Sound and Social Practice, Part 3 - Weimar West (un)erört !

Almost exactly two months ago, i celebrated the release of a very special CD.
It was the result of a seven Month long process in which i got together with a
lot of different people to make a kind of "Sound Document" on the Western Part
of the city of Weimar (Weimar-West). I worked mainly with a group of school teenagers.
It was an absolutely amazing experience with a lot of fun, some struggles, mountains
of questions to master and of course a lot of listening.
It was such a wonderful thing for me to being able to unite a lot of people all through the fact that we want to create something audible. It gave us all the chance to develop more on this skill and especially working together with a group of teenagers was amazing since they are so full of energies and the love to listen... What was special to me was the fact that although i never explicitly talked to them about the various aspects of listening, in the final workshop when i asked them about listening they all gave the most beautiful answers...

Maybe it could have been any subject or medium that taught them a lot about how to be with one another, but in this case it was sound that had an impact on their social behaviour..
I conclude that i learned a lot about how working with sound can have a very positive on social practices. I also learned that i have to move forward a lot faster with a subject when i work with teenagers. they are very quick in picking up and understanding... So I was very pleased with the results. We all achieved what i hoped for and in the end the local newspaper road a big and positive article about our work. Very good i would say : )

Glow 2007 in Pictures/ Details of Forest 2

So here are some Images of Glow 2007. All Pictures taken by Claus Langer:



This was a Video Piece by Jakub Nepras. It plays with dimensions to me as it is a
beautifully crafted piece of urban imagery melted into the inside of a electronic/digital device. I love it, because as a child i saw electronics like this.. and now i wonder.. what do i hear in a world like this ?

Then this is a piece of hans peter kuhn's piece. Maybe not his strongest, but still a
great piece. Well, i was excited to be in an exhibtion with the man. And i have to say, he is one crazy dancer....


...and last but not least: Forest 2.. as i said it was installed in this fabulous space of the dutch theatre company united-c... great space for the installation..



As you can see on the images, it is a matrix-like forest of flourescent tubes. With it there is a screen and around the tubes are surrounded by an eight channel speaker system. Six of them on stands and two of them in the rig as kind of showers.
What i did artistically was to create eight places within the space that are inhabited by some kind of sonic creatures.
The installation is based on the imagery of a forest and a digital organism that is the inhabitant of this place. This organism, based on david rockeby's Cellular Automata Algorithm, in return interacts with the light and of course the sound. So in order to keep this idea of something organic i used material generated from the human voice. It also makes the sound easier to locate. This again supports the idea that different parts of the forest are inhabited by different
sonic creatures.


As you move through the forest you interact with the creature, which in return influences the sonic creatures. They get more active or less active, depending on two parameter: one is the space itself, which is stimulated through movement within the forest and a second being the state of the creature itself. This can be influenced by the audience using a wooden controller - i introduced this controller in an earlier post. Thats basically it.. People really love it, when theyre in it.. its spooky and funny and a completely new experience. When we were done with the programming i spent a lot of time just wandering around in the installation and i was really surprised, how many different moods there existed... If you interested in knowing more or showing the piece in your festival drop me a mail and i forward it to chris....

Thanks for listening,

Alexandre

Forest 2 @ Glow 2007

From 5.11.07 until the 11.11.07 i had the chance to stay in Eindhoven. Forest 2 had been commissioned by Curators Tom Groll and Bettina Pelz for the Glow Festival 2007. It was exciting to me, since Hans Peter Kuhn was also exhibiting, whose work i was aware of since i started my research on sound art.
I must say i was very nervous, since it was a new level for me. All international Artists, big expectations, an audience of potentially 50.000 people. It had to work... and it really did.
You can find some images if you follow the link to the Glow Festival. The curators were really nice, funny and humorous people who did their utmost best for their artists. Nuff respect as they'd say in Jamaica. It was still an odd experience, being the only "Sound Guy" among all this Light Artists and i really found out once more, that this is THE medium for me.. Sound and listening.. I had some wonderful experiences. For example the second day of the opening we had many visitors. We were just hanging out by the installation when there was a man walking past us who carried his baby on his back. He was laughing a lot and so were we, since the baby had picked up one of the sounds i had designed for the installation and was making the same sound over and over again. Then i knew i had done a good job : )

