The final outcome of the Tramontana project will consist in hundreds of sound and video recordings on different aspects of the territories’ local memory and in the conception and sharing of a body of methodological documentation and best practices in the areas of media archival, sound and video recording techinques etc. All information will be available online in the project site and in individual sites of the several archives, including the Memory Archive of Lafões (Portugal) coordinated by Binaural / Nodar.

Binaural / Nodar and Associação de Artesãos de São Pedro do Sul (Artisans Cooperative of São Pedro do Sul, PT) announce a partnership to host international artist residencies in contemporary textile art at the Estação de Artes e Sabores building (former railway station of São Pedro do Sul).

All textile artists may apply, being favoured those with a portfolio of contemporary textile art works, with a personal creative language and who wish to immerse in a mountainous region with a rich ancestral culture. The residencies are designed to combine the themes of the local culture (fauna, flora, agriculture, colors, textures, architectural heritage, intangible heritage, etc.) with a sense of innovative research in concepts, shapes, materials and colors, helping to put the region as a place for innovation in the craft arts.

The residences have a duration of three weeks and a cost of 2.000 Euros, including food, accommodation, access to looms, learning of the local weaving techniques, materials required for the works, visits to places of interest in the region. Half of the amount is to be transferred to the day preceding the beginning of the residency and the second half by the end of the second week of the residency.

The final works are the sole property of the artists, having the organization the right to use photographic and videographic images of the artists and their works, only for promotion purposes.

Optionally, if the artist so wishes, the organization can sell the textile works at its building, with 70% of the sale amount being transferred to the artist.

June 08-09-10, 2012 | 9:30 to 18:00

Cellino Attanasio (province of Teramo, Abbruzzo Region, Italy)

Coordination Luis Costa featuring Manuela Barile

Registration: gianfrancospitilli@gmail.com

Additional Information: www.bambun.webnode.com

Our smallest gesture induces sounds and our entire social life involves creating a sound framework, made of voices, subjects, tools, activities, etc. In a sense it is possible to note that sound is a valuable social tool because of the degree of detail and specificity it can give to the knowledge of communities and their daily interactions and because of the positive impact sound has on identity processes and self-esteem of social groups. Today, the increasing importance given to aspects of individual or collective memory requires new methodologies that deal specifically with the use of sound in the capture, documentation and expression of memory.

This seminar aims to develop methodologies for the acquisition of skills in educational work (in a school context or not) using sound as a valuable tool to the discovery of a territory and its communities, at the same time incorporating a multidisciplinary sense by the use of tools from different scientific areas / techniques.

The seminar “Educazione al Paesaggio Sonoro” is coordinated by Binaural / Nodar and is integrated in the “L’Osso che Canta” (“The Bone that Sings”) symposium organized by the Italian organization Bambun and devoted to ethnomusicology, anthropology and sound in rural areas.

Binaural / Nodar is currently preparing a strategic partnership with the department of architecture at the Catholic University of Viseu, which will be developed in two complementary fields:

• Co-organization of a social project of rehabilitation of the architectural heritage of the traditional villages, entitled “Terra Amada” (“Beloved Land”), which will have the involvement of local communities, teachers and students of architecture, of the Viseu diocesys, sponsor materials construction, etc..
• Co-organization of a workshop that will mark the opening of the academic year 2012-2013. This workshop, to be attended by all students of the architecture course, will consist in a two-day fieldwork program for the students to later present models, posters and slide presentations with new ideas for both existing and new buildings in the rural villages of Gralheira Mountain Range.

In this regard, and in the context of the 6th Open House, Binaural / Nodar will present on June 5 at 10:30 a multimedia lecture on its activities and will participate in the presentation of the two mentioned initiatives, along with the director and vice-director of the architecture department; Architects Antonio Carvalho and Fernando Goncalves.

The Sound of the Sacred in Rural Communities

Program of Creative Labs in Sound Art and Experimental Research for 2013

Call Open until September 30th, 2012

“We were always friends. But as happens with between family members or between friends, our relationship was getting worn out. [...] We didn’t explain you our things. [...] We didn’t have you as students, friends, and talkers. [...] And we also went through dubious paths, where art and beauty, and – what is worse to us – the worship of God – weren’t always served well. Let’s remake the peace? “

(Pope Paul VI, Speech to Artists, 10-12).

