Show 761: HOMEWORK_radio mix by Tarab (Radio One, Dunedin, New Zealand)

“Space is a practiced place”.
– Michael De Certeau. Practice of Everyday life.

As discussed in George Perec’s Species of Spaces there are specific activities which we enact in a kitchen (preparing meals, washing implements used for cooking and eating), and others which take place in the bedroom (sleeping, sex, storing clothes). Domestic spaces are delegated function and furniture to match.

A bedroom is a room in which there is a bed; a dining-room is a room in which there are a table and chairs, and often a sideboard; a sitting-room is a room in which there are armchairs and a couch; a kitchen is a room in which there is a cooker and a water inlet; a bathroom is a room in which there is a water inlet above a bathtub; when there is only a shower, it is known as a shower-room; when there is only a wash-basin it is known as a cloakroom; an entrance-hall is a room in which at least one of the doors leads outside the apartment; in addition, you may find a coat-rack in there; a child’s bedroom is a room into which you put a child; a broom closet is a room into which you put brooms and the vacuum cleaner; a maid’s bedroom is a room that you let to a student.

So is place simply a space that we have designated a use or function? Or perhaps even the overlaying of a memory of use or function? However what was designed for utility, for convenience or for hygiene, can also become a behavioural trap. So what happens to a space if it no longer has a specific designated use or function? Or if we simply refuse to follow the rules of which activity takes place in which room? Does it revert from a place back to simply a space? How does that affect our behaviour within it?

HOMEWORK was installed as a 16 channel audio work, shaped for and situated within my own home. A series of speakers of various types, along side transducers, attached to and in contact with various things, were placed through out the eight rooms of the house. The work was presented at night, with the interior of the house in darkness. A series of small LED globes where connected into various speakers so once the signal sent to a speaker reached a certain volume level the globe would engage, sending flickering light throughout the house, following the various intensities of sound. An additional four LED globes places inside bottles, run from a separate inaudible audio signal, where placed around the house.

The sounds used for the original HOMEWORK installation were largely collected from empty spaces of various sizes and uses; an office; a public toilet; a small store room; a large ex-factory, now studio space; my home. A series of recordings were made through simple gestures enacted in these locations; shoes striking concrete; body and clothes brushing against each other; creaking of doors; or rubbing microphones into the carpet. Additional sounds were generated through amplifying infrastructure found in a given room (such as an air conditioning unit) and then feeding it through the rooms various resonant items or surfaces, such as a filing cabinet (via transducers), and then further recordings where collected.

All these sounds were then arranged to both sound out the physical space that is my house, but also to overlay a new fictional space over the domestic one. Allowing the domestic items and rooms to blend and merge with the sounds and activities of other rooms and spaces to create the experience of a new space within a pre-existing one. Physical rattles, knocks and hums present as traces of previous activity which never took place. Well not in this space anyway. Pointillist clicks and knocks sounded out the full dimensions of the space, played back through various horn speakers placed at the extremities of house. Transducers places within the two aluminium sinks found within the house, vibrating cutlery and resonating the hollow forms, creating various rattles, hums and percussive sounds. An additional series of speakers played back the resonance of other rooms; stray shufflings and textures moving throughout the space.

The piece presented here is not indented as a strict document of the installation. Rather recordings were made in the various rooms of the house and then re-combined and arranged in an attempt to give some sense of the shifting densities of sound and the new spaces they created. Small excerpts of the original recordings have also been used and edited into the mix to provide additional detail. Other than simple layering and arranging, no additional processing or treatments have been made to the recordings.

TARAB/eamon sprod explores re-contextualised collected sounds and tactile gestures formed into dynamic, psycho-geographical compositions inspired by discarded things, found things, crawling around in the dirt, junk, the ground, rocks, dust, wind, walking aimlessly, scratchy things, decay and most if not all the things he hears and sees. More than simply documenting a given site, TARAB is interested in a direct engagement with our surrounds, teasing out half narratives, visceral sensation, false leads and heightened awareness. Recent works have consisted of multi-channel, site specific performances and installations for speakers, transducers, found sounds, found objects, microphones and elements of the performance/installation space itself.

TARAB/eamon sprod has presented performances throughout Australia, Europe, Japan, Korea, North and South America; compositional works have been published on labels including Naturestrip (AU), nonlinear (AU), 23five (US), Unfathomless (BE), Aposiopese (FR), Swarming (FR), Cronica (PT), Semperflorens (RU) and also his own sonicrubbish imprint formed in 2018.

eamon sprod is currently undertaking a Masters by Research at RMIT in Melbourne, of which the ongoing HOMEWORK project is a component.

sonicrubbish.com

Show 760: OF SEEDS AND LICHEN by KATE DONOVAN & GABI SCHAFFNER for radio x

radia season 43 – show #760 (radio x) – Of Seeds and Lichen – by KATE DONOVAN & GABI SCHAFFNER
– playing from october 21 to october 27, 2019 –

OF SEEDS AND LICHEN
by KATE DONOVAN & GABI SCHAFFNER

Of Seeds and Lichen is an invitation to join Datscha Radio’s collective artistic experiments in sensing the garden.
Find out more about Datscha Radio at www.datscharadio.de.

