This is Lucia Chungs artist bio.

Lucia H Chung is a Taiwanese artist based in London, UK. She holds a Master degree in Sculpture (Distinction) from Winchester School of Art and a PhD degree in Sonic Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London. She performs and releases music under the alias ‘en creux’ where the sound creation springs from her fascinations in noise generated via feedback on digital and analogue equipment, and her role as a mediator-performer in the multifaceted relationship between the sonic events incurring within the self-regulated system. She also works as a broadcaster and an independent curator at Happened. She has curated and organised residency programmes and music events around the UK and Europe, including a 3-month Taiwanese Experimental Music residency for MusicHackspace at Somerset House Studios in 2018, Inland virtual residency between lacking Sound Fest. (Taiwan) and IKLECTIK (UK) in 2020, and a panel discussion on video Game Music as part of Grounding Practice at Somerset House Studios in 2021.

INTERVIEW: LUCIA H CHUNG with ATTN: MAGAZINE

This interview with Lucia H Chung is about her work and current show about to go live in the coming weeks (at the time). They begin by asking her where the idea for a Taiwanese music festival came from.

She says it’s that whenever she goes to china town she sees lots of posters for Chinese and Japanese gigs and shows and she’d never see any for Taiwanese music apart from pop stars who come over.

They continue to ask about where the idea came from. The fact that she had this idea in her head for a while. How did this come to fruition?

She says she acts on impulse a lot and doesn’t think too much about the outcomes it’s more of a bottom-up process she says. On her trip to Taiwan, she didn’t really have a chance to go to loads of live gigs and instead went to record shops. She felt as she moved here as an international student back when she was studying her status was not certain but now it is she wanted to connect her people to where she lives now. Bring them over to experience new things.

The Water by en creux

I first listened to Fog after reading the bio of the album. This album was a two-track piece based on no-input feedback mixers. The two sides depict deficiency and surplus respectively: the first a semi-solid hum that flickers on the brink of becoming, the second a harsh buzz that presses into excess until it warps. Balance and stillness, so readily associated with a drone, are therefore illusory – only ever implied in the cancelling-out of these deviations from equilibrium, manifesting as a non-state framed by exertion, arriving within that silent pause between these two exquisitely manoeuvred tilts.

I did really find the first Fog song captivating. We’ve used no input mixing in the lectures with Milo and it’s interesting to see it in a real-world scenario. I find the laid back approach of letting the machine take the lead. Just guiding the sounds into drone sounds is really captivating. You get lost in the sounds and let the filters guide your thoughts.

https://hardreturn.bandcamp.com/track/fog

Post Lecture Reflection

Lucia began by speaking around the curatorial things she’s done, starting from monthly radio programs and artist interviews. And now the program has gone through transition and change she can reflect on it. So she usually loves to ask this as the first question in most of her interviews which is “What is your background? And how did you get where you are as an artist?”

I think this question makes sense it’s important to know someone’s background to see their bias and their motivation, why are they doing what they are doing?

For her, she moved to England when she started her masters at Winchester and she was one of two only non-English speaking people in her class. She didn’t find the English pub culture that interesting so she just sat in the background a lot, most likely as English wasn’t her first language, she felt she couldn’t community effectively. She found it interesting the gap between translation and how a person feels when they’re caught in this situation.

So for her, this was a huge inspiration. And she feels like her work has evolved from this experience. One specific project she did at her masters was related to photos. She was told she had a different personality between speaking mandarin and speaking English. And she wanted to put herself in front of the camera and study herself closely. She wanted to investigate this change.

She found in the photos she took when speaking mandarin were completely different to her speaking English. This invoked a deep question thought process for her and linked to other works.

She then spoke about her work in 2009, Spring piece stereo recording. She had just moved from Winchester to London, Newcross area and found it extremely busy and full of noise pollution. No longer in a lovely town but a busy area. She decided to record her window as she lived opposite the main road and used a piezo mic that she clipped to the window. She looped up the sound of the recording and played it back into the piezo mic, she stated it was one of her first loop/noise or no inputting mixing sort of work.

To her, it sounded like an angel or a flight to heaven. A really cool concept. I remember Cai using no-input mixing in the lecture with Milo, we were improvising as a collective and the sounds coming out of that machine were incredible. I can see how noise and noise pollution inspired her work. London is really a shock when moving here, I felt the same when I first moved from Brighton. A lot of sounds is overwhelming at first here.

I think overall that Lucias work is captivating and her expression on the day came through her presentation. I found that her curation relating to her heritage and also her self-aware state towards her current surroundings and how she can benefit that place whilst not taking away from it was a benefit to hear about.

My choice of podcast is The Guardians podcast on Spotify. Titled, where does the world go from here?