I want to thank Chris Ziegler a lot, who invited me to come along and whose work forest 2 mainly is. He is such a character and if you get a chance to work with him, do so.. !
I also met some great people at the united-c, which was the theatre that was housing the installation.. Great place, great people, great festival.. even though it was "just about light"..
oh.. before i forget.. i had a really good conversation with a mad guy from mexico named gustavo.. he was one of the artist and he is responsible for the public lighting system in mexico city.. we were talking about listening and he and his crazy daughters made me aware of the fact again how listening is something that happens with our whole body.. just like we perceive light through our bones, sound as well is perceived with our whole body.. thanks for that !!!

thanks for listening, blog

alexandre

A lot of water...

.. has passed under the bridges since the last post.. meanwhile forest II happened, got commissioned for the glow festival in eindhoven, i celebrated the release of the cd "weimar
west-(un)erhört!" - an Audiobook like Feature about a neighbourhood in Weimar, Germany that i created together with a group of teenagers and other cititzens of the area - and i started working on a new project... i will write on each of these happenings one by one in the next couple of days : )

keep listening !

alexandre

Forest II - update 3 .. midi controller is done

here is it :



after some hard work and help from people around it is done: my norwegian wood controller..
born for the installation forest II... im quite happy with it - and again big thanks to the owl project for showing me this way : ) contact me if youre interested in how i did it..

i realised that i actually build i microforest within the macroforest...depending on the perspective. dont you think ? have look yourself:



isnt that cute, or what ??

alexandre

work in progress ---- Forest II --- UPDATE 2

Forest II - Cellular automato midi controller:



here you see the start of my first selfmade midi-controller. it is going to be housed in a tree trunk (which you can already see >>> big up to the owl project who got me thinking about the whole thing.. check them out on myspace !!). the trunk is a rather special piece of wood, since my partner, girlfriend and lover woman merete found it in the norwegian woods, right where she used to be a boyscout.. we took it out of the forest and then it flew with me to germay...... so what is it for ? there are eight faders, which are supposed to influence the cellular automata digital organism, which is in return influencing the light of the installation.. i made the soldering with a lot of help from a guy called martin bellardi.. he is a genius.. i am a happy man, now : )

work in progress ---- Forest II --- UPDATE

today was a good day.. phew.. ! i never worked on such a big project..
it is at least 20 people involved.. then there is technical crew and all that ..
wow ! .. im spending most of my times programming .. which is a lot of fun
for me, since it is not what i do all the time.. just a l0t.. it is so amazing to
work on such a scale: the venue is at least 15 meters high and about 3o meters
long.. i get to work with 16 speakers, two of them are massive subwoofer with
4000 Watts.. then there is a pair of speaker on the rig, about 1o meter high up in
the air... its fantastic !!!!
today we managed to get some tracking together, so i programmed a matrix that will allow to place six individual sounds in space according to motion information of two cameras.. i was happy for achieving this. .. there is more to it, which i might explain later.. two things to conclude.. .. im so grateful to be creating a listening
experience on this scale.. its spatial audio information heaven : )) .. and here is two images of two dancer rehearsing in the installation ... (sorry, since i took them with my phone : ))

work in progress ---- Forest II ---

just a quick update before i get into details about the eklective affinities project and more
details about the art of listening .. ! i am working on my first large scale arts installation..
well, its actually not mine, but its quite big still.. here you can see the construction of it:



its an unusual site in weimar and its a pretty amazing installation by media artist chris ziegler.
he has chosen to work with me as a sound artist/listening artist and i am also assisting him on the project. so much for contrast, if you think of the intimacy of eklective affinities.. the main
part of the installation actually is three performance pieces.. so we have a group of fifteen dancers working with three composers.. my part is to make the installation sonically available for the public..

the installation is now done and we are working and experimenting with it.. what that would be in detail i shall let you know soon : )

thanks for listening, blog : )

