Acoustic Ecology Institute

www.acousticecology.org - anyone interested in soundscape, acousticecology and field recording should visit this site set up by Jim Cumming in paralell to his Earthear CD label www.earthear.com

. An invaluable resource.

Berlin.Soundscape-FM : A City of Sounds

http://berlin.soundscape-fm.net and SoundTransit http://soundtransit.nl

map based archives of sound recordings from Berlin and worldwide locations respectively, put together by Derek Holzer, Sara Kolster, Marc Boon, Gerard van Dongen. The invitation to contribute is open, so browsing the many recordings is fascinating.

Finland 100 Soundscapes

http://www.100aanimaisemaa.fi/ohjeet_en.php

Soundwalks

http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/Soundwalk/indexandra.html

American Society for Acoustic Ecology

http://www.AcousticEcology.org/asae

The Handbook for Acoustic Ecology http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Soundwalk.html edited by Barry Truax

Nature Sound Society

http://www.naturesounds.org/

MANCHESTER : PERIPHERAL

Alastair Dant, Tom Davis & David Gunn (UK/USA)

http://www.manchesterperipheral.com

The sounds of Manchester, for you to remix. Manchester : Peripheral is an interactive SoundMap that uses physical workshops and virtual interfaces to allow individuals to create their own “folk songs”.

Chinese phonography groups blogs:

PlayBackUnit http://sjp.blogbus.com/ http://sjp.blogbus.com/

by Lin Zhiying & Zhong Minjie (Guangzhou, Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta)

Harbin Sound Unit http://www.chinesenewear.com/harbin/

by Zhang Jun’gang & Wang Changcun Covering Harbin, Shanghai

Global Noise Online http://www.chinesenewear.com/gno/

Site-hearing http://www.mattgilbert.net/sitehearing/

a website that logs places that have interesting acoustics all over the world. All these sites are plotted on a Google map, and can be sorted by type.

Spires and Steeples website Dallas Simpson

http://www.spiresandsteeples.com/ListenHere/

Sound Map sites

Tuned City http://www.tunedcity.de/

Audiolab: Soinumapa http://www.soinumapa.net/index_en.php

Radio Aporee maps http://aporee.org/maps/

Locus Sonus audio streams

http://nujus.net/~locusonus/site/streams/map.php#

Gordon Soundscape map

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/%7Ewae006gordonsoundscape.co.uk/frameset.php?id=1&username=guest

Cologne http://soundmap.akustikfilm.com/

Berlin: http://berlincast.com/

New York City http://www.nysoundmap.org/

Individual recordists and sound artists sites

Francisco Lopez

www.franciscolopez.net/about.html

Aaron Ximm, the quiet american

www.quietamerican.com

Chris de Laurenti

www.delaurenti.net

Derek Holzer

http://www.umatic.nl

Chris Watson

www.chriswatson.net/

Hildegarde Westerkamp

www.sfu.ca/~westerka/bio.html

Andra McCartney http://andrasound.org/

Janet Cardiff http://www.abbeymedia.com/Janweb/jan.htm

Andrea Polli http://www.andreapolli.com/

sound map of New York City http://www.andreapolli.com/studio/maps/google.html

Walter Knapp

http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/

Mike Hallenbeck

http://www.juniorbirdman.com/archive

Windows project

http://www.lappareil.com/window/

Phonography from Iraq - Thomas Ashcraft

http://www.heliotown.com/Sound_From_Iraq_2006.html

http://www.silenceradio.org

Escoitar http://www.escoitar.org/?lang=en

Mississauga Sound Map http://www.yorku.ca/caseaces/soundmap/

New Adventures in Sound Art http://www.naisa.ca/opportunities.html

Architectural Association Summer School Unit

Mon, 26 May 2008 12:45:00 -0400

This AA Unit considers simultaneously - the city as sound and catastrophe as a silencing.

It questions: What will the city sound like? Is communication possible? As the noise floor drops, will a new soundscape emerge?

