binauralmedia.org

Nodar Artist Residency Center and Teatro Viriato present:

Audio Installation
Works by Maksims Shentelevs, Aaron Ximm, Pali Meursault and John Grzinich
From 01 November to 14 December 08
1.00 p.m. – 7.00  p.m. and evenings in case of shows
Viriato Theatre’s Foyer

Viriato Teatro Municipal
Largo Mouzinho de Albuquerque
3511 901 Viseu
Portugal

This installation includes four works by sound artists Maksims Shentelevs (Latvia), Aaron Ximm (US), Pali Meursault (France) and John Grzinich (US / Estonia). All of them were developed at Nodar Artist Residency Center (Portugal), a rural media arts working and living space. These pieces reflect different esthetic and technical approaches towards Nodar’s sonic environment, ranging from pure field recordings, to field mixing, field improvisation and electroacoustic composition.

Nodar Artist Residency Center, run by the artistic collective Binauralmedia, has positioned itself in the forefront of the international reflection and praxis concerning the use of environmental sounds, having been hosted since 2006 around twenty of the most active sound artists.

Sound works:

Maksims Shentelevs: “Nodar Soundscape Mapping”

A sound project of field recording and mixing. Field mixing as a method opens up possibilities of learning space by inductive decomposing it into complement sonorous parts and selective recomposing of soundscape. Thus field mix resembles a cartographical approach to soundscape with the distinctive quality of intensive mapping expanded rather within determined territory than covering extensive vastness. In this case reconstructed soundscape represents map or a schema of a personal experience rather than display of objectivity. Despite its subjectivity, field mix as a documentation of research allows public access to hidden parts of soundscapes as a topographical map allows to navigate in expanse of terrain.

http://www.audiot.lv

Aaron Ximm: “As Paredes Têm Ouvidos” (“The Walls Have Ears”)

The project started from the perception of how difficult is for a foreign artist to access the sound from inside the houses, where at least half of the real life of Nodar happens, and also from the importance of the slate, the local stone, for building, walls and houses and the bridge and the terraces. Having these ideas in mind, Aaron Ximm developed a sound project that reflected on the interior / exterior dialectics. By putting microphones inside the Nodar walls, Aaron sought to capture how things would sound if we could be inside the walls, what they capture and keep, and not hear what gets away or is stopped by them.

http://www.quietamerican.org

Pali Meursault: “Walk[s]”

« Walk[s] » is a project of sound creation and also the research for a form of musical writing, through the meeting with an environment. This research used the techniques of field-recording, as well as improvisation with found objects, and mainly: walking exploration and encounters. All of this carried out with an extended idea of what an environment is, by questioning the sonorous specificities of space, as well as its geographical, temporal, social or political datum.

http://www.palimeursault.net

John Grzinich: “Nodar Flowlines”

A sonic survey of the landscape around Nodar through a series of site-specific recording sessions. In particular were compared and contrasted the geographic lines caused by the natural water flows towards the river at the bottom of the valley versus the man-made aqueduct that transverses the vertical lines and brings water into the village. Both of these phenomena actually rely on natural forces yet one was created for a specific purpose for the local inhabitants. The base sound material relies on the use of ambient sounds, found objects, (natural and man-made materials), and human intervention (improvisation and performance).

http://maaheli.ee/

Nodar Artist Residency Center (S. Pedro do Sul, PT) present:

Noid (Austria) + guests *
Wolfgang Dorninger (Austria)
Andrea Brandão (Portugal)
Duncan Whitley (Great Britain)

*Manuela Barile, Rui Costa, Antonio Mainenti, Manuel Paiva and José do Raso

Fri. 17 Out | 7.00 p.m.
Audiovisual conference at the Piaget Institute (Viseu)
Nodar’s resident artists present their artistic background

Sat. 18 Out | 4.00 p.m.
Audio Installation on the banks fo the river Paiva (Nodar)
Wolfgang Dorninger live-mixes an audio piece based on field recordings made in the Nodar area

Sat. 25 Out | 3.00 p.m.
Presentation of art projects developed in residency (Nodar)

Sun. 26 Out | 2.00 p.m.
Audiovisual Presentation at G.D. Parada’s Stadium (Parada de Ester, Castro Daire)
Duncan Whitley presents a four channel audio work and a video, as a result of a sound project developed about a small amateur football club in the Nodar area.