Eklective affinities

These are the details i was promising earlier on in one post about what i am up to
these days. Together with Live Art Legend Roger Hill alias Mandy Romero i was
working on an improvisation entitled "elecitve affinities" for the last 6 days. It was a bit of a mad one, since i picked up Roger in berlin last week on thursday and performed with him the following day in Weimar at a Gallery called the ACC Gallery. We have known each other for a very long time, but never actually performed together.. So here are some pictures of the performance:





I will want to go into more detail into what it is that we are doing. For the moment i would want to say that it was quite a magical performance for us and the audience. It surely is amazing to be working with an artist as versatile as Roger Hill. In relation to my art it is deeply challenging work since i the art of listening in this case lies in relating to the actions of another human being and react on it instantly in front of an audience.
So i am very happy about this unexpected success and will keep you up to date..

thanks for listening, blog !

alexandre

Sound and Social Practice Part 2

Something i forgot to mention: this term is coined through my conversations with the American media artist Kristin Lucas. i met her, when she was on residence with the ACC Gallery in Weimar while she was investigating "The Outside". Kristin took me on a little, mind expanding journey, for which i am very grateful.
Meeting Kristin (Foto taken by Kristin Lucas)

(more on her project can be found here: http://www.search4outside.com/doku.php?id=wiki:dokuwiki:about).

In our quite long conversations she made me aware of the fact that some aspects of my work actually relate to something that can be referred to as sound and social practice. that resonated in my mind and this is how these blog posts came about...

Sound and social practice. To me this sounds utterly fascinating. At least when I
let it ring in my brain. It sounds super fresh, doesn't it ? Maybe this has to do
with the way that the letter sound in this specific combination, but it just makes
an awful lot of sense when my inner voices pronounces it in my head...On the second thought i get to the point where I actually get interested enough to ask myself:
what does it actually mean ?

Here is a start. A humble attempt to share my practical thoughts on this subject, bearing in mind that my point of departure is listening as an art form. Listening as such can already be a social act in itself. When we get together we talk. We understand the talking through what ? Through listening of course. In order to understand properly, we have to listen properly.For that we, for once, take ourselves out of the picture and pay attention to the person who is talking to us. Quite nice, i think. We give attention and that in itself already is a social act to some extend. Now, I want to take this further. Much further, of course.

So last Friday i met up with a 71 Year old woman. She had written a poem on the neighbourhood she lives in. Now, she let me visit her in her home to record her reciting the poem for a project I am working on. So I was listening to her extensively. Even recording what she had composed in words. Keeping a record of her thoughts. I was lucky to meet her, because she allowed it to happen and so the fact, that i came to listen to her made us friends very quickly. And so I listened and learned. And so she talked and she learned.


(Foto taken by Alexandre Decoupigny, used by kind permission of both persons.. )

End of Part 2

Listening Art at documenta 12 in Kassel..

A special year for art, so they say.. Venice Biennale, Documenta 12,
Sculpture Projects in Münster.. I'm in Germany right now. The place for art this summer, since two of the three major art events happen to be in Germany. So this Monday i finally found my way to documenta 12 in Kassel on the look out for Art to listen to.. Let me say it right away.. there was not much at all !!!!!!
I was quite pleased though when i found out that a colleague of mine, Imogen Stidworthy actually had a room on her own.. I met Imogen last year a couple of times, when i was on a group show with her in Liverpool.. You should check her out, she does very important work. I love the humanity in her work the most about it.. The piece she was showing that i liked most carried the title "i hate".. it reminded me about the piece she was doing for the show we both were in, which was titled "get here"..Here is an image of me waving to Imogen while i am listening to her piece..
It is a 5.1 Surround Format, with speakers built into this U-Shaped wall.. We can listen to a person (I only remember one, could have been more as well..) trying to articulate the words "i hate". If we stay fixed at one point we quickly get the impression of being immersed into these different attempts and ways of articulating the phrase "I hate".. The sound quality is superior and the spatial quality of the piece areamazing.. I love this work, because to me it investigates into how language constitutes us as human beings.. how it is also a tool of liberation to express our internal emotional state.. and in return then highlights our aural perception as a tool to understand these essentially important messages and various pieces of information. Personally i think Imogen's Work is strongly influenced by her surrounding, which i believe to be the city of Liverpool.. She probably would not agree with me, since the work is totally capable to stand on its own. Still, after living in Liverpool from 2000 until 2005, i have to suppose that Liverpool as a place must have a profound impact on her work..