1. Creative proposal

The sacred is a central element of the rural communities of the Gralheira mountain range, São Pedro do Sul (PT). The relationship between rural daily life and sacred practices is so close and real that it is impossible to think about these communities apart from the religious themes. Despite the accelerated transformation of these rural areas, there remains a strong support by the inhabitants towards religion, not only the older but also the younger ones, which may surprise many people given the increasing secularism of contemporary societies. It is therefore useful to analyze the particular aspects of religion in these rural communities and the reasons why it continues to deserve such high levels of adherence.

Religion is clearly a major element of social cohesion in rural mountain communities, where ancient ways of living and feeling remain vivid, which are passed on from parents to children, thus ensuring a very genuine balance, anthropologically interesting, between a contemporary way of life and the permanence of a set of ancient beliefs and practices that give a sense of continuity over time (historical, familiar, personal) and reinforce the sense of belonging to a place. In particular, religion intertwines their lives (the masses, the social work, catechesis, religious heritage, the festivals that mark the seasonal cycles, celebrations of life and death, etc..) that it becomes a crucial element for the study of the rural communities of the Gralheira mountain range.

As the religious subject is very contaminated by simplistic debates and irreducible positions, it seems to us that it’s necessary to convoke free-spirited and multi-faceted visions about it. On the other hand, being the opening to the “other”, to the “unknown” one of the primary focuses of Binaural/Nodar’s, activities in order to build bridges between the world of globalized contemporary art and contexts that are not normally dealt with through a first-hand experience, we believe it’s very relevant the inclusion of this subject in the artistic research to be developed in our region.

The program of creative labs in sound art and experimental research for 2013 will precisely have as theme the rich religious phonosphere found in the rural villages of the Gralheira mountain range, within a framework of promoting an open and frank dialogue with local religious institutions and in line with the theological, liturgical and cultural changes initiated after World War II with the Second Vatican Council and more recently addressed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI through regular dialogues with artists and composers.

2. Open Call

a) The following are the specific themes that may be the subject of artistic projects and experimental researches:

1. Rural hagiography: Legends of local saints and miracles.
2. Parish Stories: Memory of the local historical relationship with religion.
3. Religion, gender and generational issues.
4. Built Religious Heritage: Churches, chapels, sanctuaries, shrines and cemeteries.
5. Object religious heritage: garments, crosses, litters, chalices, books, etc..
6. Local religious musical heritage.
7. Sacred rites: Celebrations, Masses, weddings, baptisms and funerals.
8. Religious phonosphere in the landscape: Bell tolls, chants, processions, fireworks.
9. The sacred in the private sphere: Prayers and rosaries, religious iconography in the rural house.
10. Religion and the agricultural cycles.

b) In the selection process the following types of artistic works and scientific researches will be privileged:

1. Electroacoustic / vocal / sound art compositions of religious nature that may include specific elements such as local instruments, voices or church organs and may be broadcast via the audio systems of the local churches, during masses, etc.
2. Permanent sound sculptures for churches, chapels and other religious spaces.
3. Radio works from elements of the local religious and anthropological history.
4. Free improvisation and performance works for/from the local religious phonosphere.
5. Experimental researches in anthropology, theology, history, architecture, philosophy, etc.

c) The artistic creation and experimental research labs will be developed in two phases, in April and October 2013 (each artist will develop his/her project during three weeks in only one of the mentioned periods).

d) Applications are accepted only if sent by September 30th, 2012, exclusively using the online application form:

http://www.binauralmedia.org/news/en/artist-residency/application-form

e) For additional inquiries, please write to Manuela Barile (manuela@binauralmedia.org) or Rui Costa (rui@binauralmedia.org).

f) For additional information on the conditions of the residency, please refer to Binaural/Nodar’s website:

http://www.binauralmedia.org/news/en/artist-residency/the-residency.