Events’ poster:

“Transit”
A multi-media project by Paul Bradley and Maile Colbert

Friday, October 10th, 2008 – 10.00pm
“O Século” Cultural Center (Lisbon)

MULTI-CHANNEL AUDIOVISUAL PERFORMANCE

TRANSIT
the room is dark
the eyes strain to focus
a lack of sight is said to sharpen hearing, invoking a more conscious listening

the sound, somewhere between music and memory
provoking the state right before sleep
when the mind wanders through it’s past.

like staring into the dark as a child
the eyes suddenly snap focus
straining to find if what they thought they saw was actually there.

slowly
in and out like breath
images take form around you.

out of the corner of your eye
like night swimming bubbles rising to the surface of a moonlit lake
dreamy figures start to take shape

moving in and out of the space around you
weaving with the sound.

TRANSIT is a 45 minute environment created to immerse the viewer in a space just out of recognition and suspending them in this state to better experience and think about the places in-between. In-between sleep and wakefulness. In-between memory and emotion. In-between the inhale and exhale, where snatches of something almost recognizable appear and dissolve, distorted through our altered consciousness.

A multi-channel audiovisual installation that in its ideal showing will see the audience surrounded by four large projection screens and eight speakers.

“Transit” has the support of Binaural in production and promotion and Maile Colbert is a member artist of Binaural.

Maile Colbert and Rui Costa from Binaural will direct on September, 27th 2008 a field recordings workshop (”Tuning your ears and composing the world“) during ANAMNESIS 08, a meeting dedicated to cinema, sound and oral tradition to be held in a rural area near Vimioso, on the northeastern part of Portugal.

This workshop is part of a large-scale educational project that Binaural recently set up and that includes a range of workshops for professionals (in the areas of experimental sound, video and performance) and laboratories for children and youngsters living in rural areas (field recordings, sound objects, etc.).

Click here for the full program of ANAMNESIS (in pdf):

Sound Walk @ Musica Viva 2008

Dates: from 20 to 27 Setember 08 (throughout the day)
Typology: Electroacoustic walk (pedestrian walk)
Location: Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon, Portugal)
Free admission

A sound piece composed by the Binaural artists Maile Colbert and Rui Costa, entitled “Day of Anger - Act 3″, was chosen to be part of an electroacoustic walk organized within the context of Musica Viva 08, a festival organized by Miso Music Portugal.

Following a worldwide invitation to electroacoustic composers, Sound Walk is a collective and unique sound installation that follows the visitors inside Centro Cultural de Belém: 142 pieces from 28 countries, from which 36 were chosen to be part of Sound Walk 2008.

To listen to the sound piece:

 

 Maile Colbert & Rui Costa: Day of Anger Act 3: Play Now | Download

Pali Meursault’s Universinternational label announces the realease of “Dérives” a compilation CD which includes a sound piece by Binaural’s Rui Costa. Pali Meursault was an artist-in-residency during June 08 at Binaural’s guest studio in Nodar.

Here is the info from the press release:

First, there was the desire of an ambitious record, then to work with these artists, to bring them together. Unavoidably, a rule had to be set, and everybody had enough taste to bend it somewhat.

Francisco López, jgrzinich+murmer, Rui Costa, Pali Meursault, Tô, Maksims Shentelevs and Helena Gough have given us pieces built from an active listening of their own environment.

Beyond a gallery of subjective pictures of the sound landscape, something different emerged: maybe the very specific way an ear plugs to the world, and makes the energy flow between the outside and the inside.

Dérives’ beautiful cover design:

Binaural and Associação Cultural de Nodar present:

4 Artists by the Paiva river
16 August 08 | 6.00 p.m.
Nodar Artist Residency Center
Nodar, S. Pedro do Sul (Portugal)

A multidisciplinary event in a rural context, organized within the scope of the Nodar Artist Residency Program. Four projects will be presented in several locations on the village and on its surroundings, forming both a spatial and an artistic itinerary through several contemporary expressions, namely sound art, performance, land art, video art and multimedia installation.

