Five Sound Questions to Mamoru

Performance: Etude no.13 - Ice. Photo: Emi Yamaguchi

Japanese artist Mamoru creates his own instruments and installations. In his series of Etudes, he takes average, everyday objects and places them in an abnormal situation. He encourages his audience to indulge in the, preferably unamplified sound, to really carefully listen and be surprised by what they hear. 

This week he answers my five questions about sound and listening. Read more about Mamoru and his work on his website www.afewnotes.com.

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

It is really hard to say what sound made the most impression on me… Honestly, I don’t even remember if I was very sensitive about it. However, one thing that comes to my mind is the memory of Sundays during my childhood. I grew up in a family that goes to a church every Sunday. This is very rare in Japan (it says less than 1% of the population is Christian), and it wasn’t fun for me to get up early and drive an hour or so to get there while my friends are watching the Anime on TV at home.

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Sound and Music in Museums

Last year at New Zealand’s Auckland Museum visitors could enjoy the exhibitions while listening to music inspired by the historic and artistic artifacts. They called it the Sonic Museum. I missed it, but I still think it is worth a mention, as it crosses the bridge between the whisper quiet environment of museums on one hand and sound and music on the other.  

Exhibiting sound art and installations as we see them a lot on Everyday Listening will create a completely different experience in a museum and should be handled with great care. I love the relative silence among a group of people as it feels like a way of paying respect to the works of art. That said, incorporating sound and music could change the way we perceive an exhibition and make it a more personal experience. 

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Whispering In The Leaves

In this short documentary Chris Watson tells us about his sound installation Whispering In The Leaves. The installation allows us to listen the sound of places most of us have never been, mysterious and fascinating.

He tells us how he is carefully “fishing for sounds” on the rainforest floor in South and Central America. Chris has been recording for many years. Living in a city I sometimes forget about the variety of sounds in this world. Amsterdam sounds different than Mexico City, but what about all those forests, swamps, lakes, creeks and all the creatures living there!

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Listen to The Sonic Body

Have you ever wondered what your body sounds like, from the inside? I have, and I actually recorded some bowel sounds once using a stethoscope I borrowed from a doctor friend. The Sonic Body is an interactive installation which allows visitors to experience what the human body sounds like.

From the outside the installation does not reveal any of its secrets, it is just a plain wooden cylinder. While entering the ‘body’, visitors will see a glowing representation of our organs. They can explore the different sides of The Sonic Body by touching it. This will trigger the sounds, which are played back omnidirectionally to increase the feeling of immersion. 

The installation was created by Thomas Michalak, Harry Neve and Anna Orliac. To record all those bodily sounds they collaborated with a heart surgeon. They used instruments like stethoscopes and hydrophones and recorded in an anechoic chamber to capture even the slightest sound. 

The artist is not performing for an audience this time. It feels like we are intruders, literally listening to the artist’s inside. See The Sonic Body website to learn more about this highly intimate piece of art:

www.sonicbody.co.uk

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Five Sound Questions to Dennis de Bel

We were amazed by the effective simplicity of his Sew-O-Phone and Vacumonium as well as his Brick-Up. Dennis de Bel is an “extemporary artist” from the Netherlands, transforming everyday objects into something new. We could say he extends their functionality. 

The titles of his work are very descriptive and the functionality is limited, but they tickle the imagination. Read more about his work on his website www.dennisdebel.nl.

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you? 

Music: David Bowie - let’s dance (+ videoclip as earliest memory), Dire Straits as my parents ‘car music’ during our holiday drives. Pink Floyd as ‘the-band-that-demolished-buildings-with-their-soundsystem-in-venice’ (was it such a loud system or were the buildings so crappy?).

 

Sound: vacuum cleaner. When I was still in the womb, my mom used to vacuum clean her clothes to remove the hair of our cats when they had been sitting on her lap. After my birth, I would stop crying when my mom turned on the vacuum cleaner. This might explain my love for monotonous sounds/noise, although this might as well be a genetic condition most people suffer from (truck drivers falling asleep from the diesel engine’s hum etc.).

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Rechnender Raum

At this year’s Sonic Acts festival I had an encounter with Rechnender Raum, a wonderful, seemingly living installation created by Ralf Baecker, operating similar to a basic artificial neural network. The open construction allows visitors to see every single moving detail of the machine. 

I was amazed by the complexity of the fragile wooden structure and the network of strings, all connected to the moving outline of a torus in the center of the installation. 

While Rechnender Raum (German for calculating space) gives us a lot to look at, and it is nice to walk around the structure and inspect every small element up-close, I also enjoyed the soft, insect-like chirping of the small electronic motors keeping the network alive and slowly moving.  

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Was: More Washing Machines

Honestly, I was not planning on having a washing machine theme this week, but after The Drying Green I stumbled upon another piece of sound art which has to do with wet clothes and the sound of washing machines, and this time it is simply called Was.

In the installation, created by Wessel Westerveld and Lydia van de Streek, water keeps on dripping from the wet clothes onto the water on the floor, creating a concert of dripping sounds. The washing machine kicks in now and then, creating a low rumbling sound, and the installation keeps the clothes wet at all times.

I am sorry that I do not have a video of the installation to show you, but on Wessel Westerveld’s website you can read more about his work and watch a few videos of his installations. Happy washing!

The Drying Green

Another example of sound art in public space is this sound installation on the Glasgow Green, a place where people used to bring their wet laundry to dry, as they did not have a garden next to their house, up until 1977. 

The Drying Green is a sound installation consisting of four poles with speakers on top, playing the sound of washing machines, thus bringing the listener back to the days when the same field would be full of drying clothes. 

I was not able to find the names of the creators of this piece of public sound art. If you happen to know, tips are welcome!

5 Questions to Gianpaolo D'Amico & Sara Lenzi

sounDesign, or Gianpaolo D’Amico and Sara Lenzi from Italy are next in the ongoing series of Five Sound Questions. With their projects and events they want to focus more attention on the importance of great sound design. Visit their blog at soundesign.info 

Sara Lenzi is a saxophonist and a composer as well as a teacher. She founded the sound design company Lorelei.

Gianpaolo D’Amico works at the Media Integration and Communication Centre of the University of Florence. His main interests are sound design and new media.

  

What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

Gianpaolo: My beautiful mother and some other amazing women in the kitchen at childhood home, dealing with domestic activities, feminine laughs, washing machines, forks & spoons…

 

Sara: The sound of coffee coming out. It meant that it was Sunday morning and that my parents were both at home, and we were going to have breakfast all together, and to spend the whole day together. In brief, it meant Happiness.

How do you listen to the world around you?

Gianpaolo: My ears are wide open. A lot of years ago a teacher told me that Sound was just there. My world turned to a big audio system. Sometimes I stop talking and dedicate myself only to listen. When I was a rebel boy I used to play in a indie-rock band, you know :), then every sound is a potential tune to develop for creating a song. It’s a natural and violent process. There’s no way out for me.

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Portimão: Praça Manuel Teixeira Gomes

It has been a while since I shared the sound of a place I visited in the places category, but now I am in Portimão, I have a good reason to start doing it again! It is remarkably hot and sunny, even for spring in southern Portugal. I never visited this country before, and it is welcoming me with a beautiful blue sky. 

Here is what Praça Manuel Teixeira Gomes sounds like on an average Monday morning in spring. It is quite a sonic surprise. While lots of birds sing their song in the olive trees, I pass a cheesy Native American music performance on one side while on the other side the fountains rustle:

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