binauralmedia.org

Binaural U.S. Tour 2009
Lectures | Workshops | Concerts
January, 21st – February, 17th 2009

Between January, 21st and February, 17th 2009, Binaural founder and sound artist Rui Costa and the sound/video artist Maile Colbert will conduct a series of lectures, workshops and concerts hosted by US universities and cultural organizations. Through this tour, Binaural seeks to share with artists, students and communities from across Atlantic the experience of an immersive and committed site-specific art practice and of creative interaction with rural communities. A particular focus will be given to the different possibilities of working with sound in a site-specific manner.

As part of the lectures, some excerpts of works developed in Nodar will be presented, by such sound / video artists as Martin Clarke & Alicja Rogalska, Vered Dror, Maile Colbert, John Grzinich, Aaron Ximm, Pablo Rega & Oscar de Paz, Jurate Jarulyte Weiss, o.blaat, Pali Meursault, Viv Corringham, Rui Costa & Manuela Barile, Suzanne Caines, Christine Niehoff and Xesús Valle.

Full Program:

Wed, Jan. 21st – 8.00 pm
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA
http://www.massart.edu/
Screening and Lecture

Sat, Jan. 25th – 9.00 pm
Share NYC, NY
http://www.share.dj/
Concert by Maile Colbert and Rui Costa: “The Future Memory Project”

Wed, Jan. 28th – 9.00 pm
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY
http://www.hallwalls.org/
Concert by Maile Colbert (“Transit”) and Rui Costa (“The Future Memory Project”)

Thu, Jan. 29th – 3:15 pm
State University of New York, Buffalo, NY
http://www.buffalo.edu/
Screening, Lecture and Workshop

Mon, Feb. 2nd – 4.30 pm
State University of New York, Binghamton, NY
http://www.binghamton.edu/
Lecture and Workshop

Thu, Feb. 12th – 8.00 pm
Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, CA
http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org/
Screening and Lecture

Sat, Feb. 14th – 4.00 pm
Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, CA
http://www.echoparkfilmcenter.org/
Workshop

Sun, Feb. 15th – 7.00 pm
Los Angeles Film Forum, Los Angeles, CA
http://lafilmforum.wordpress.com/
Screening and Lecture

Tue, Feb. 17th – 7.00 pm
California Institute for the Arts, Valencia, CA
http://www.calarts.edu/
Screening and Lecture

Binaural in partnership with Teatro Viriato presents:

Sound Objects Workshop
Directed by Antonio Mainenti (Italy)

Dates: January, 15th, 16th and 17th 2009
Venue:  Teatro Viriato
Largo Mouzinho de Albuquerque,  Viseu (PT)

Cost per person: 30 euros
Max. number of attendees: 20
Min. number of attendees: 7
To register: on Teatro Viriato’s ticket office until January, 13th (between 1.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m.)
Information:  Tel. +351 91 895 18 57

Sound is produced everywhere. A small corner, a hole, a valley are sufficient to generate sound richness. This workshop seeks the reappropriation of hidden sounds, the ones kept in the most unlikely spaces of our lives. Throughout the workshop, both natural materials and daily-life objects will be used in such a way that, after being transformed, they can produce unique sound universes, musical or not.

Workshops’s structure:

1. Historical perspective on the use of sound objects (John Cage, Harry Partch, Fluxus, Fred Frith Reith Rowe, Akio Suzuki, Max Eastley, etc.). Samples of sound works.
2. Basic notions of physics-acoustics. Research on the acoustical properties of different materials.
3. Research and cataloguing of natural and artificial sounds. The sounds of natural elements (water, rock, stone, sand, air, plant, trunk, leaf, etc.) and of different materials (glass, wood, metal, plastic, etc.), in its different forms, dimensions and combinations.
4. Sound objects construction, seeking inspiration in the sounds previously collected and analyzed.
5. Collective composition following a graphical notation system and making use of different sound objects as instruments. Some of the sound objects will have musical possibilities; others will have non-musical purpose or will be used to generate unconscious or random sounds.
6. Performance-installation, presenting the collective composition and the spatial disposition of the previously built sound objects.

Any person interested in sound research, and in experimental artistic practice can participate in the workshop.

The workshop duration is 16 hours (4 hours on both Jan 15th and Jan 16th, and 8 hours on Saturday, Jan 17th)

For additional information, click here.

A special radio show about Nodar Artist Residency Center and its artists:

Radio FRO, Linz (Austria)
Author: Wolfgang Dorninger

During his presence in Nodar, the Austrian sound artist Wolgang Dorninger made a 2 hour show to Radio FRO, Linz where he interviewed some of the resident artists and Luís Costa from Binaural. The interviews where intercalated with sounds from artists who stayed at Nodar Artist Residency Center.

Here is the podcast from that radio show (broadcasted on October, 15th 2008):

 

 Nodar @ Radio FRO, Linz #1: Play Now | Download

 

 Nodar @ Radio FRO, Linz #2: Play Now | Download

Last November, 21st 2008, the Italian composer and Binaural member Antonio Mainenti presented himself to Portuguese audiences during a concert at Lugar do Capitão (Viseu). His powerful mix of looped monodic chantings, field recordings, Sicilian jaws harp and plenty of other self-built instruments and sound objects really impressed the crowd who attended this special event.

Here are three tracks (along with some photos) from that concert:

 

 Antonio Mainenti: Matri chi aviti i figghi a la batia: Play Now | Download

 

 Antonio Mainenti: Lu libbru di l'infami: Play Now | Download

 

 Antonio Mainenti: Sta bedda libbirta: Play Now | Download

Human Field Recordings
A performance by Manuela Barile
Das Kleine Field Recordings Festival, Berlin
November, 12th 2008

“Some people go out with very expensive equipment… and they sit for hours to record… and they put it on another equipment… and then it goes into the computer… and then it goes on a CD… and then it goes into a sound system. But we also use our ears to listen… and if you are gifted with the voice, you use the voice to reproduce those things that you hear…”

Rinus Van Alebeek

 

 Manuela Barile @ DKFRF, Berlin: Play Now | Download

Photos by Kurt Korthals

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