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