KUNSTRADIO - RADIOKUNST

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Evropi-Singvogel-Heksonbrand is based on two myths: the well-known story of the abduction of Evropi by Zeus, who after she has given birth to two sons, is married off to the king of Crete. She receives three gifts: a horde of wilde dogs, a spear that never misses mark and an undefeatable giant, who have to take care of no setting foot on the island. The second story is derived from the Barzaz Broiz, the large gathering of early songs from Brittany and tells about a young woman. As her old husband askes about the reason why the stands at the window every night, she seeks excuses, but finally admits that she listens to the nightingale. The husband the instructs to catch the bird. The next day he offers it to her and puts it, dead, in the womb of the woman, after which she doen´t meet her beloved anymore, at night in the moonlight. It is remarkable that both stories end in a moment of injustice. We only can guess, how it turns out for the two women.

This piece comments the demagogy that is used by both ancient and modern man-gods. The last will come to word. The material for this "soundscape" has been gathered at the four places where I stayed the last four years, in order to make of them a sound-synthesis and to create of them a fifth world of my own: the world of a traveller who mingles every new impression with former experiences. Every sound has its own story, that mingles with many other stories. In that sense this piece is cased on the "musique concrète" pur sang. There are two parts that are each other opposite, they behave like the scales of a balance. In the first part the listener does hardly get the opportunity to attach to the musical material. As a binding factor there is a hit, combining several percussive sounds as the "Udu Grando" and a gliding cymbal-sound. The material of the second part ripples steady on. The binding factor in this part is the overtones of a pianostring, from which the attack sometimes has been cut. The piece includes short interventions in Deutsch, French and English.

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PLAY

Dauer: 37'25"

Afflux (Influx) is to succeed in building in situ an electroacoustic device in order to work out a set of live interactions with a site. This device connects the three improvisers to the place at the same time. The set of connections creates an infinite interplay of interactions and possibilities.

This device is basically founded upon a principle of circulation (of sounds…). The recordings of environmental and devices interacting with the elements: winds, waters, … is filtered and mixed live by a protagonist. The mix is then broadcast to the two others (through headphones) who interact with inflexions altering the course of what is recorded, it may just as well consist in triggering and processing sounds through setting out a control upon acoustic parameters.

It is thus possible to achieve a system of circulating sound creation where the interaction network is getting more and more complex as the sound data are travelling inside. Not so much circulating as an ever moving flow.

The places are selected according to the circulatory principle: stations, roads, streams, port …

This project is implicitly linked to radioplay inasmuch as it questions the transmission of flows in a recording and broadcasting device. Moreover we can at the same time foster some reflection about this experiment, by means of reports and interviews, even in the very moment when sound is generated.

Places

Selecting places is determinant for the project as a whole (with regard to their sound qualities). Places will have in common to be circulation places in the proper meaning of the word. For instance we have carried out our project (in France) in the following places:

Look-out post, maritime navigation radar station (Dieppe, Normandy)
Brook/stream (Aizier, Normandy)
Sea/Tide (Saint-Martin-sur-mer, Normandy)
Gare de Lyon (railway station, Paris)
Petroleum industry factory Esso (Port Jérôme)
In a tunnel, where a motorway and a secondary road intersect (Bouquetot, Normandy)

Recording

Recording doesn't amount to a topographic restitution of places, but everything is brought into play for the recording to be made in a musical way. It is thus allow no realistic reading of places inasmuch as it is amount to a non-objective survey of a circulatory tellurism of the landscape! In other words, sound tapping opens into an intrinsic dimension of a site in which we disclose sound within sight. It is a way of taking hold of reality by opening out a fresh, even paradoxical live hearing point.

Recording is thus loaded with substances and other vibratory matters which will set the whole musical device into motion. The sound peculiarity of the site, selected and extended, lives alongside musical improvising. Thus this reality of the landscape takes full part in the music : something like a musical inscape of the landscape. The improvisers, connected together, experience it live and make up their way of playing accordingly.

Improvising

Here the improvisers are bound to play free from any stereotype, while listening all the more closely to one another. The difficulty lies all the fact that here the other one is not only another musician, but also the whole humming of a place with which they have to compound.

Electronic processing

Sound alterations are evolving and can be unceasingly modified with some appliances: foot controlers, but it is also possible to assign some recording parameters for monitoring the altering algorithms. So the sound pitch (the tuning), the loudness, the envelope of the recording, but also the way in which the instrument is played or the pressure on the microphones can modulate the alterations of the initial recording.

Mixing

Mixing is a decisive step in the endeavour. There is no multi-track recording that would allow a posteriori mixing. On the contrary, it is done live as the other steps in process.

Setting up

In order to achieve the required interaction, the musicians are immersed in a sound environment and have to respond to each other and according to this environment.

Technically, the matter is to carry out the recording of a musical improvisation involving some sound tapings of the surroundings. Simultaneously, this recording is mixed and broadcast towards the three improvisers who respond to it. Everything is recorded digitally on a two tracks DAT recorder.

We have recording and mixing equipment at our disposal, but we may be restricted by impediments arising from the land or the site where some equipment is needed (for example very long cables…).

The mobility of the device is made to fit the required pliability on account of changes in the weather and temperature.