Artistic creation residencies >  Experimental architecture residencies > media and sound installations in architectural structures >  Field meetings with artists, architects and anthropologists > Community driven activities > Educational activities > Conferences

Participants:

Artists in residence:

James Wyness (UK)
Antonio Della Marina (IT)
Alessandra Zucchi (IT)
Luís Costa (PT)
Lisa Premke (DE)
Perri Lynch (U.S.)
Johanna Hällsten (SE/UK)
Manuela Barile (IT/EN)
UVBA Collective (PT)

Architects in residence:

Maria Carlos Valverde (PT)
Ana Costa (PT)
Zoraima de Figueiredo (PT)
Pedro Silva (PT)
Silvia Jorge (PT)

Anthropologist in residence:

Ana Saraiva (PT)

Credits:

Production: Binaural / Nodar
Funded by the Government of Portugal | Secretary of State for Culture | Director General of the Arts

General Coordination: Luís Costa
Artistic Director: Manuela Barile
Architecture Coordinator:  Maria Carlos Valverde
Production Support: Carina Martins

Sound and space form an important pair in our everyday environment: no sound exists outside of space and no space is really silent. Sound and space mutually reinforce one another in our perception, the qualities of a space affect how we perceive the sound and a sound affects how we perceive space. In short, space and sound are inseparable in our experience of what is to exist in the world.

Similarly, there is clear evidence of the importance of sound in ancient sacred sites, which have been documented by anthropologists. The sounds were probably an important part of rituals, by the way they affected the human body and brain function. Many of the ancient holy sites were built in stone, which, by means of their geological qualities or disposition in space, generated particular acoustic effects of reverberation or echo. These types of phenomena are studied in the field of acoustic archeology.

It is fair to say that the specific case of rural areas highlights the profound connection between landscape, architecture and sound. On the one hand, the countryside is largely an anthropological and architectural landscape, transformed by a myriad of utilitarian constructions, many of them centuries-old: grain mills, olive oil mills, irrigation canals, houses, threshing floor, wells, community laundry places, granaries, mines, stone walls, chapels, churches, bandstands, streets, alleys, squares, farmlands, roads, etc.. Moreover, many of the rural buildings have an acoustic specificity, so it is possible to recognize the architectural typology by listening to these places.

SOUND AND RURAL ARCHITECTURE FESTIVAL will explore possible interactions between landscape, architecture and sound in the rural context of the Gralheira Mountain Range, municipality of São Pedro do Sul (Portugal). The festival will host artistic projects that will acoustically “activate”  different types of rural buildings, through the creation of installations and sound sculptures in specific context, in parallel with experimental architecture projects and anthropological field work, that will all together help to understand aspects of specificity and identity associated with the built environment, and will speculate on potential uses for the local rural architecture, much of it in a state of abandonment.

To read full programme:

Luís Costa, coordinator of Binaural/Nodar, will give a conference at the University of Aveiro entitled “The Sound Waves of the Rual World and the Sensorial Enrichment of the Tourist Experience”, organized by the Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences . This conference will consist of a general presentation of Binaural/Nodar’s cultural project in media arts, developed in the Gralheira Mountain Range – São Pedro do Sul municipality, with special emphasis on the projects related with the sonic experience of the territory and its potential in the enrichment of the tourist experience.

March 12 – April 19, 2012
11h00 – 22h00, Monday to Friday

Normal (??Cultural Intervention Space)
University of Coruña
Paseo de Ronda 47, 15011 A Coruña (Galicia, Spain)

http://www.nossomosson.org


Credits:
Commissioner: Alg-a.org Cultural Association
Organization: Alg-a + Normal
Production: Normal
Graphic Design: Normal + Escoitar.org
Support: University of Coruña


Participating Organizations:
Alg-a
Binaural / Nodar
Normal
Escoitar.org
Parto


List of artists and works to exhibit:
Isaac Cordal: Triptique
Luis Costa/Manuela Barile: A Esposa
Servando Barreiro: Attitudes
Igmig: Monos electrónicos
Berio Molina: Augmented Sound
Parto: Aquófono Bambú
Escoitar.org: Macrófono


Binaural / Nodar piece:

“In Memoriam Gente Nostrae”
Series of installations commissioned by Luis Costa

“In Memoriam Gente Nostrae # 1: A Esposa”
Sound / Visual / Object Installation by Manuela Barile
2012

“In Memoriam Gente Nostrae” (“In Memory of Our People”) is a series of sound installations that binds directly to the family history of Binaural / Nodar’s board members, more precisely to rural villages located in the mountain range of Gralheira (São Pedro do Sul municipality, Portugal) where ancestors up to the sixth generation in the late eighteenth Century lived.

