Sonntag, 18. July 2021, 23:03 - 0:00, Ö1

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EBU Ars Acustica - Palma Online discussion


Prix Palma Ars Acustica 2021 - part 1

1) „Ivry-sur-Seine“ by Iain Chambers (WDR)
2) „Habitat“ by Savannah Agger (SR)

The Prix Palma Ars Acustica (PAA) is an international competition organized by the Euroradio Ars Acustica Group to promote and honor outstanding radio art productions: Radio art, sound art, media art, text-sound compositions, electroacoustic music, live electronica, etc. - the competition is open to all these disciplines; pieces are submitted by members of Ars Acustica, i.e. radio art editorial departments of public broadcasters throughout Europe.

This year, the winner was chosen online, and the winner of the competition is the artist Iain Chambers with a production of the German WDR: "Ivry-sur-Seine" is an acoustic exploration of the housing complex built in the 1970s in the Parisian suburb of the same name. This complex - because of the use of exposed concrete and the unconventional formal language - is attributed to Brutalism.

An excerpt from the jury's statement: "Iain Chambers managed to accomplish the nearly impossible task - to rethink brutalist architecture in the medium of sound and in the human, sociological context while retaining compositional logic of highest degree. Ivry-sur-Seine is both confrontation - physical, tactile, aural, emotional confrontation - with living environment, and superb musique concrete in every moment of the piece."

The other finalists were:
Alien Productions (ORF), "Performing Utopia", a radio opera
Olga Kokcharova (RTS), "Die Ebbinghaus-Kurve des Vergessens"
Adriana Kramarić | Marija Pečnik Kvesić (HRTR) "Ars Mundi"
Savannah Agger (SR) "Habitat"




1) „Ivry-sur-Seine“ by Iain Chambers (WDR)



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In ‘Ivry-sur-Seine’, Iain Chambers composes using extensive location recordings in and around the brutalist buildings of the commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris.

 Inspired by the pioneering architecture of Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie, Iain made three types of recording to describe the experience of these concrete structures through sound: Ambient recordings to convey the lived experience of this concrete architecture by residents and those passing through its threshold spaces, as well as the sounds beyond the boundaries of the architecture: sirens, birdsong, traffic.
 The second type of recording could be described as ‘playing the building’, in which the acoustics of the spaces are excited by human sounds and hard objects – such as stones or tiles – coming into contact with the architecture’s own hard surfaces.  The third category of recording used the buildings as resonators, amplifying or focusing our ears on the ambient soundworld, but through the lens of the built fabric. Contact microphones are fixed on metal handrails, generators, doors; the better to connect with how sounds are activating the architecture itself.
 These three types of recordings come together in a musique concrète composition with varying atmospheres. There is a general progression from raw recordings – and actualité – towards more abstract manipulation of the location recordings. The only sound heard beyond Ivry is an extract from Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2005 description of French rioters as ‘racaille’ – or ‘scum’, seen to have fuelled further rioting in the banlieues where these brutalist structures are mostly sited.




2) „Habitat“ by Savannah Agger (SR)



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Habitat – as in the natural surrounding in which an animal or plant usually lives, but also as in home, setting, territory, scene, surroundings, context, conditions and circumstances, etc.
Humankind has affected all the natural habitats of the world in many ways, the ‘natural’ has become a different state of natural, or just ‘another natural state of nature’ – maybe forever changing. Can we even speak about a real ‘natural’ nature anymore, if we also consider the micro level of physical matter? Habitat is created from a diverse collection of recordings of environmental sounds, animals, field recordings, as well as synthetic sounds, creatures and environments. The composition is in constant flux between ‘real’ places and ‘unreal’ spaces, creating its own sounding transnature habitat(s).

Link:
EBU Ars Acustica Gruppe