EPAS journal
hearing, sounding, what i've been listening to. when do i press that REC - UNREC button, the decision making and training of the instinct of knowing exactly that. getting closer to the objective truth by shutting down one functional part of my regular being. in our first day with els viaene, my EPAS-comrades and i were stopping and walking blindfolded or guiding a blindfolded fellow and sharing our experience together.
to me day 1 was about crossing boarders :: borders of countries as well as of what i believed to be able to put into categories, other people, other city, other weather, other light, other smells, other sounds. just otherS... to only realize once again, that another context is usually another category, ready to find its own, very unique value of content. by just taking the time, arriving and reducing motion to a minimum, i temporarily shut out a core sense (sight) to reinforced another core sense (hearing). the world that came gushing in with this, was familiar, yet so astonishingly unusual and revealed so many different aspects of what i believed to know. i, too, once again learned: all i know, is that i know nothing.
my reality is much more imaginary and made up, when i have my eyes uncovered, because i think more in concepts of already acquired knowledge and assign definitions to things as soon as my eye catches them. i name them and think about the world in languages, my navigation within the visual world is very much connected to my language acquisition. i also narrate more what happens to me, when i see them, maybe tell more stories then there actually happen. i assign sounds and foyles to events that in physical truth can't be sensible for me.
with covered eyes, though, i can listen and travel into where i physically can't go. so in a way i experience more of what is objectively, actually there, when i only listen to what i hear. consistency or hesitation have a bigger influence on my own navigation, with rhythmic or regular sounds i have an immediate security in my own movement in the space. i am much more exposed and react instinctively. partly because i feel like a toddler learning, experiencing and mapping this new situation of sensing, but also because sound cares for no limits; until it's waves fade out or until it will smash against a material boarder it will keep waving on.
unlearning the value of good - bad. whatever happens: it is part of the intention.
cage: the spirit of things are set free in vibrations and the simple is still complex, the complexity of things just always is. even in an anechoic chamber the encounters with sound and noise will be unavoidable, since keeping an organism alive is a very noisy procedure.
ben zijlstra with his collection of glasses sent us off to a binural exploration of what we could find out there.
DPA 4060'ies "nearly ear" mics clipped to my glasses i took to the KASK yard and received, decided, pushed the REC button, moved about or stood still and unRECed again. a binural recording in which my experience should become the listeners own and yet transport them into anything, based on what they would make of what they hear, anywhere to their own experience. sounds captured for an externalization of their origin since every sound comes as it does and every intention will become undisguised. i moved about the middle floor between two outside entrances to the building. perfectly geometric, rectangle stone plates were the ground. through its slots, tiny pieces of grass tweaked out like confused pubic hair growing on a shoulder. the traffic flowing from left to right-right to left on godhuizenlaan. as i set step after step and every other sound was slightly fading out behind my grey, stone hub, suddenly i shivered: a crunchy, crumbling, crackling, CR..ing sound was moving under my steps. i was not able to control it, i was not able to repeat it and then there it was again, i had stepped back and it was gone but now, with a new step it had decided to react to my body weight again. i pressed REC and our audible "contact dance" started. i was charmed to soon find a third partner to our mingleing: a plastic bag was pushing and gliding up and down a railing. its rustling in the wind was louder, more frequent but just as hardheaded as the crackles from under the stone plates, that were carrying me. for less then two minutes i was in a self-dissolved, yet very tense improvised choreography, experiencing how our vibrations were blindly and randomly colliding in space.
who sound i? how do i edit my own biography? it wants to be transmitted clearly but much more is hidden between the decisions we make about the narrations we construct. learn to listen.
How much are we able to listen practically and literally but also philosophically. the rationing and the will to understand can often stand between the actual experience of what is right in front of us and one can rarely say what something is until it has reached a certain state. everything is made of atoms and yet the time and space relations we exist in is very essential to our entire relation to what ever we relate to. Yet there are glimpses and ways of reaching to one thing and another, because eventually we both live and die and we must stay open to each others mortality. Is this the the "creative zone"?