This series of installations is part of a set of anthropological surveys and sound field recording in villages such as Nodar, Sequeiros, Meã, Sa, Rompecilha, São Martinho das Moitas, Parada de Ester, Moimenta and Cabril, all representing different aspects of the spatio-temporal memory of a family, what could be called micro sound history.

The first piece in the series entitled “A Esposa” (“The Bride” ) is a sound, visual and object installation by Manuela Barile, built upon a reflection on the importance of marriage in ancient rural contexts, particularly the rites of passage of the day of ceremony in which the bride leaves for ever the house where she was born and raised, toward an uncertain future where nothing will be as before. “A Esposa” was based on a series of interviews with women in the family living in the village of Sequeiros.

Duration: 15 hours, 0.6 credits for teachers in the 2nd and 3rd cycle and secondary education

Space and sound are inseparable in our experience of what is there in the world. The concept of soundscape emerged in the ’60s, specifically through the need to orient attention to the role of the acoustic context in the understanding of each territory, site etc.. This action aims at developing methods of acquiring skills in working with students for the use of sound as a tool of great value to the discovery of a territory and its communities or an actual physical space (a site or monument, for example), incorporating a multidisciplinary approach in learning the use of tools from different scientific areas / techniques (in the areas of history, citizenship, environment, art, music, information technology, etc..).

Coordination: Luis Costa (Binaural / Nodar)

Venue: Interpretation Center of Aljubarrota Battle

Registration fee: € 55
Registration through the CIBA Educational Services Tel. 244 480 062 or servico.educativo@fundacao-aljubarrota.pt

Number of participants: minimum 17 participants | maximum 22 participants
Conditions for participation: Participants should bring a laptop for editing sound works

A certificate will be be issued by the Cascais Center for Continuing Education of Teachers

Address:

Interpretation Center of Aljubarrota Battle (CIBA)
Av. Nuno Alvares Pereira, No. 120, São Jorge
2480-062 Calvaria de Cima
Portugal

Retiro da Fraguinha (Candal, São Pedro do Sul, PT)

Between March 29 and April 1 will be held the second edition of an artistic creation laboratory in residence, a partnership with the Department of Communication and Arts at the University of Aveiro.

This second edition is integrated in the Sound and Rural Architecture Festival, to the extent that the field work to be developed by the students will have a conceptual and structural relationship with the different types of rural architecture of the Gralheira mountain range and a selection of these works will be presented in final weekend of the festival between 28 and 29 April 2011.

In parallel with the artistic research of students, Binaural / Nodar will carry out a series of master classes and workshops during the days of residence on some aspects related to the usefulness of sound and work in connection with territories and communities, within a context of contemporary creativity.

The access to this channel is only possible for those who have Portugal Telecom’s MEO subscription TV service (copper or fiber).

For those who don’t have access to this service, it is still possible to watch the same audiovisual contents on our Vimeo page, http://vimeo.com/binauralmedia

Festival programs, here.

About Moroloja:

Moroloja is a reflection about the experience of pain. The experience of pain is experience of loss, of mourning. It is anticipation of the death. Those affected by pain enter into a process of estrangement, moving away from the world because one can never communicate to the others own suffering until the end. Pain is intimate recollection, suffering binds us, holds us in the limit, it exposes our existence to its frailty. Solitude and suffering pervade each other. However, the pain of the individual cannot be separated from the pain of all, the pain of the world. Pain and existence is the only thing. The individual pain, expressed in this video by a mother, a “Demeter-prefica”, therefore refers to a cosmology of pain, to a sense of universal suffering.

