Details
The SoundscapeLandscape project is based around the use of many different innovative techniques in field recording (both passive methods of simply capturing the sounds around us and new inquisitive practices). At the same time visual investigations will both partner the sounds and add a further dimension to how we perceive and make sense of each environment.

The Landscapes/Soundscapes project starts with an initial micro-residency, which aims to explore these themes as they operate within two different physical environments: the Koumaria Estate and the Onassis Cultural Centre. What are the sound marks and shaping agents in each place? How do these elements transform themselves and their new environment when they area transferred from one place to the other? What new elements would we understanding about both places if we walked around the Onassis Cultural Centre when it was resounding on all levels and in all corners to the soundscape of Koumaria? What insights would emerge if the process were to be reversed?

The project will culminate in a site-specific installation, addressing many of the questions that arise when we listen in and to each space. Through the cartography that emerges, the new Onassis Cultural Centre (www.stg.gr) will better find its sense of place within the sonic environment around it, and its own sonic identity in terms of the sound within it.

Background
By now it is a well-established practice to listen to the sounds of the real world recontextualized as recordings and to encounter them under various guises as or within music. It was over thirty years ago that Schafer (Murray) first coined the term ‘acoustic ecology’ and set out his guidelines for a new kind of listening, with the whole world as a universal ongoing musical composition. Schaeffer (Pierre) approached sonically similar territory from a quite different perspective, but in the same way also found it vital to set down his own prescription for establishing a new way to listen, extended this to form a new musical grammar.

If we step forward to today, we find that the ideas of ‘reduced listening’ and the ‘soundscape’ are as potent as ever. They are certainly more mainstream – a consistent presence in the gallery, improvisation venue and concert hall – but beyond this their influence can be felt in everyday life to an increasing degree. We all construct our own personal sonic map that is made up of an increasingly complex amalgam of the different environments we encounter during our daily routine. Today, perhaps more than every before, we are aware of both what we hear and of when and how we are listening, and even (sometimes) of the multitude of different agents and environments that seek to intervene in our listening and shape or direct the process.

Credits

More info soon at www.soundscapeslandscapes.gr

contact info Timothy Ward timward03@gmail.com

SoundscapesLandscapes
A Project by Medea Electronique
at the Koumaria Residency,
April 6th-9th,, 2012.

For more details contact Tim Ward at timward03@gmail.com

Overview
On the first weekend of April, 2012, the Koumaria Residency will host the Medea Electronique project SoundscapesLandscapes. Within this four-day microresidency, sound and video artists and performers will meet together within the Taigetos mountain range and explore the create of a new form of artistic digital cartography.

Details
The SoundscapeLandscape project is based around the use of many different innovative techniques in field recording (both passive methods of simply capturing the sounds around us and new inquisitive practices). At the same time visual investigations will both partner the sounds and add a further dimension to how we perceive and make sense of each environment.

The Landscapes/Soundscapes project starts with an initial micro-residency, which aims to explore these themes as they operate within two different physical environments: the Koumaria Estate and the Onassis Cultural Centre. What are the sound marks and shaping agents in each place? How do these elements transform themselves and their new environment when they area transferred from one place to the other? What new elements would we understanding about both places if we walked around the Onassis Cultural Centre when it was resounding on all levels and in all corners to the soundscape of Koumaria? What insights would emerge if the process were to be reversed?

The project will culminate in a site-specific installation, addressing many of the questions that arise when we listen in and to each space. Through the cartography that emerges, the new Onassis Cultural Centre (www.stg.gr) will better find its sense of place within the sonic environment around it, and its own sonic identity in terms of the sound within it.

Background
By now it is a well-established practice to listen to the sounds of the real world recontextualized as recordings and to encounter them under various guises as or within music. It was over thirty years ago that Schafer (Murray) first coined the term ‘acoustic ecology’ and set out his guidelines for a new kind of listening, with the whole world as a universal ongoing musical composition. Schaeffer (Pierre) approached sonically similar territory from a quite different perspective, but in the same way also found it vital to set down his own prescription for establishing a new way to listen, extended this to form a new musical grammar.