Art Projects to be presented:

Viv Corringham (UK)
“Shadow Walks”
Sound Art, Vocal Performance

A sound project with the participation of local inhabitants. The artist asked for volunteers to take her on their “special” walk, a walk that has been repeated many times and has distinct meaning or significance for that person. An initial walk with the person along their selected route, in which their conversations were recorded, was followed by the artist’s solo walk in which she attempted to sense her previous companion’s traces on the walk and to make these audible through her own improvised singing in the location.

Lezli Rubin-Kunda (Israel)
“Marking Stones”
Performance, Visual Arts

The artist wanders through the village, where the local slate stone is used to build walls, houses, pave roads, mark boundaries. She responds to the rocks at different sites by marking incising, drawing onto them, as well as making rubbings from them. A video and a set of photos will document her spontaneous interactions at each site. And for the open house, a live performance will take place along the stone roadway.

Jurate Jarulyte Weiss (Lithuania)
“Dream Objects”
Land Art

Behind every real object there is a dream object” (J. Baudrillard, “The System of Object”). Do we try to adjust our imagination to the real object or a situation? Then, how do our “dream objects” interact with new “real objects” or situations? The project intends to look for a natural and harmonious interaction with a local place and to create some extraordinary “dream like” situation.

Francisco Janes (Portugal)
“Interior”
Mixed-Media Installation

The project was structured around a hike along the river Paiva, from Nodar to the source in Carapito, Moimenta da Beira. Sounds, photos and video were recorded in Nodar and during the walk and will be presented as a mixed-media installation. The elements captured by the artist reflect a subjective vision of the relationship between a body and a landscape as well as the contingency and memory of a trip made against the flow, to the “interior” of a river.

On June, 9th 2008, during an artist residency at Nodar, two of the resident artists (french sound artists Pali Meursault and Cédric Anglaret) joined Binaural’s Rui Costa, Manuela Barile and Maile Colbert in a spontaneous collective improvisation of field recodings, electronic manipulations, sound objects and voice. This one-off collective was later known as “Portal do Inferno Ensemble”, as an homage to a magnificent place in the Nodar area.

Here is the result of that night’s improvisation:

 

 Portal do Inferno Ensemble @ Nodar: Play Now | Download

Binaural announces a retrospective exhibition of 8 video works created under the Nodar Artist Residency Program. The exhibition, co-organized with Cine Clube de Viseu, happens between July, 11th and August, 31st at the Grão Vasco Museum, located in Viseu (40 km away from Nodar).

The videos will be presented in two modules, that reflect two possible aesthetic approaches to the place: “Nodar: Visions of Sound” presents 4 works that use audio field recordings from Nodar as a means of composing soundscapes; “Nodar: Visions of Space and People” presents 4 works that establish an expressive interaction with the local landscape or communities.

The Grão Vasco museum is a Portuguese state monument and is named after one of the most important Portuguese painters of the Renaissance, Vasco Fernandes (also known as the Grão Vasco), who lived and worked in Viseu. The museum, founded in 1916, occupies the building of the old Seminary, was built in the late 16th century in Mannerist style, and had its interior recently rebuilt by the famous Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura.

Exhibition program:

Nodar: Visions of Sound
2.00 p.m. - 4.00 p.m.
Videos by John Grzinich (USA/Estonia), Xesús Valle (Spain), Pali Meursault (France), and Martin Clarke / Alicja Rogalska (UK/Poland)

Nodar: Visions of Space and People
4.00 p.m. - 6 p.m.
Videos by Maile Colbert (USA), Suzanne Caines (Canada), Christine Niehoff (Germany) and Evelyn Müürsepp (Estonia)

To read the exhibition flyer (in Portuguese), click here.

John Grzinich produced a framework afield radio show based on some of his recordings made in Nodar, during an artist residency in April 08. This show was broadcasted live on Resonance FM in London on June 8th, 08.

/*framework*/ - phonography / field recording; contextual and decontextualized sound activity
presented by patrick mcginley

/*framework*/ broadcasts sundays on *resonance104.4fm* in London (UK) or worldwide on http://www.resonancefm.com from 10-11 p.m. GMT

To listen to the radio show:

 

 John Grzinich: Nodar sounds @ Framework: Play Now | Download