Kim Walker

Kim Walker is a Scottish artist working with sound, video, installation and new media. She gained her MFA in Studio from SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and her BA (Hons) Time Based Art from DJCAD (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design). Kim also holds a PgDip in Library and Information Studies from the University of Strathclyde. Kim is a member of 26 Collective and with artist Jim Ewen, is a director of the creative non-profit company All In Ideas. www.kimwalkerart.co.uk

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

A composition of field recordings gathered in Moray, Scotland.

“My work has naturally moved towards exploring pathos surrounding the concepts of seriousness, the mundane, nonsense, failure, success and humour. This has been achieved through a continued focus on the human condition and behaviours of gaming, playfulness, amusement and isolation. I create settings in which the mundane and the playful, ordinary gesture can suddenly invoke existential and poetic meanings. My engagement with the world around us comes from an observatory position – this gaze looks towards human interactions, the natural word and the spaces in between these two sites.”

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Maria Marzaioli

Maria Marzaioli is a Musician/Composer MariaMarzaioliSoundcloud

“As an artist I am interested in sonic and musical representations of the landscape around us – both the natural and built environment. Through sound, my work seeks engagement with the phsyical world in alternative ways and encourages people to explore and (re)evaluate their relationship with place and space differently.”

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

“This work was conceived as a score, giving a set of instructions to be followed for a journey of your own choosing that is to be repeated on the hour, every hour for 24 hours. The piece of music ’24 hours in 12 minutes’ is created from the recordings made on the journey I chose, following those instructions.”

 

 

“The piece is made up of multiple acts of repetition, physically walking the same path repeatedly and recording at the same places for set durations of time. The use of contact mic as well as ambient recording in this piece was important; I wanted to hear the hidden sounds of these places, to understand them more fully and discover their secret life. The creating of this piece was also motivated by the desire to know familiar places in sound more completely, hear the different sounds carried within and resonating through each location at different times of the day and night. It is an act of discovery and exploration, ritual and demystification…”

“The score forced me to confront my own sense of safety as a woman in public places at night. i wanted to be able to reclaim these spaces for myself, make them safe and interact with them without fear.” Quotes from Supporting Statement

 

Rachael Finney

Rachael Finney is an artist and lecturer based in London.  Working primarily with sound, video and performance her work explores the material qualities of voice. She is currently undertaking her PhD within the department of Visual and Aural Culture at Goldsmiths College where her research focuses on phenomenology and vocal multiplicity. www.rachaelfinney.com

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

“Interested in voice and repetition Dining Room (2014) explores the performative formation of collective utterance from a singular subject. While walking the parameter of her parents recently vacated dining room the artist simultaneously utters and records a singular, flat note. This single note is echoed back into the space through an amplifier at the same moment a new note is being uttered. This action is repeated until a full circle of the space has been completed.  As the constant looping of the utterance occurs the listener is presented with an ever- increasing echo. This echo slowly and consistently smothers the embodied utterance leaving a new acoustic object in its place…” Supporting Statment

Caroline Park

Caroline Park is a composer, musician, and artist working within the minimum in experimental electronic music. www.blanksound/org

“Echo, subversive difference, and repetition all play core roles in the way I create music. As a sound-artist and composer, I find that having less direct control in both performing and in composing allows me to listen much more deeply, with a greater sense of awareness of space and how sound can color it and non-aggressively explore a given space’s physical perimeter. The manner in which I let go of this control is through chance. My work is quite minimal — I work within the minimum — and by both limiting myself with specific constraints and juxtaposing a specific curation with chance procedures, the resultant work emerges simultaneously focused and open. I tend to listen and explore rather than take charge…”

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

OTO – “I began exploring “stock” MIDI piano sound with systems of very fast and/or changing rates programmed in Max/MSP. I found that these fast rates would produce expansive, blurred, organic textures — a digital, yet semi-natural resonance from the sound of MIDI piano. OTO allowed me to explore particular pitch combinations through such extreme rate-processing, the minimal pitch material acting as a portal into these simple and profound systems.”

“There is actually no such thing as repetition — every instance is a new one, our minds are not exactly the same as when we heard one iteration from the next. Our minds are constantly changing, time is perpetually in motion, space changes. I am interested in continuity via repetition, and often wonder what it means to become a “constant signal”. To me, a constant signal suggests so much of a micro-action, repeating over and over again, to give the sense that it is in motion, like frames of a film.” Supporting Statement.

 

Ingrid Plum

Ingrid Plum is a Brighton-based Composer/Musician www.ingridplum.com

“I find that feminist context emerges as part of my practice through my eschewing of boundaries that would be projected upon my choice of roles, rather than by making work that individually and specifically addresses feminist issues… I do not usually frame my work as feminist in itself. I am a feminist who makes work and my practice infers these issues – not by addressing them directly by subject, but by making work that exists despite and in spite of any gender gap that would deny me a contextual space for my work.”

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

“I followed Alvin Lucier’s example in ‘I am sitting in a room’, using the piano instead of a room and Nils Frahm’s ‘Mi’ as the source…I set up 2 Neumann 183 microphones to capture the sound of a Yamaha C6 grand piano with the sustain pedal weighted to form a reverb unit. I played the track on speakers aimed at the piano, and recorded this with the reverb from the piano. I repeated this with each new recording and the layers of reverb added obscured the notes played in the original. After 15 repetitions I ended up with this version comprising of the last few repetitions layered, which I have played with so that the feedback from the higher harmonics is not uncomfortable to listen to.