If we step forward to today, we find that the ideas of ‘reduced listening’ and the ‘soundscape’ are as potent as ever. They are certainly more mainstream – a consistent presence in the gallery, improvisation venue and concert hall – but beyond this their influence can be felt in everyday life to an increasing degree. We all construct our own personal sonic map that is made up of an increasingly complex amalgam of the different environments we encounter during our daily routine. Today, perhaps more than every before, we are aware of both what we hear and of when and how we are listening, and even (sometimes) of the multitude of different agents and environments that seek to intervene in our listening and shape or direct the process.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aspasiakoulira/sets/72157627820114839/

Since Thursday we are in London shooting Fragments of the Unseen London. After several problems we had with private security forces we almost reached our goal.
We have uploaded a small making off with Ioanna and several pictures taken by Michael. We are performing in Leicester at DMU this Wednesday. Soon we will be uploading the third Fragment, you can check the previous ones at www.theunseen.gr.

By Stavros Apostolatos and Aspasia Koulira

By Kleopatra Korai

Ioanna Kabylafka and Alessio Castellacci perform at Onassis Cultural Centre a structured improvisation they worked during the Koumaria 2011 Residency.

Guido De Flaviis at Onassis Cultural Centre performing Sedna by Massimo Botter

Performance of ISE at Onassis Cultural Centre during the presentation of Koumaria 2011 Residency

The collective spent a profitable day refining individual projects. So many projects have developed a full head of steam that we have had to post a schedule for the main studio space. The video project involving stop animation was completed, and viewed by the sound artists with an ear towards creating an improvised sound track. Another session of natural movement took place, this time on a different part of the surrounding countryside. The circuit makers spent much of the day, solder irons lit, making assorted sounding devices. A piece for processed voice, saxophone, live electronics and dance was further refined and practiced. We continued the portrait project of all the residents. The ISE experimented with a conduction, which succeeded in bringing the ensemble into new sonic spaces. A new meditative piece for looped chanting voice and movement was practiced, while soundtracks for a photo documentary were created. The mood today was one of concentrated work, with increasing realization that the clock is ticking towards our weekend presentation. At our daily communal meal we discussed our upcoming presentation and decided that by the end of tomorrow all the individual projects should be near completion so we can begin the difficult process of creating out of them a compelling and sensible presentation. Much work ahead!

The house wakes up without the usual sparkling ferment of the past days. The feeling is rather that of a light buzz … small flocks of different insects silently at work on their projects.

After yesterday’s meeting with all the artists, a common schedule has been laid out to coordinate the activities and rehearsals throughout the day.

After a morning session of Authentic Movement with few partecipants in the olive grove, Joana, Guido and Alessio have been rehearsing their trio with voice, dance and sax, striving to reach a clarity of gestural intention as well a balance between improvisational and compositional structure. Tim has created on the fly a remote control (out of a common play-station joystick) for Alessio to process his voice with effects in real time.

In the afternoon, while Hans, John, Tim, Nicola and Cleopatra keep working on different projects (animations, interactive video projections, analog sound installation), we go out in the nature to pose – ups, naked – for Aspasia’s potraits project.

After a convivial dinner, the ISE ensemble rehearse in the main space generating a nocturnal intricate blend of analogic textures, monotonic drones and digital corrosive distortion.

Outside the night grows and expands, unnoticed.

A sense of concentrated focus pervaded today’s work. Most projects have their overall form and shape established, and are now being critiqued and fine-tuned. Not only were residents working on their projects for the Saturday performance, but those running workshops were busy preparing materials for them. We completed the photo essay on the residency, and further refinements were made to the video technologies in use. The ISE rehearsed again, working on establishing a wider range of dynamic moods and a more refined set of timbres. A sense of ease has descended upon the residents, who now assist each other in very natural ways, understanding better what each resident needs from the others. When one stops to think about it, the range of art practices developing here is mind-boggling: hardware design and construction, software design and construction, instrument making, video mapping, video audio controllers, animation, acoustic music, electro-acoustic music, electronic music, real time audio signal processing, dance and movement, photography, sculpture, voice work, new theatre arts, curation, and of course culinary arts! The evening featured a run-through of the existing projects, with first attempts at integrating into them video processing. Our next major task is to decide how to present the emerging projects so as to best reveal, on the one hand, the sense in which they are the product of a single resident’s vision, and on the other the many ways in which each project bears the hallmarks of the input of many residents.