The Unit employs the soundtrack as the index for the urban sonic condition - before, during and after catastrophe. It takes the soundtracks of uncoventional and experimental films as points of departure to consider the sound of a post-catastrophe London.

The Unit explores the catastrophic possibilities for the sound of the city from three perspectives.

The Acoustic: The physical sound of the city and its psychoacoustic effects.

The Electromagnetic: The hidden, but prevalent phenomena that underpin everything from telecommunications to the weather.

The Soundtrack: The film, and in particular the disaster film, can serve as a medium for exploring and projecting our collective fears and hopes for an alternate future for how the city sounds.

"Both architecture and cinema articulate lived space. These two art forms create and mediate..."

Mon, 26 May 2008 12:35:00 -0400

“Both architecture and cinema articulate lived space. These two art forms create and mediate comprehensive images of life… Both forms of art define the dimensions and essence of existential space. They both create experimental scenes of life situations.”

- Juhani Pallasmaa Lived Space in Architecture and Cinema

Click Here To Open.

Sun, 25 May 2008 20:23:00 -0400

Click Here To Open.

Photo

Sun, 25 May 2008 12:51:00 -0400

Catastrophic Listening

Sun, 25 May 2008 01:48:00 -0400

Alvin Lucier ‘I am sitting in a room’ 1969 & ‘Music on a Long Thin Wire’ 1980

Chris Watson & BJ Nilsen ‘Storm’ 2006.

Franscisco Lopez ‘New York Buildings’ 2001.

Glenn Gould ‘The Solitude Trilogy’ 1967-77.

Christina Kubisch ‘Five Electrical Walks’ 2007.

Wolf Eyes ‘Dead Hills’ 2002

Steve McGreevy ‘Auroral Chorus II: The Music of the Magnetosphere’ 2000.

Toshiya Tsunoda ‘Pieces of Air’ & ‘extract from field recording archive #2&3’ 2002-5

Jason Kahn ‘One Hour as Snow’ 2003.

Peter Cusack ‘Baikal Ice’ 2003.

Steve Roden ‘Resonant Cities’ 2003.

Krzysztof Penderecki ‘Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima’ 1960.

Gavin Bryars with Philip Jeck & Alter Ego ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ 2005.

RLW ‘The Pleasure of Burning Down Churches’ 2007.

Tod Dockstader ‘Apocalypse’ 1993.

The Conet Project ‘Recordings Of Shortwave Numbers Stations’ 1997.

Knurl ‘Torus’ 1998.

London, UK

Sat, 24 May 2008 13:55:00 -0400

London, UK

Steve Bates | Joshua Bonnetta | Douglas Moffat

Fri, 23 May 2008 15:09:00 -0400

Steve Bates

Steve Bates is a media artist, musician, and audio technician whose current work revolves around improvised and composed music, radio, and installation projects. He founded and directed the Send +Recieve Festival of Sound in 1998, now in its eight year. Bates is the Sound Coordinator at the Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation in Media Arts and Technologies and is a graduate candidate in Studio Arts/Open Media at Concordia University. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Joshua Bonnetta

Based in Montreal, Bonnetta is multi-disciplinary artist working with sound and the moving image. His work, largely film based, incorporates both found-footage and direct-animation techniques. His work has been exhibited in various forms including installation and performance. His films have been screened in festivals in Russia, Ireland, Netherlands and Columbia. He is completing his graduate studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University. Bonnetta works as a revisionist for the Toronto International Film Festival and lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Douglas Moffat

Trained as a landscape architect, Moffat has worked in ofﬁces in Montréal and Vancouver. His work explores the relationship between sound and the built landscape. Utilizing ﬁeld recordings, electro-acoustics, and landscape architecture, his projects are spaces built for listening. Currently completing his graduate work in Studio Arts at Concordia University, his graduate thesis project Listening to Las Vegas explores the sonic environment of the Las Vegas Strip. He has presented works at the Jardin de Métis Festival international de jardins and the Send + Receive Festival. He lives in Montreal,Quebec.