Then there was an interesting piece by Inigo Manglano-Ovalles called radio..it consists of a room covered in orange light and on the floor is a wooden object shaped after a stereo-type of a radio. There are two speaker that constantly transmit white noise like sound. I find it interesting in the sense, that it uses the medium radio for a very visual installation piece. Also the sound element seems ultra important, since without them the installation could easily fall into insignificance.. It is mainly a visual installation though and as such I do not consider it fully as a piece of listening art..

Having said this actually brings me to an interesting point.. why do i consider Imogen's Piece, (which also has a second part that builds on a video) more a piece of listening art than the piece by Inigo Manglano-Ovalles? I guess it must be our perception and what actually forms the basis of the work.. Inigo Manglano-Ovalles visualizes for me a radio moment.. the image clearly comes first.. whereas in Imogen's work I get the strong sense that her work is based on listening and actually being triggered by what she hers, rather than sees. This for me makes her work for me so much more interesting than Inigo Manglano-Ovalles.

This brings me to the last piece i find worth mentioning on this blog. Black chords plays lyrics by Saâdane Afif. 13 identical black guitars are hooked up to identical amps. All Guitars have a different tuning and are arranged in space. They are equipped with a technical addition that allows for the open tuning to be played mechanically as a chord. The mechanism is computer controlled and seems to be programmed in a random manner. This results in hearing a random series of different guitar chords in space. Visually this piece is very strong and it also is a beautiful idea. I personally would have loved to hear a lot more variety in the amp's set ups, but that is just a personal matter of taste. I love the combination of installation and musical composition although i have to say the space was poorly equipped for this piece. It is a straight forward piece, which is very beautiful and interesting although i am not sure about its depth. I would like to conclude that the metaphor and the language in this piece is also more of a visual
nature rather than a piece based on listening experience.

Apart from these pieces, I only found one more listening related piece, which i really did not like at all. I do not remember the title or the author. I apologize for this, but i think it is better this way. I have to add that out of six main location i only visited four: the Museum Fridericanum, the documenta Halle, the Aue Pavillion and the Neue Gallerie. So there could be a lot that i missed, but i saw enough to draw the conclusion, this artform is far from being understood as a valid contribution to the arts world and still has
a long, long way to go to be fully recognized. Let's do it !!!

Listening Art by Alexandre Decoupigny

Today I would like to tell about the progress i experienced since I started this blog..

I am currently working on three projects: 1.) Weimar West - (Un)erhört
2.) Forest II 3. ) Untitled - a collaboration with Live Artist Roger Hill..

Here are some more details about these individual projects:

1.) Weimar West - (Un)erhört: I am creating an Audio-Feature about a Neighbourhood in Weimar which is called Weimar-West.. I work with a
range of different groups and individuals creating a variety of contributions
all somehow related to listening to this neighbourhood..In addition we looked into broadcasting through collaborating with a commercial and an experimental radio station..
In the end there
will be a CD, which will be manufactured with a thick booklet. I feel a bit proud of this project, since I initiated it and made it all happen.. I think it is a wonderful
project, so email me about it, if you're interested.. also there is a German blog
about it, which is a sort of dairy: www.unerhoert.blogspot.com..






2. ) Forest II is a Multi-Media Artist Chris Ziegler. Chris is an associated artist with
the ZKM in Karlsruhe and currently develops Forest II Piece for the Art Festival in Weimar, called Pelerinages.. The main purpose of this project is to create a spatial, multimedia instrument for a group of composer, dancers and choreographer to create a performance
on from the 10th to the 12th of September in Weimar, Germany.
Since i don't find this that interesting I am lucky enough to assist Chris personally as well as developing the acoustic concept of a visitor based installation as well as the sound design and the patching of sound applications/programming for the visitor installation.
I just spent two days in Berlin in the famous Tesla Labs, setting up the installation
for technical rehearsals and also sketching some ideas. Very nice : )
Here are some images from the first experimental public installation in the city
of Dresden:





