[Nodar003] Three Years In Nodar Context-Specific Art Practices in Rural Portugal 315 pages full color catalogue Accompanying double CD with 20 sound compositions made in Nodar Price: 25 Euros + postage For orders, please contact info@binauralmedia.org The catalog includes essays, critical texts, field diaries, photographs and drawings of more than 40 artists who developed art [...]

Nodar: Collective Sound Installation Works by Maksims Shentelevs (LV), Aaron Ximm (US), Pali Meursault (FR) and John Grzinich (US) Estúdio Performas, Aveiro (PT) February, 17th – 27th 2010 This installation was developed at Nodar Artist Residency Center (Portugal) and reflects different esthetic and technical approaches towards Nodar’s sonic environment, ranging from pure field recordings, to [...]

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/

Fronte[i]ras 07 – I International Meeting of Transdisciplinary Arts, a collaborative event organized by Binaural and Associação Cultural de Nodar (Portugal) and Alg-a (Spain), will end its program with a final collective exhibition of ten art pieces related to the theme of borders that were created during two simultaneous residencies, one in the rural community of Nodar (Portugal) and another in San Simón Island (Galicia, Spain).

The artists and pieces included in the exhibition are the following:

Vered Dror (Israel) – Souvenirs
Maria Idília Martins (Portugal, living in Venezuela) – Zapatos de Mi pueblo
Amaya González Reyes (Galicia, Spain) – Transgresión
António Pedro (Portugal) – Eu só quero ser (aquilo que sou)
Maksims Shentelevs (Latvia) – Soundscape Mapping
Carlos Suárez (Galicia, Spain) – A morte como Fronteira
Richard Lerman (USA) – Border / Algae / Acqua
Azul Blaseotto (Argentina) – Ardiente Árbol Genealógico
Leila Durán & Arturo Reboiras (Galicia, Spain) – Tempo Linear. Tempo Cíclico
Mona Higuchi (USA) – Ghost Planes

The exhibition will be open in the Rural Art Museum and Community Center of Carvalhais (S. Pedro do Sul, Portugal) between December 15th, 2007 and January 31st, 2008, and was installed in collaboration with students and teachers from the local crafts school, being the first time that these students (most of them with a rural background) had contact with contemporary art pieces.

Visits to the exhibition should be booked beforehand by calling to +351 918 951 857 or +351 916 432 585 or by sending an email to fronteiras07@cps-carvalhais.com

The Community Center of Carvalhais:

The Rural Art Museum of Carvalhais:

The exhibition poster (click on photo to enlarge image):

The Latvian sound artist Maksims Shentelevs presented during Fronte[i]ras 07 a project that used recordings of mixed sounds made in specific acoustic environments of Nodar (water tanks, river banks, tree branches).

During the concert in Barcelos he created a composition using each of the three sound environments along with several percussion and string instruments (two of them built by the artist in Nodar, string instruments using burnt wood from a huge fire that almost destroyed the village two years ago).

Here is the audio from Maksims Shentelevs’ concert at the Municipal Library of Barcelos’ Auditorium (September, 29th 2007):

Maksims Shentelevs @ Fronte[i]ras 07 Play Now

Fronte[i]ras 07 – 1st International Meeting of Transdisciplinary Arts was a wonderful experience for us. Along with the variety of artistic and theoretical aspects related to the issue of borders that were discussed and presented, the most important that happened was the opportunity to share experiences with such wonderful people as António Pedro, Maksims Shentelevs, Maria Idília Martins, Amaya González, Vered Dror, Bojana Bauer, Azul Blaseotto, Richard Lerman, Mona Higuchi, Arturo Reboiras, Leila Durán and Carlos Suárez (and the conference speakers, not to mention our dear galician co-organizers from Alg-a).

Below is a selection of the photos taken during the meeting:

The full photo set: