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Other works (B)

Back to Square One (2007) 10m00s nil.23259 | 23259 |

Commission: IMEB

Premiere: November 1, 2007, sound — North East Scotland’s festival of new music, Picture Gallery — University of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, UK)

Composer: Pete Stollery

I have always been fascinated by radio sports commentary and the differences between them and their TV counterparts — how the radio commentator is required to provide visual clues for the listener. I’ve also always been struck by the apparent musicality of sports commentaries, particularly horse racing and track athletics with the gradual rise in pitch and intensity and the subsequent fall back to rest position, but also other sporting events with their frequent changes in intensity and the commentator’s reaction to them. I wanted to make a piece that would reflect these two aspects and, using recordings of commentaries from sporting events from 2007 (Grand National — horse racing, England v India — cricket, US Open — tennis, France v Argentina — rugby), I was able to use the shape and frequency of events to create a structure for the piece. These sounds (unrecognisable from the original recordings) are interwoven with sounds made by a crowd in a Parisian bar in 2006 when France beat Brazil to get to the finals of the 2006 Football World Cup.

The title refers to a phrase used in early radio football commentary where a numbered grid representing the pitch was provided for listeners whilst a second commentator would call out the number on the grid where the ball was situated.

Back to Square One was composed in Studio Circé at IMEB in April and September 2007.

Baoding (2002) 7m21s nil.19883 | 19883 |

Composer: David Berezan

ecstatic; intimate; pulsing

8-track tape

These three miniatures bring together the sounds of Baoding Iron Balls, originating in China during the Ming dynasty and rotated in the palm of the hand for therapeutic benefits, with sounds from Beijing and Kun opera. I imagined the delicate musical chimes encased within the Iron Balls to magically conceal the dynamic and theatrical opera sound worlds. Each miniature evokes a different characteristic of these art forms — the ecstatic and acrobatic nature of Beijing opera, the intimate soundings of the more aristocratic Kun opera, and the inherent energy of both. A theme of vibration emerged as I composed the work — naturally evident in and underlying the opera samples, sonically cultivated from the recordings of the Baoding balls (the metallic points of contact and impact as well as the musical chimes), and developed in unique ways in each of the miniatures. Presented here, the suite is framed by a very brief prologue and epilogue.

[viii-05]

Box (1989) 9m14s nil.10028 | 10028 |

Premiere: November 17, 1990, Kobe International Contemporary Music Festival (Kobe, Japan)

MP3

Composer: Jean-François Denis

Box is composed of three inter-related movements—each movement is three minutes in duration—where raw sound materials are processed and combined “live” in the studio. Box is both a live electroacoustic piece and a tape work. By juxtaposition and superpositions of the same basic sounds, the piece recreates the sensation of being inside a box which causes a—temporary—sonic claustrophobia, especially during the 2nd movement. The nature of certain elements brings in a cadence which wasn’t concealed. The 3rd movement uses the rhythmic and repetitive (loop) quality of one rich sound gesture.

Box is also the electroacoustic soundtrack for a “music video” realized in collaboration with the Canadian video artist Robert Hamilton. The music video is an extension of electroacoustics into the medium of video where sound and image carry equal weight, and as such, compliment one another in such a way to offer a single time-based experience.

The electroacoustic soundtrack of Box was realized at the EARS studio of the Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, Alberta) in November 1989. The video of the same name was realized at the same centre from October 1989 to February 1990. The latter was selected at the 2nd International Video Festival of Vigo (Spain) and was awarded a mention in the “Electroacoustic Video” category of the 1991 Stockholm Electronic Arts Award.

Breath Control nil.23923 | 23923 |

Composer: Darren Copeland

Breath Control is an interactive audio-visual installation by sound artist Darren Copeland that relates the visceral experience of one’s last breath to the sounds of everyday life. Breath Control also confronts the conventions of the gallery experience by altering the gallery’s interior design in order to re-structure the sensory hierarchy.

Breathing measures time. It is a rate of control, a rate for balancing input and output. R Murray Schafer once pointed out that the human body is one of the best engineering examples of refined acoustic design. In order to best hear the sounds around one, the sounds of the body are minimized. Could you imagine trying to listen a long distance away if your heartbeat thumped loudly in our ears? Yet, in our society we tune out the sounds that exist in the distance and even in our immediate midst and replace them with an artificial soundtrack by wearing ipod earphones. In the process, we not only encourage the world to be louder but we chip away decibel by decibel, frequency by frequency, at the quality of our own hearing. No wonder the world needs to be louder.

There are two components to the work: the breath of the artist and the breath of the visitor both of which control the sound environment of the installation. The breath of the artist is represented by a video abstraction of his lips breathing. The sound of the breathing is heard in the distance through long tubes that peer out like smoke stacks. This breathing also controls the rise and fall of sounds derived from nearby environs. The breathing of the gallery visitor seated on a yoga matt is used to control the volume of the destruction of a nearby building, recorded earlier in Parkdale.

The artist’s initial inspiration for the piece comes from a sound memory of his mother when she was dying from respiratory complications caused by melanoma. The sound that plays in his mind is the sound of her breathing through the oxygen tubes. Since sound is the center of his artistic work he would often record sounds that intrique him, but this sound he could not bring himself to record. Almost two years later this still plays in his memory and has influenced the way he hears the environment. Now instead of listening for interesting timbres or reverberations, he finds himself listening more and more to rhythmic oscillations in sounds from the everyday environment. In a sense, he finds himself searching for how an environment breathes and speaks over time and pays less attention to its mere acoustic spectra.

Brouillard (1997) 3m00s nil.10031 | 10031 |

Composer: Ned Bouhalassa

[English translation not available]

Pièce de format «clip» réalisée pour le concours Radio-Mix de Phonurgia Nova (France).

Bruxelles bivoque (1997) 6m00s nil.18368 | 18368 |

Composer: Annette Vande Gorne

[English translation not available]

Création radiophonique avec les voix de Dimitri Coppe et Thierry Génicot.

Other works (B)

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