“There is something to be said about a woman taking on the role of producer and remixing a male artist’s work. Remixes tend to be done more often by men, and I often get a reaction of surprise that I would assume the role of remixing & producer, as you need the confidence in your ability to believe you can bring something new, reimagine or improve someone’s work. I’ve used the piano, his instrument, to both transform his piece and remove the sound of his performance so his actions as a performer are a trigger for my choices in process & production.” Supporting Statement.

Johanna Bramli

“Johanna Bramli is a sound artist, performer and composer dealing with sensory perception, spaces and audience interaction. She is a founding member of the Metahub, an interdisciplinary platform for international, real-time, artistic and cultural meta-communication. Since 2000, she has been a professional musician performing, recording and touring internationally in a variety of pop, rock and electronic acts.

Additionally, Bramli works as a lecturer in Music Performance and Composition for Media for the Foundation Degree and BA courses at Northbrook College, Worthing (partner of University of Brighton) sharing her study and practice in experimental composition, multi-disciplinary arts and performance, and installations-based work”. www.johannabramli.com

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

‘Atom is an 8-channel surround piece (the attached audio is a stereo version) based on two fundamental sound sources; the human voice and the sine wave – one organic, one processed. These sounds merge into one another, highlighting their commonalities, yet their differences. The ethereal textures of the vocal harmonies gradually turn into low drones that have more oppressive sonic qualities and reveal a darker undertone to the whole piece. The vocal harmonies come back in the third section, accompanied by an ordered repetitive count to 4 that give authority whilst retaining the initial softness of the opening section. In the 8-channel version of Atom, these gradually building sonic textures surround the audience, creating a sense of immersion and meditation. It is written so that it can be indefinitely looped as part of an installation (which is how it was performed in the past).’ Quote from Bramli’s supporting statement.

Sylvia Hinz

“Berlin artist Sylvia Hinz is an Instrumentalist, Conductor, Teacher and Founder of the ensembles XelmYa, UMBRATONO, the bewitched project and Syl’Cor. An expert on Contemporary Music and Improvisation, Hinz studied recorder, experimental music, chamber music and ensemble-leading – and is now working within contemporary improvisation”. www.sylviahinz.com

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

[Bass Recorder, breath, voice, tongue. Recorded on Zoom H4n]

‘Windsarie describes my preoccupation with the topics of wind and breath. Growing up near the coast, I always loved the sounds of wind and the storms. I began playing the recorder aged seven and have had a focus on breath (breathing sounds) and wind noises ever since’ Quote from Hinz’s supporting statment

Caterina Barbieri

“Caterina Barbieri (b.1990, Bologna, Italy) is a composer and performer of electroacoustic music. Mostly interested in modular synthesis, three-dimensional spatialisation and psychoacoustic aural sculpture, her music arises from a meditative approach to primary waveforms, microtonality and the polyrhythm of harmonics, on the boundary between drone, minimalism and techno in multichannel systems.

Her minimalistic focus is rooted in the exploration of the stratigraphic potential of voltage-controlled synthesizers, in terms of polyrhythm and polyphony.
Synthesis, texture-based forms and immersive listening are three fundamental conditions for her to enhance an advanced cognitive and auditory art, not based on extrinsic links but solely built on the experience of the spectrum, able to develop our very limited ability of perceiving the vertical domain of music, involving us in a holistic way.” www.caterinabarbieri.com

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

Undular is an eight-channel piece composed by Caterina Barbieri. All sounds derive from a Buchla Modular System with almost no digital processing.

‘…Immersive listening experiences with multichannel systems greatly advance our cognitive and auditory comprehension of music. After a certain exposure to the sounds, the spectral spaces underlying the fundamental tones, at first almost ‘inivisible’, come to our consciousness, enlighting an hidden perceptive dimension, that may not be specified in a score but still exists in the mind and in the body of the listener. Such a listening process may enlighten the listener to live the music as an infinitely changing experience (not only as a form), where she/he takes an active position, even a performative role. One can investigate the density of the harmonics and the secrets of their variations in time. One can move the skull horizontally and vertically to evaluate how the perception of the spectrum varies in space; cranial movement offers alternative aural perceptions due to the filtering, phasing and reflection’s phenomena depending on the angular incidence of the wavefronts on one’s ears.’ Quote from Barbieri’s supporting statment

Mirjam Tally

“Sound is central in Tally’s creations. Her music is a flow of playful contrasts where a sense of humour and poetic use of sound are blended to mix. Beside writing works for contemporary music scene, she is active as a film composer. Her earlier works are mainly for chamber ensembles and electronics. In recent years, importance of orchestral music has increased in her oeuvre. Sometimes she uses elements of jazz, folk and pop, Nordic or exotic instruments (Estonian kannel, didgeridoo, tanpura, accordion and others) and treats sound material with a modernist open mind.

She has graduated from the Estonian Academy of Music as a student of Lepo Sumera in 2000. Since 2006, Tally lives on the island of Gotland, Sweden. In 2009-2010, she was Composer in Residence at Swedish Radio P2 channel. Since 2012, her orchestra works are published by Gehrmans Musikförlag.” www.mirjamtally.com

Submission to ‘Ekho:: Toward a Repetitive Sounding of Difference’

 

 

Breathe (2005) is realized at Visby International Centre for Composers, in Studio Alpha and it was part of the NOMUS scholarship. This work was premiered at Dark Music Days festival on Iceland in 2006. I have used pre-recorded flute sounds (mostly tongue-ram’s and breathing inhale/exhale) which I have processed in Pro Tools (mostly using transpose and reverse). These original flute sounds are recorded with Estonian flutist Monika Mattiesen at the electroacoustic studio of Estonian Academy of Music.