Seeds Dispersal I and II by Kate Donovan
8:15 min
“Seed Dispersal” explores the sounds and stories of various seeds on their journeys through water, air, and bodies: a cosmos of dispersal, told in radio snippets and sent upon a breeze. With sounds and voices from Pablo Juanes; Molly, Hunter & Scout.
Seed Dispersal I and II formed part of Datscha Radio’s intervention “Radio Seed Bombs” on the 13th of September 2019.

La Lichen Parfumée by Gabi Schaffner with Julia Drouhin
19:30 min
Based on several failed experiments in the transposition of plant’s chemical ingredients into random melody, lost and found field recordings and the sound and scents of a waffle iron. (Lan: F)
Text, recordings and composition: Gabi Schaffner
Speaker: Julia Drouhin
Piano: Sanne Drouhin-Kok
Waffle Iron: Richard Schaffner
La Lichen Parfumée was written and composed for Datscha Radio’s Nightgardening II, “Frequencies and Fragrances”, broadcasted August 8-9, 2019..

KATE DONOVAN
is a practicing radio artist, facilitator and researcher based in Berlin. Her artistic practice deals with radio in an elemental sense, in terms of frequency, transmission and interconnectedness (but also disruption and interference). Her editorial and organisational work in free and community radio fosters inclusion and experimentation.
Recent and current projects include: Datscha Radio 17, a garden radio art festival on the future of the garden in the Anthropocene; ‘The Bespoke Headpiece’, a speculative telling of radio history which was developed during a transmission arts residency at Wave Farm in 2018; and the ongoing radio show ‘elements’, which broadcasts monthly via CoLaboRadio, on FM in Berlin and Potsdam, and online.

GABI SCHAFFNER
works as an interdisciplinary artist in the field of visionary documentation, poetics and sound art. Traveling forms a vital part of her artistic practice – as a source for sound and language recordings but also as “a rite of passage” enabling the artist to explore alternative narrative structures. Her works in the field of sound and radio art have been broadcast internationally, including commissions by Deutschlandradio, SWR, ABC Australia and many more. Besides radio she has realized site-specific projects and exhibitions in India, Australia, Iceland, Spain, Finland, France and, most recently, Taiwan. Her collaborative project Datscha Radio won the Award of the Berlin Network of Free Project Spaces and Initiatives 2019. Recent activities include “Nightshade Island”, an audio walk conceived of for “Tracks in a Box” by “The Walking Tour Library”, and “Night Gardening”, Datscha Radio’s new series of broadcasts.

metadata:
Of Seeds and Lichen – by KATE DONOVAN & GABI SCHAFFNER
radia production: miss.gunst [GUNST + radiator x]
production date: september 2019
station: radio x, frankfurt am main (germany)
length: 28 min.
licence: (cc-by-nc) KATE DONOVAN & GABI SCHAFFNER
www.radiox.dewww.gunst.infowww.datscharadio.de

credits:
great many thanks to KATE DONOVAN & GABI SCHAFFNER!

additional info:
includes radia jingles (in/out), station and program info/intro (english)

links:
radio x & radiator x: www.radiox.dewww.radiox.de/radiator-x
GUNSTradio & radiator x: www.gunst.infowww.gunst.info/radiator
Datscha Radio: www.datscharadio.de

pic:
(c) Gabi Schaffner 2011

Show 758: Benjamin. Sounds along the tramway by Radio Papesse

October 2019, Firenze.

The early commuters on the florentine tramway are caught off guard by unusual sounds while at the stops and on the rides. Surprise, weirdness and something unexpected in their daily routine make them look at each other and smile, eventually crack a laugh or exchange puzzled remarks.

It is all Benjamin’s fault. A project by Radio Papesse attempting to transform the waiting time into an imaginary journey and to invite people to get out of the bubble of their own personal devices so to find themselves as part of a moving – even if temporary – community.

This RADIA show is a mix of some of the soundworks that were broadcasted through the tramway speakers from October 3rd to the 6th.

The included sounds are:

  • π by Giovanni Corona
  • Borgarfiord in spring by Charo Calvo
  • A distanza by Pietro Michi
  • Affrico. Morte della stagione di mezzo by Maria Pecchioli
  • 3 by Katatonic Silentio
  • I’ve never heard a Theremin before by Giulio Aldinucci
  • Quasi casa by La cosa preziosa
  • Attese :: Attesi by Chelidon Frame
  • AN by Abo Carcassi
  • The Piqué sisters by Valeria Muledda
  • Di passaggio by Luana Lunetta
  • Notturno by Roberto Paci Dalò
  • Bus Imaginario by Felix Blume & Chloé Despax
  • Mistery Goats & Mount Vodno by Toni Dimitrov
  • Waiting in the wings by Dinah Bird
  • DAM 0003 by User form PT
  • Amjad Mood by Giacomo Anichini 
  • Take me home by Radio Continental Drift

More than 40 artists took part in Benjamin | sounds along the tramway. To know more about the project and to listen to the selected pieces: radiopapesse.org