Artist:        murmer
Title:         4 spaces  | ©
Date:        2009
Duration:  15′00

photo by: Patrick McGinley

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THE SOUND

During a recent tour of the northeastern United States I made a collection of recordings inside the spaces in which I would perform.  The individual recordings were to be used as the starting point of the performance in the same location, a slow sonic zooming-in to the self-same space shared with an audience, and an experiment in natural resonant feedback caused by playing the sound of a space back into itself.  A handful of the spaces were particularly interesting, and I collect those here to highlight the notion of no space being neutral, and of each having it’s own living, breathing character.  The spaces we hear here are St Stephen’s Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the front lobby of the Baker Center for the Arts at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the gallery space at the Pyramid Atlantic in Washington DC.  At either end of this collection is a different kind of space, and one much closer to home: this is the sound of my mother’s backyard, on the edge of marshland in Abington, Massachusetts, with my personal favorite late-night sound of distant passing trains.

THE ARTIST

Patrick McGinley (aka murmer) is an American born sound, performance, and radio artist who has lived and worked in Europe since 1996.  In 2002 he co-founded framework, an organisation that produces a weekly radio show consecrated to field recording and phonography. His work concentrates on the framing of sounds from our environment which normally pass through our ears unnoticed and unremarked, but which out of context become unrecognisable, alien and extraordinary: crackling charcoal, a squeaking escalator, a buzzing insect, or one’s own breath. More recently McGinley has been giving presentations, workshops, and performances based on the exploration of site-specific sound and sound as definition of space.  In live performance his initial interest in field recording has developed into an attempt to integrate and resonate found sounds, found objects, specific spaces, and moments in time, in order to create a direct and visceral link with an audience and location.

Links: www.murmerings.com

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Artist:        BJ Nilsen
Title:         Are the birds gonna eat us, Mommy? | ©
Date:        2006-06-28
Duration:  7′18

photo by: BJ Nilsen

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THE SOUND

This field recording was made at Vatnsleysuströnd, Landakot on the southwest coast of Iceland.

In this remote location I was drawn to the amazing birds nesting there, especially the Arctic Tern (Kría) who are fiercely protective of their nests and known for dive bombing towards any intruders, usually striking humans on the top or back of the head. The crow in the beginning of the recording lives in the house seen in the photograph, obviously he got upset by my furry microphone. Besides the birds we hear the rain, wind and ocean waves coming in from the North Atlantic.

THE ARTIST

Benny Jonas Nilsen was born in 1975. He has been active with experimental music for nearly 20 years. For the past 10 years he has been releasing albums on Touch, making music and sound design for documentary film and television.  He focuses on the sound of nature and its effect on humans, field recordings and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound, often electronically treated.

Links: www.bjnilsen.com | www.touchmusic.org.uk

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Artist:        Roberto Paci Dalo
Title:          NAPOLI ATLAS | ©
Date:         2009
Duration:   7′00

photo by: Roberto Paci Dalo

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THE SOUND

“Napoli Atlas” is the natural development of a ongoing work about Napoli, started in 1993 with the sound and mixed-media installation “Napoli”.  The work was based on the city’s soundscape, the acoustical secrets of the city at various moments of day and night.  The sound landscape is collected through a gradual and progressive approach, a drift into the memory of the city like an acoustical film without images.  “Napoli Atlas” is an inner volcanic journey that starts from the surface of an almost anonymous place, a coffee bar.  The coffee bar is a place of well-being, the place where quickness (the espresso) and the mundane of the coffee routine cohabit, an alchemical and ritualistic place.  The bar is a gathering of sounds, an overlapping of acoustical streams.

THE ARTIST

Italian artist Roberto Paci Dalò (born Rimini, IT) is the director of the group Giardini Pensili and Velvet Factory – space for the arts (Rimini).  His work has won him international admiration and support from, among others, John Cage and Aleksandr Sokurov.  Member of the Internationale Heiner Müller Gesellschaft Berlin and recipient in 1993 of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD Fellowship.  His work – music, film, radio, theatre, drawing, installations, performance, sensorial design – has been presented throughout North and South America, Russia, Middle East, and Europe.  He has performed and created works in many of the world’s most prestigious spaces including Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna Opera House, Ars Electronica Linz, Fundaciò Joan Mirò Barcelona, Biennale di Venezia, MaerzMusik / Berliner Festspiele and more.  Border breaking collaborations include Kronos Quartet, Maurizio Cattelan, Scanner aka Robin Rimbaud, Olga Neuwirth, Kurt Hentschläger, Terry Riley, Philip Jeck.  His latest book, edited together with Enrico Pitozzi, is Electroscene dedicated to the relationship between image and sound in the electronic international landscape (Napoli 2010).  Paci Dalò was born in Rimini and spent his childhood on the Lake Garda (Italy), he currently lives and works in Rimini with residencies in Vancouver, B.C.

links: www.giardini.sm | www.velvet.it

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