EARS HAVE EYES // Episode 14
Airing Wednesday, March 8, 2023 at 8 pm MST
on CJSW 90.9 FM
ECHOLOGY: environments of sound
Akari Komura
Alëna Korolëva
Audrey Lane Cockett
Costas Frantzis
Fulya Uçanok
Jarek Lustych
Matt Rogalsky
Morten Poulsen
Rafael Diogo
Rigoberto Gallardo
Co-hosted by Wayne Garrett & Caitlind Brown, edited by Caitlind.
This month’s episode of EARS HAVE EYES is part of The Hibernation Project.
EARS HAVE EYES is a monthly sound art radio program airing on CJSW 90.9 FM in Calgary/Mohkinstsis. You can listen to podcasts of previous episodes here.
Our March theme is a fusion of ECHO and ECOLOGY, drawing from the lush interspace between sound & environment. Sound artists on today’s program draw from inspiration spanning field recordings, political commentary, sounds of ecosystems in crisis, the voice of rivers, echoes, and experimental instrumentation.
Thanks to the participating artists and our friends at CJSW!
Akari Komura
Akari Komura (b.1996) is a Japanese composer-vocalist whose works center around contemplative engagement with listening and soundmaking. Her interest in the somatic practice and embodied consciousness is central to her creative process. She is currently pursuing Ph.D. in Composition at the University of California San Diego.
In the language of bloom was written with reverence for the native inhabitants and environments in our lives. The work revolves around the idea of fostering and celebrating a harmonious relationship with nature. Prior to playing the piece, each performer has been invited to seek a wildflower and to be in dialogue with it by observing and meditating with its presence. Through musical improvisation, the performers imagine their ways to embody individual collected plants. The performance engages in the energies of the collective plants through the sonic expression of the flowers’ color, shape, aura, and other imaginative qualities.
Alëna Korolëvahe
Alëna Korolëva is an artist and curator, who works with sound, photo and video and curates programs for film festivals. Her work is focused on field recordings, acoustic ecology, soundscape studies and acousmatic composition. Based in Toronto, Canada.
About Echolalia:
“Long-tailed Ducks breed in the high Arctic and migrate south in winter. When they come to Toronto their repetitive calls and responses haunt me from November to March, though their elusive nature makes it very hard to come close and record. As an autistic person I experience echolalia – I repeat random noises mostly internally as a stimming behavior, and found myself obsessed with the humorous tune of my long-tailed neighbours.”
Audrey Lane Cockett
Audrey Lane Cockett is a spoken word poet, filmmaker, soundscape artist, artistic director, educator, and ecologist based in Treaty 7 land, Calgary AB. Their work embodies wild feminist rhetoric, political discontent, tender feels in a body that overheard it was broken, deep time, and river rhythm.
About the track, Audrey Lane writes:
I believe you,
I believe chickadees
I believe women
This spoken work piece was recorded at the Banff Centre’s Spoken Word Program in 2017. Created in response to the MeToo movement nationally and internationally – but particularly in Canada’s own literary community – the piece features Britta B: Yeh U Kno Me, Queen Nardean, and Chickadees from Alberta.
Costas Frantzis
Costas Frantzis is a musician and sound artist based in Athens, Greece. He studied Music Science (BA) and Sonic Arts & Audio Technologies (MA) at Ionian University in Corfu. He explores music and sound through creative projects in the wider context of performing arts.
Nemesis is inspired by the mythological context according to which Nemesis follows Ivris. Nemesis derives as a “fair punishment” when you go against the violation of the laws of nature, against the insult that results from human intervention at the expense of natural wealth and the environment in general. The basic audio material comes from field recordings processed with various techniques. The choice of material was part of a “journey” aimed at exploring/ developing a personal sonic language.
Fulya Uçanok
Fulya Uçanok is an electroacoustic musician and pianist, composing, performing and improvising. In her practice, she likes to be relationscapes with humans, more-than-humans, and materials. Aside from composition and performance practice, she is interested in communal teaching/learning environments; these are important spaces where her sonic thinking and artistic research is informed socially, culturally and politically.
About S-wallow-ING I:
“S-wallow-ING is a two-miniature exploration. As I went for a three day visit to Balıkesir, Edincik/Turkey, I was woken up by a duet of swallows at 4:00 AM chattering a dawn song. I wanted to join-in with them. These two explorations are my responses with the swallow recordings I made at that moment. During my response process, I asked: How do I move past the learnt ape-brain vs. bird-brain dichotomies? How may I render these swallows as well as myself capable in our sounding together? Starting with such questions, I began generating and leaning on speculations, and so, a world of storying opened up.”
Jarek Lustych
Jarek Lustych is a Polish visual artist.
In his work, he refers to social and political problems, referring to post-humanist theories. Since 2000, trying to transcend the anthropocentric vision of the world, he has been creating projects that take into account the natural components of the environment, which become, in a way, co-authors of works or their active participants. He uses various media, including recycled materials, but tries not to produce new objects; draws attention to unnoticed aspects of the environment.
