EARS HAVE EYES // Episode 18
Airing Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 8 pm MST
on CJSW 90.9 FM
PART 2 of 2
SOUND DEATH:
endangered, delicate, and increasingly rare
Beni Brachtel (FOSE)
Domenico De Simone
Fabian Lanzmaier
Jacob Kirkegaard
Mishka Henner (FOSE)
Tomer Baruch (FOSE)
Una Walker
Featuring an interview with sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard.
Co-hosted by Wayne Garrett & Caitlind Brown, produced and edited by Caitlind Brown, supported by Kaamil Kareemi and CJSW 90.9 FM.
Cover image by Domenico De Simone.
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.
This is Part 2 of a 2-part theme called SOUND DEATH. Participating artists draw from endangered, delicate, and increasingly rare sounds, soundscapes, and ideas.
Some works on this episode are related to human death and decomposition, others focus on overbreeding, extinction, fictional field recordings, and mythical explorations of sleep as a death-like (and yet, life-like) state of being.
This month, we’re featuring an interview with Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard, as well as work from Fragments of Sonic Extinction (FOSE) www.fragmentsofsonicextinction.net.
Thanks to the participating artists and our friends at CJSW!
Beni Brachtel
Parallel to his academic career studying jazz guitar, jazz composition and a master in classical composition, Beni Brachtel has spent much time in the studio and on stage as a performer, musician and dj.
Overbreeding uses recordings of a French Bulldog as a point of departure and transforms them into an eerie and almost terrifying composition for solo cello. The piece focuses on the French Bulldog and the sound of its omnipresent heavy breathing, which is caused by systematic overbreeding.
Domenico De Simone
Domenico De Simone is a Professor of Electroacoustic Composition at the “Umberto Giordano” Music Conservatory of Foggia – ITALY. He enhanced his knowledge under the guidance of Ennio Morricone, Franco Donatoni, Salvatore Sciarrino, Azio Corghi, Giorgio Nottoli, Riccardo Bianchini. His compositions have been performed in more than one hundred concerts in Italy and abroad (China, Latvia, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Romania, Malta, USA, Ireland, UK, Spain, Austria, Brazil, etc.).
About HYPNOS:
Hypnos and Thanatos, Sleep and Death. Death mirrors Sleep, because it is the latter that interacts with life; it is life itself, while Death represents its mirror opposite: life is mirrored in Death. Now Hypnos is introduced … Thanatos can wait.
Starting from the sounds recorded on the lakeside of the town where I was born, I imagined what the soundscape will be in the future.
Fabian Lanzmaier
Fabian Lanzmaier is a musician and sound artist based in Vienna/Austria. In his sound related works he uses audio synthesis to explore aspects of texture and structure of sound as well as its presence within space. He is experimenting with perception and ideas of natural / artificial sounds, fluid and ambiguous environments.
Die Abschaffung der Arten / the abolition of species is an extract of a fictional archive of field recordings. To the listener, however, these audio pieces are presented as nature recordings done in the field, most probably in a tropical environment, however they are meticulously composed pieces consisting of a mix of processed recordings and synthetic sounds.
Jacob Kirkegaard
Jacob Kirkegaard explores ways to reflect on complex, unnoticed or unapproachable conditions and environments. His works have treated themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl and Fukushima, melting ice in the Arctic, border walls in global and metaphorical contexts, immersive acoustic explorations into global waste management, and processes related to when a human being dies. Kirkegaard’s sound works have been released on labels such as Important Records (USA), Touch (UK) and Posh Isolation (DK). He is a founding member of the sound art collective freq_out as well as the not-for-profit arts organisation TOPOS. Jacob has presented his works at galleries, museums, biennales and concert spaces throughout the world, including MoMA in New York, LOUISIANA – Museum of Modern Art and ARoS in Denmark, The Menil Collection and at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, The Sydney Biennale in Australia, Aichi Triennale in Nagoya, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan. He has gallery representation through Fridman Gallery (New York, USA) and Galleri Tom Christoffersen (Copenhagen, DK). His work is in the collections of LOUISIANA – Museum of Modern Art and at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Museum Sønderjylland in Denmark, and Bell Gallery at Brown University, USA. In 2022 he received the Eckersberg Medal from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (Akademiraadet) in recognition of outstanding achievements in the arts.
Opus Mors is four listening spaces for one of the existential and natural aspects of being alive, which is death. The project portrays four sound environments that the human body commonly will be surrounded by or exposed to in the immediate post mortem: a morgue, an autopsy, a cremation and the decomposition – events that no one will ever get to sense on their own bodies because of the very fact of death. Opus Mors is an immersive, intimate and powerfully detailed sonic meditation into these four significant death spaces.
We’re featuring Part 4 of Opus Mors on our program, Opus Potescu – sound recordings made at a forensic study facility where donated corpses are placed in an enclosed nature area to decompose while being studied. This work was made from near-field sound recordings of decomposing corpses recorded with measurement microphones placed only 1 cm above – as well as with vibration sensors placed inside the corpses.
Mishka Henner
Mishka Henner is a visual artist born in Belgium and living in the UK. His varied practice navigates through the digital terrain to focus on key subjects of cultural and geo-political interest.
Nature Calls consists of humans imitating animal sounds and animal distress calls. With the latter, these are performed by hunters using artificial devices to attract prey. With their prey absent, are the only remaining sounds of nature those that humans can evoke?
Tomer Baruch
Tomer Baruch is an interdisciplinary musician and sound artist. In his work he mixes a variety of genres and mediums, ranging from psychedelic funk, abstract ambient lullabies, noise-jazz and experimental net-based sound art.
Los Magnolios Reserve’s Imaginary Funk Band is a part of a campaign to safeguard wildlife and ensure local ownership. It is using four videos of four different animals which were taken by the staff of the Los Magnolios reserve. Each of these animals is given a musical part and together they form an imaginary band. This is a comical anthropomorphism which reinterprets casual movements and gestures as musical notation. By reimagining the soundtrack of Los Magnolios’ Imaginary Funk Band the piece is hopefully creating an optimistic and engaging experience, one that could drive people to participate in the fundraiser and help protect these species in the real world.
Donate to the fundraiser and protect the Colombian forest:
https://this-is-my-earth.org/habitat/reserva-natural-los-magnolios/
Una Walker
Una Walker is an artist and writer based at Flax Art Studios, Belfast. She has exhibited extensively in Ireland and internationally, making site and context specific installation, audio and video works, and works on paper. In the last few years she has used field recordings made in and around her home as the source for a series of audio works.
About Wednesday Morning at 5 am:
In the past when I have been anxious and lying awake in the night the sounds of the early morning – birds outside and aircraft high above – provided reassurance and perhaps sleep. Now the fear that keeps me awake is that the aircraft, and all they represent, will overwhelm and obliterate the birds and all their habitats. The bird song used in this piece was recorded at 5am on the 3rd of May 2023 from my bedroom window. The aircraft was recorded a short distance away.
Thank you to the artists & listeners!
Special thanks to CJSW.
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