HD, 8m05s (2008)
Directed by Manuel Barile
Camera: Luis Costa
Produced by Binaural/Nodar

Open call for subscriptions:
Nodar Summer School 2012: Documenting and reinventing the memory of a territory

A theoretical and practical residency training program
16 – 22 July 2012 / 7 days / 60 hours
Locations: Rural villages of Gralheira Mountain Range, São Pedro do Sul

1. Orientation

Luis Costa (filmmaker / sound educator and president of Binaural/Nodar)
in collaboration with:
Manuela Barile (vocal performer / video artist and artistic director of Binaural/Nodar),
Gianfranco Spitilli (anthropologist / filmmaker and president of Bambun)
Rui Costa (sound artist and editorial director of Binaural/Nodar)

2. Keywords and recipients

Territory, landscape, community, cultural tradition, documentation, intangible heritage, sound and visual anthropology, sound ethnography, sound art, multi-media installation, land art

Recipients: Students / professionals / interest in social sciences, rural studies, earth sciences, contemporary art, sound and image. Regional or local technicians in the field of culture or heritage

3. Applications:
Applications accepted until April 30, 2012 by sending a CV / biography and letter of motivation to info@binauralmedia.org

Communication of the selected entrants: May 15, 2012
Maximum number of entrants: 12

4. Fees

Registration Fee: 300 Euros, including teaching materials, transportation for field trips, accommodation and food. Payment of 50% until 30 May 2012 and payment of the other 50% until the date before the beginning of the course.

5. Objectives and program

This is a time for the rediscovery of territories, its landscapes and heritage resources, both tangible and intangible. It is also a time of production and dissemination, sometimes massive and chaotic, of audiovisual material related to territories. However, there are many misconceptions on the loose about the what could really mean documenting the real using audiovisual media. We therefore need to reflect, with both depth and patience, upon a series of crucial aspects: what areas of knowledge are useful for documenting territories? which sensory aspects may be related to an enhanced experience of a place? What can and should be given back to the documented communities? How to escape immediate impressions and to capture in innovative ways the deep and subtle meanings of the cultural magma of a territory: its archaisms, changes, contaminations, contradictions, endogenous and exogenous social representations?

This 7-day intensive course offers a critical sharing of some of the methodologies and work practices developed since 2006 by Binaural/Nodar in the Gralheira mountain range (Center Portugal), based on a direct and continuous contact with rural communities and in an exploratory approach in terms of concepts, meanings and used media. The following are some of the issues to be addressed:

• The sense of place: philosophy and aesthetics of landscape. Discussion of authors and works.
• History, ethnography, anthropology and art as tools for multidisciplinary work. Discussion of authors and works.
• The ethics of images and sounds: a critical analysis of visual and sound works.
• The authenticity of communities: how to understand and deal with such representations, mythifications and simplifications.
• The multi-sensory approach to a territory as a way of enriching the experience
• Techniques and practicallities of field work. Planning field work, the role of time, mediation and involvement of local partners. Practice of field work in several villages.
• sound techniques applied to the knowledge of territories: practical exercises of sound recording in landscapes, work envirnoments, oral tradition and music, etc..
• Text, photographic and videographic documentation, digital mapping of information and the forms of integration between different media.
• Design of final multi-media multi-sensory installation.
• Talk with the inhabitants of what has been documented and created and its potential usefulness for the community.
• Organization of final documentation and discussion of future dissemination possibilities.

6. Language Course
The course will be taught in English with translation to Portuguese, Spanish and/or Italian when necessary.

Binaural/Nodar travels on February 17, 2012 to University of Aveiro (PT) for a multimedia presentation on its media arts cultural project developed in the rural area of the Gralheira Mountain Range, São Pedro do Sul, for a presentation of the newly published book “Three Years in Nodar – Context-specific art practices in rural Portugal” and for an invitation to the students of the Master in Contemporary Artistic Creation to participate in an artist residency on the subject of rural architecture, to be held between March 29 and April 1, 2012 and that will be part of Sound and Rural Architecture Festival.