3.) Is just in the making.. more news later : )

I moved into a studio in Weimar West, which feels absolutely wonderful. It is amazing to have some space and place for your work.. I love it !!! It was given
to me because of the Project in Weimar West and as such I will also use it mainly for this purpose.. have a look :



That's it for now.. As you can see i have made some progress
since i started writing this blog.. Unfortunately i did not manage
to update this blog continuously, because i was quite busy
working or trying to get more work. This takes up a lot of time.
I did not know before how much really, so now that i am doing
it i can tell you it is an awful lot. . . On the contrary it might be nice to see now,
that actually there is development in my work and that since i started
writing this blog I actually managed to make a living full-time as a
freelance artist, which i think is superb. This, of course, brings us to
the next step.. what if you are starting to be successful in your field..
how do you maintain it ? ? how do you actually improve and keep it going.. ?
I feel this is the next step i have to learn. Cross your fingers if you like and hope the
best and that i am ready for it : ) I keep you posted ..

Thanks for listening, blog !

Sound and Social Practice Pt. 1

As an artist working with our ability to listen. I recently transfered into a Project. For this Project i managed to secure funding from the European Social Fund. It was very impressive for me to find open ears to the subject of sound and social practice and was rewarded with a decent sum of money to create an audio-book with various parts of a community here in Weimar, the place i am living in at this point in time. There is a seperate Blog for this ( only in German though): www.unerhoert.blogspot.com
It is a magnificent opportunity and you will find my thoughts towards this subject as i go along doing the work.

alexandre

Re:organising -

i was thinking about this blog for a while and i came to the conclusion that its too much about
me personally. This is not what i want. My girlfriend told me thats what musicians do.. they seem
to want to publish everything about themselves and that is true to some extend. So i decided that the more diary like stuff - i can publish that under the myspace blog part. This blog is hopefully going to become more what the title promises: A blog about the art of listening. I still want to includevthe parts that tell a little about how I apply this professionallly. Its just that it is going to become, in need of a better word, a little more official. Whatever that might be ... We shall see : )

thanks for listening, blog !

Back after a while ...

I have been absent from these pages for quite some time. A lot happened in between, but first things first... Here are the fotos that i mentioned in my last post :

this is me on the right side playing with dr. jammm : )

whats new ?

hey hey hey.. so the installtion is runnig fine i heard from marcus. me, i had a flu
these days : ) a week after the opening i played a small gig of a kind of experimental music here in weimar with four musicians (trombone, voice, bass and guitar) at an andy warhol tribute night.. if i ever come across some pics in time i shall put them up here.. it was a lot of fun and a great night out...after which i fell ill.. i am happy to realize an opening of an exhibtion in one weekend and then play a gig at the next and still keep a decent level of quality if i pay attention to the feedback of people at both events.. the gig was paid as well, so that helped me finish the month : ))) so whats next ? my focus is slowly shifting to the project here in weimar: " Weimar West - (un)erhört".. yesterday we all met with the board of trustees who generously support the project and it went quite well.. it was great to be able to talk to people in that kind of position about the art of listening and to bring it to their attention.. they are only small regional board who grants money from the european social funds to projects in their region, but still it was quite a new experience and i was slightly nervous about it.. afterwards i noticed that there was not a singel need for this. the people from the board were actually quite human and friendly and curious about the work that i am doing.. they were also a bit impressed to find this kind of thing a part of their thing.. it was important for me to learn that its always best to speak straight up and not try to impress, but stick to whats the facts.. also there is no need to be shy about anything in front of these kind of people, but rather openness helps a lot and putting any prejudice aside.. i think that this way at least you will not get paranoid about them seeing you as weird....i will post a link to the project but bear in mind it is all going to be written in german, since it is project here in weimar and it communicates mainly to the people involved locally .. then also up next is one or two gigs in berlin at the end
of march... tell you more about it later ! bad news is.. merete and me did not get the residency at da kunsthaus kloster gravenhorst.. oh well.. we still have one more application out and will get together to send new ones out.. i also applied for a masters in fine arts in oslo and for a paid voluntary position at the zkm in karlsruhe.. just to have a go : )) at the minute i am very happy with freelance live, although its very tough some times.. anyways.. thanks for listening, blog !