listening is an act of tuning in, to the state of hearing the "objective" truth about the world, as well to what material we are made of. ears dropping to the secrets oft what ever there is to capture and learning that, once a sound has become evident, it stops being effective and with that it looses evidence to only become effective again and so and and so forth. even tough, this loop will keep on going, will keep on morphing into its variations, ideally the thread for a third party is provided. a thread for the audience to find enough bounce to hop on to the ride the artist is steering and yet just as much space for itself to find an emotional relation to the work of their own.
but this is a rare and lucky case. but surely something i wish to achieve.
annabelle pangborn abducted us carefully, intellectually and cognitively into the world of haptic listening.
idea's are decisions, a point to start with and continue to interrogate the work. once tuned into the interaction it will stick and it is the duty of creativity to try and shake the habitual and comfortable, in order to find the extreme, unexplored, most far away places. We move into "the zone", to become simultaneous with the object we handle and the intuitions we hunt, or letting us get abducted.
which ever direction it might be, it goes from an inside to an outside and soon these limits start to vanish as they dissolve in constant movement and we find ourself existing in several spaces at the same time. we stick to our skills of articulation and control the sonority by being precise with what we do and what is happening to us. meaning is unfolding even tough we work on the edge of meaning. we open up to resonance and become the resonator. we strive towards meaning and never arrive at it, silence is the essence of sound and silence we only reach when we stop resonating.
where we incubate :: where we discover and tear out of its hidden corners :: where we destroy and create :: where we shiver and heat :: quiver and creep and stomp and fly towards the scape ::
the sTudio!
transmiTTing an experience
I'm swinging in the viscous lotion between wake and sleep. The darkness is deep and shapeless. Just patterns, textures floating on the cone of my periphery of blindness. Single peaks of mumbling noises, again shapeless muttering keep stinging my ears and pull me through the thick first layer, i float slightly a top of the surface and the light, which is no light but lesser darkness, shapes the corners in my room... a window, where am i?...aaaand i dive back into sleep, oh yes here i am.
Louder talking... my window, someone is in here...who? Can't see, can't hear but.... Someone is in my chambers of unconsciousness...i lay back and fall backwards into sleep again. Like on a swing i float into wake, where the muffled carped of my cocoon gets lifted and back into sleep to cuddle back inside.
Then a loud thunder shutters and drumms. a screeching "pssssssst!" is trying to shush the growl in response...they are many. I float into wake and feel naked and in a void...i turn around and fall right back into the cave still cozy from my bodly warmth. Into wake, yet can't reach and into sleep. Into wake and back into sleep..into sleep...a sleep....
The thunder is back, now stronger, the drones are approaching.everything suddenly speeded up. They are loud and there are many. i'm wide awake now.
it's his voice, he hurrles, stomps moves to an other room and she hisses back, follows, screams. No more shushing each other. The arena has been set. It's them again. It's them fighting again.
transmitting an experience turned out to be one of the most fitting methodologies i've ever encountered and laid my hands, ears...senses on.
in amsterdam we, the EPAS2 crew, were introduced to cilia erens's artistic practice and were urged by her to experience the space in sound. martine huvenne invited us to go deeper into her research of the phenomenology of listening and we took an intellectual insight into her work in theory and practice as an artist and scientist, that in experiencing sound narration, spacial movement, texture, time and physical materiality are clearly contained. With ben zijlstra we were introduced to the technical and sensational ways of how microphones and speakers function.
as the biggest bit we were asked to find, gather and capture recordings of the necessary element and bring them together to make an audience experience what we've had previously chosen to share.
i've had written a rather descriptive text to reach the lingual way to the experience. to me it worked so far. the text was non specific and yet transmitting already more the "how" then the "what".
we were welcomed to use the equipment and studios, were graced with the grate knowledge of ben zijlstra, michel schöpping and the fabulous technical help from kris knoop.
as i first set off to find the sounds to tell upon an ancient experience of mine, in a city i've had no relation to what so ever, i struggled. i felt uninspired and randomly placed. at first nothing seemed to fit, so i recorded what i felt was intriguing sounds, trying to find my way on technical aspects of recording. the story of my experience felt then heavy in my backpack but in the same time there was a distance to the actual experience. but after wandering around, getting lost and returning to the very point i started from, the feeling began to take to an abstracted level. somehow the thought of content had taken a peripheral shape, which weight just as much and forced me into frequent breaks but it was not as literal and therefor got lighter to carry the more i took distance to the story and leaned into the feeling. i searched and was only able to press REC on few occasions, yet it felt enough, when i sat in the studio and started to edit. the first broad structure was quickly built and i knew, that everything after this was going to be fine tuning. now, this is where the real work for me begins. after four days of minimal change that would make all the difference, countless listenings, experiencingS in a all kinds of human possible positions and several feedback rounds with my teachers and group-mates, the deed is still not yet done. but it must rest for now because within these few days the piece had reach its momentary endpassage.
