Category Archives: #18

#18

Show 193: The Military Landscape Show by Jay Needham

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Lange Beschreibung The sonic resonance that surround current and former military landscapes have intrigued artists working with sound. Memories of power and technology settle as an uneasy layer in these environments, creating opportunities for artists. I intend for this to be an on-going series, hopefully weaving in writings, interviews and inviting collaborations.

1.Richard Lerman, Aleutian Internment (7:01)
Inside a hunting dwelling on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea (amplified whale bone, grass, rain, wild celery and a wind harp) Funter Bay Internment camp (slats of the goldmine camp building where they were interned, windharp, rain) Windharp and weeds at a Cemetery across from the Internment camp at Funter BaySeals on St Paul Island, the Pribilofs Ugadaga Bay, looking towards Biorka Island and an Iris in the wind and snow, recorded on Unalaska Island.

2. Louise K. Wilson “Black Beacon Receiver mix” ( 5:46)
Mixed-down version of the seven soundscapes produced for “Black Beacon Receiver”. From A Record of Fear

3. Louise K. Wilson, “U amplified choir. Sine oscillator ” Yannais Kyriakides, Composer (7:20)
A specially composed piece for Exmoor Singers, made for temporary installation in Lab 5 at Orford Ness.
Recorded at Lansdowne Studios, London on August 7, 2005.
Music Director: James Jarvis; Producer Clarissa Farran.

4. Richard Lerman, Trinity Site (5:12)
Trinity Site, near Alamagordo, NM, was recorded in April 1997. Two times a year, the site where the first atomic bomb was tested, is opened up to visitors and many hundreds of people attend. I began recording from the car as I entered the military check point. Later, I recorded sounds from piezo disks attached to glass pieces that I placed into the earth. Also heard are sounds recorded from the fence surrounding ground zero and amplified, grass, weeks and footsteps of persons at the site.

Visit Richard’s site: http://sonicjourneys.com
Visit Louise’s site: http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/lsad/staff_pt/l_wilson.htm

#18

Show 190: Black Water Brown Water by David Prior

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Black Water Brown Water is an evolving sound piece, originally commissioned as a sound walk for the Stourport canal basins in Worcestershire, UK. The basins form an intersection between the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal and the river Severn and the piece is really about the relationship between these two water systems.

My ‘way in’ was the experience of standing on a lock-gate that separates the canal and the river and on one side there was this chaotic, gushing, brown water and on the other, the water was controlled, black and serene. Black Water Brown Water. The piece is based on an imagined dialogue between the great canal engineer James Brindley and Sabrina, Goddess of the river Severn – but in a way it is a dialogue between the two water systems themselves with these two characters giving voice to the myths that represent them.
The language of the work draws heavily on John Milton¹s Comus and to a lesser extent Michael Drayton¹s Poly Olbion, both of which make reference to Sabrina. Additionally, I¹ve taken a lot from the biography of James Brindley – both real and imagined.

In the original walk, visitors pick up an mp3 player and listen to the piece on a small, man-made island that sits between these water systems. This version though has been re-edited specifically for RADIA.

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In Black Water Brown Water, the readers were John Hall as James Brindley and Ella Turk-Richards as Sabrina.

The Pieces was commissioned by British Waterways with funds from the Arts Council of England, Arts & Business new partners, Advantage West Midlands, Wyre Forest District Council, Heritage Lottery Fund and Stourport Forward.

Black Water Brown Water was created by David Prior for liminal and this radio mix comes from Sound Art Radio, Dartington.

For more information on liminal, please go to www.liminal.org.uk

#18

Show 189: Bloody Manaus by Pali Meursault

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At the beginning of winter 2007-2008, Pali Meursault spent 15 days in Mamori Lake with other sound artists from all around the world in the frame of Mamori Art Lab. Then he spent a week in Manaus and made field-recordings for a radio project. The final shape of the piece was not predetermined: a material started to exist from his drifts through the city, through the people he met. When Radio Grenouille invited him to make a Radia show, this gave him a frame.

So Bloody Manaus is at the same time a travel diary, the recomposition of a soundscape and an immersion into this singular city. It’s also a subjective and inevitably superficial point of view, something between sociological amazement and musical fascination for a deafening city.

Pali Meursault is a sound artist who lives and works in Grenoble, France. His works are published on Universinternational in France, Entr’acte in Great Britain and And/oar in the USA. He regularly collaborates with the artists collective Ici-Même.