best

alexandre

"Town Country House - a virtually real Soundwalk"

so here is a photo diary of the events..

i arrived in berlin on thursday. this is me on the way to takt..



the whole day i spent at takt.. so i had a picknick with neil mcintee,
who was a fellow artist from scotland..


this is how far i came on the first day, after i went
to stay at betty & joe's in prenzlberg (by the way, the
laptop shows meretes hand performing her everyday
wish on her sculpture "wishing well"..)..


this is joe, learning some image magic:


after a short night's sleep :


the next day i worked the whole day in takt again and was almost done
with the piece...here it is on the night of the second day..

...in the night i went to visit my old flatmate sarah and
her boyfriend patrick and their little son robin.. robin convinced me
to stay for the night so the next day so in the morning we took pictures together:




its amazing.. he said he wanted to take picures of light.. so i did the first one that
has the disco mirror ball in it.. the other one robin took himself.. it was so amazing
to see how unintentionally and through playing around with the flash he had actually
created exactly what he said he wanted to photograph.....

the next day i finished the piece of and merete came to berlin..
this is the piece, ready before the exhibiton.. pictures taken by merete.

you can see the sensor on the shelf, together with the laptop and the transmitter.
closer by are the headphones hanging next to a sheet of paper that had a
brief explanation written on it. you can also see on the floor that i had
an area defined that people could use to wander throught he four individual
soundscapes that i had composed for the installtion.

this is a closer view of the shelf and the components that partially
make up "town country house - a virtually real soundwalk" ..


and another one:


i was overwhelmed by the amount of people who turned up... this
is a picure taken shortly after peak time:


...lots of friends turned up.. wonderful surprises.. this is rainer heesch,
who i lived with in england... i had not seen him since 3 years..


and this is me with uli bentele, who i went to school with from 1st til
7th grade and who i had not seen since 1999..


me and betty, who i stayed with on thursday, who i have known
for 10 years at least..

after all this self-related issues.. here is an image of the piece of
miguel and stefan.. a device that listens to your breath and
controls a database of sounds, all related to sex, masturbation and
intercourse..


and last but not least some impressions from people listening to the piece:




on the last image you see elke, who together with her boyfriend
phillipe put merete and me up for the night : )

the piece is still up until the 31st of march.. you can drop by takt
gallery every thursday and sunday.. have a listen and tell me what
you think .. : )


thanks blog for listening and watching !!!

alexandre

Opening at takt.

i cant believe.. its done. i call the piece "town country house - a virtually
real soundwalk" .. it came to me while working in the workshop in coudraystr..
the presentation was ace and it gave me great confidence that robin minard
really liked the piece and said i should not worry.. then i went to berlin on thursday to install the piece. i thought it would take little time but actually it was a lot more time consuming
than i thought. when it was done i felt quite good. i also proved mzself right by giving myself
enough time that it is important to make sure ou have enough time when you set something
up that has to work and look right... tomorrow i shall post some lovely images of the different
stages and also some pictures of the piece in action and the opening itself.. this was a little
crazy for me, since all of a sudden i met people that i hadnt seen in years !! anyways.. i shall
leave you with me as a happy man for now.. this picture was taken by merete in front of
the gallery just after i finished the piece and we went out for a meal

.. thanks for listening, blog !
alexandre

A day in Q3

these are some images of today:


this was the initial set up.. you can see the soundbeam sensor and on the floor is the soundbeam box and the laptop and further back is the transmitter for the wireless headphones..



this is the frontal view.. same stuff ..



hello.. this is me checking with headphones on .. "merete can you see me ?"



in the end i rearranged everything for a presentation tomorrow.. i will show the piece to colleges at the colloqium of composers at the Studio for Electroacoustic Music Weimar..



...and a final close up of the sensor ... you cant see him on these
images , but thanks a lot to hanns holger rutz for being a genius on implementing
more realistic algorithms in this installation and for generally
having a very productive day ... thanks for watching, blog !!!!

alexandre