the revelation, that i believe to feel very intuitively when i can go on in sound and when i'm stuck, is something big i take with me from these 9 days in amsterdam. this revelation is a meaningful one for me since in almost every other art practice i've been involved with, the "stop's" and "go's" are usually more opaque.
it was not possible for me to finish the piece to its entirety, even though, i feel very close to what might be possibly its "supposed to be-ness". and this is just about all i could wish to achieve at this point of my development.
The world starts where ever my body ends
Space and the movement within the space are relations I am very familiar with. I learned this relation by bumping into, falling onto and pushing back to when I started walking.
The only space I ever actually really am in, though, is my body, the world starts where ever my body ends. Sometimes being in this space can be hard enough to navigate, that ever so often, I do not investigate the second and third spaces surrounding me. Most of the time I try not to bump into, fall onto or push back to things and people.
Investigating the space with sound, though, so I've come to realize, gives me some kind of a super-power. As mentioned in earlier writings listening does not obey the same physical rules as seeing or touching does. It brings my primary space, my body, to places where my other senses cannot take me. It explores wayward the second and third spaces and fuels my agility. It expands my primary space and all of the sudden I glide, graze, trickle, smash, hatch in and out and on and against things and people, sometimes without them even noticing.
In the four days of our workshop with Els it was wonderful to experiment on scaling the spaces, gigantic or micro, with mics and displaced speakers, with movements and shifts between analogue and digital sounds. To built contact and electric microphones has been a very enriching experience for me, since tinkering about is a big passion of mine. I will take many of the elements we have explored into my personal project:: I've already built some more electric mics and am working on an interactive set up between analogue and prerecorded scapes.
Also to improvise with my fellow EPAS companions has been long time due and a missing level of communication for us. It was a different way of listening and responding to each other and I think we needed that, since coming back together as a group wasn't smooth and easy at all this module. The group had split into its segments and each of the segments solitarily focused onto its own centre without integrating a permeable membrane. So in the beginning it was ever so hard to break through to one another. But looking back to it, I feel content about what we achieved in the process as well as in the moment of the improvised presentation to an audience. Yet for me the process had only just begun as soon as it was over and I therefore would have wished for more time. Nevertheless I'm bagging a big chunk of inspiration and can start weaving a more permeable membrane into my future navigation in the primary, secondary, third and n spaces.
m&M
With wonderful maRtin paRker we patched the hours out the weekend. Crushing into the woRld of maX mSp, theRe is yet a long way to go and not much to say except for :: these two N a 1/2 days being intense and boosting in many ways. Meeting m&M (maRtin&Max) is an enrichment and I want moRe!
as we walke the halls
With H.P. Kuhn we investigated the hallway of the Bijloke. Quick and short all seven of us found their grain of interest and produced a little work to it. I was intrigued by the 11th flagstone coming in from the side entrance. It was broken in three pieces and yet puzzled together in its square caging, crunching, banging and crackling on whenever the busy Bijloke visitor stepped on or rolled over. The stretch of the hallway and the acoustic incline towards the gothic stretch into the sky, brought much more meaning to it being activated. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ,nine, ten, *** it was like an instrument some seemed to intentionally articulate, adjust it to the rhythm of their steps, their trains of thoughts or punctuate it as a cornerstone on their journey through the wast marches on the Bijloke property. Being so focused on one detail in this big space and wanting to deform the space with as little intervention as possible to what is already there, I decided to also use the several rectangle, white, blocks tucked to the side of the hallway. They were very much following the stretch of the hallway almost pointing to the "one way or the other"-ness inherit to the nature of a hallway. One had a little pool built into it :: so here was my chance to show a work about the entire space by only using a bit of it. I edited my recordings and chose the most interesting moments that choreographed the flagstone-dance.
For notes on 'sounDing / 4 phases of de-knowing' click the picture above