About Latent Voice — Pilawa, recorded 2021:
“Since 2016 I have been uncovering and registering the voice of the rivers, their internal song. It can be heard with the assistance of tight strings installed between the riverbed and the bank which function in a manner similar to an eolian harp. My strings begin to vibrate under the mass of flowing water. When amplified, the sounds are loud enough to allow recognition of specific tones and patterns. It turns out that every river sounds differently. Their timbre and melodies also depend on the particular location within the course, as well as on the season of the year.“
Matt Rogalsky
Matt Rogalsky works in live electronic music composition and performance, sound installation, and study of late 20th century compositions by David Tudor and other composers. He has been active in installation art, composition and improvisational performance since the mid-1980s, and is based in Kingston Ontario where he runs the Sonic Arts Studio at Queen’s University. Recent projects include the outdoor sound installations Octet (2016) and Into the Middle of Things (2017, with LJ Cameron), which are based on research into the life and work of William WH Gunn, Canadian conservationist and field recordist. In 2023 Rogalsky will begin publishing electronic compositions from a series entitled Visitations and Revisitations, with a new release on XI Records.
Gong Dialogues is a live improvisation. Environmental sounds set in motion by stereo contact mics on a homemade gong with a one meter diameter, using an interactive instrument created in MaxMSP. All environmental sound libraries gathered responsibly by M Rogalsky. Represented: Hornby Island recycling depot (Canada’s first!) and sounds gathered from its piles of glass, metal containers, etc. Also other locally sourced sounds such as beach pebble drops and metal expanding and contracting in an electric heater. Performed directly out of MaxMSP at Memory Device West. Binaural spatial treatments will sound most interesting on good headphones.
The homemade gong was created by APE Technology.
Morten Poulsen
Morten Poulsen is a Danish sound artist, who is interested in exploring the ways in which we are embedded in socio-political structures, especially focusing on gender, power relations and the environment. By creating and nurturing spaces and situations where listening can take place, he explore relationships and allow the listener to become aware of their own role in the soundscape.
About Hambi:
“Using contact microphones, the artist has recorded the sound of the internal creaking of trees and abandoned tree-houses in the German forest of Hambach (or Hambi, as the forest is called by activists and locals). For many years, the forest has been at the forefront of the climate fight, as the largest coal mine in Europe, Garzweiler, has eaten its way through the forest. Activists have occupied Hambi for 10 years, creating communities and alternative societies in close and intricate contact with the forest environment.”
Rafael Diogo
Rafael Diogo is an ambient composer and sound designer based in London, whose works move across experimental paths and natural investigations into everyday sounds, focused on the manipulation and mixture between organic materials, synthesis and acoustic instruments to convey experience. I create soundscapes in a variety of moods and shapes but mainly I favour the sound of stories embedded into objects and places, a feeling of great immediacy, the phenomenological sense of place and time, the despair for that loss, a memory. The practice of traveling enabled me to embrace the boundless possibilities of perceiving the world from many distinct angles. My body of work maintains both an ecologic focus that emphasizes nature’s challenges and fragilities and a wide-eyed spirit of exploration, creating unforeseen liminal soundscapes that can reveal hidden information about a place or a moment that no longer exists.
Recording and production for Of The Beaten Path was done by Rafael Diogo, an ambient composer and sound designer based in London. Francisco Amoscotegui contributed to the track with the flute, and recording locations include the Philippines and Portugal.
This track is infused with a deep ecological meaning and is the result of a larger effort to share aural stories of travels both on and off the beaten path.
About Of The Beaten Path:
“Through my journeys, I have had the privilege of meeting locals and natives and experiencing the natural aura of diverse cultures. This has allowed me to face the reality of the world we live in, and appreciate the beauty and best intentions of those who may have less.
The soundscapes of this album have been crafted through a unique combination of binaural recordings, synthesis, and acoustic instruments. My practice of traveling has enabled me to embrace boundless possibilities in perceiving the world from distinct angles, resulting in unforeseen liminal soundscapes that reveal hidden information about a place or moment that no longer exists.“
Rigoberto Gallardo
Rigoberto Gallardo a.k.a. Mvd0ae is a Mexican multidisciplinary artist born in 1998. He works with heavily processed field recordings and various sound synthesis techniques creating experimental compositions. These efforts strive to achieve coitus-like confrontation and merging between representation of organic phenomena and the artifacts derived from exploring the possibilities of digital sound-altering technology.
About Mesceted Mirgoa:
“It’s a piece of experimental music I composed specifically for [EARS HAVE EYES] in the course of the past week by processing and manipulating field recordings made at Divoká Šárka park in Prague, Czech Republic.”
Thank you to the artists & listeners!
Special thanks to CJSW.
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THE HIBERNATION PROJECT 