1. The audio paper affords performative aesthetics.

The podcast, in the beginning, had introduction music, synthesisers playing to create a futuristic atmosphere based on the topic of climate change. It creates an interesting aesthetic. The way the performer speaks as well inclines a more newsworthy podcast than an extremely performative one. I also enjoyed the field recordings used when speaking about the summit in Scotland, when speaking about the crowds they used actual crowd recordings.

2. The audio paper is idiosyncratic.

I wouldn’t say this specific podcast is idiosyncratic. But I would say I also don’t listen to enough podcasts to establish whether or not there is anything immensely unique to this podcast. One thing perhaps is the use of going back and forth between live interviews almost like a radio show, which then goes back towards actual recordings and sound effects, music to set the scene.

3. The audio paper is situated and partial.

I would say this podcast is situated and partial. It’s situated on our current time and understanding of climate change. The reasons why climate change is important and also an uncertain future. It’s very situated. Partial as well, the speaker is contrasting against the person being interviewed.

4. The audio paper evokes effects and sensations.

The use of sound effects and music evokes sensations and has powerful effects. Even the way the narrator speaks, in contrast to the person being interviewed who has a more confident voice speaking with authority. The narrator speaks at times with emotions of sadness and anger towards the narrator almost as if she is the issue. I think the overall production for this podcast was designed specifically to evoke emotion over this topic that is currently really important. The summit in Scotland.

5. The audio paper is multifocal; it assembles diverse and often heterogeneous voices.

This podcast could have better use of heterogeneous voices. Although I agree to an extent with this podcast. I think it really skewered towards the anti-big business and coal usage. Again it’s not that I disagree with this statement but more that it didn’t bring a balanced argument. Didn’t discuss the other side, why don’t the big business what to get rid of it? Is this actually realistic?

6. The audio paper has multiple protagonists, narrators and material agencies.

I would say this podcast does this very well. There are multiple protagonists, interviewers and narrators. Usage of sounds and recordings to build atmospheres. Sound design and music. Perhaps the narration could be improved as it does change, but not a lot. It’s mainly the male voice throughout asking questions and one could ask potentially why that is? I think it could perhaps be a systematic patriarchal choice, patriarchy usually has the idea that the man rules the house and society. So we should always have a man asking the questions and being the overall narrator.

7. The audio paper brings aesthetics and technology together in mediation.

This podcast uses masters and mixing. Recording and production to its uses. Music production and sound editing. Recording, samples and other techniques. I think it does it well, in contrast to this point it hits the nail on the head. Specifically with the mixing and mastering.

8. The audio paper is a constituent part of broader ecologies.

I would say this podcast only touches on this point. It does reflect the topic of global warming to wider countries and cultures. Using recordings of other countries leaders speaking about what global warming does. How it affects different countries differently. But also doesn’t really touch to much apart from the use of samples/recordings.

I’m currently at the stage where I’ve decided my topic for now. I want to speak about noise pollution and its effects on us. How it is being combated and what role a sound artist could have on sound designing cities to combat noise pollution. I created a mind map to reflect the paragraphs for each section of the audio document.

I’ve given myself the broad categories of what I want to speak about. I’m not entirely sure if they will stay the same but I need to begin doing my research and writing the script so I can refine it. I’ve been stuck for a while on the about to begin my research stage so I decided to go ahead and plan everything.

I’ll begin by doing research into defining what is noise pollution first as I think that’s important. What do we consider noise pollution? Why is it important to be aware of noise pollution? What are the effects of it? I need to do some information findings before answering these questions.

This is Sam Auinger’s bio on his website

Sam Auinger (1956, Linz) is a sonic thinker, composer and sound artist. He lives and works in Berlin since receiving an invitation to the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD in 1997. His interest is the sonic and auditory as material phenomena that embed information about our shared global interdependence and emotional triggers. Central to his artistic research aims to deepen understanding of acoustic/aural qualities in our urban living environments, precisely public spaces. He propagates “thinking with the ears”. For him, it is a critical daily praxis towards understanding our role in an endangered planetary environment at all levels, from social to environmental. Together with Bruce Odland, he founded O+A in 1989. Their central theme is “hearing perspective,” and known for large-scale, public space sound installations that transform city noise in real-time. (Blue Moon 2004 NY/US, Sonic Vista Frankfurt/D since 2011, Symphonie of Resonances documenta 14 Thessaloniki /GR  2017).https://www.samauinger.de/

Harmonic Bridge

In this installation, Sam decided to use the sounds of a highway separating two towns into the main sounds of the installation. He fed the noise pollution from the road into tuning tubes to create harmonic sounds underneath the highway. The underneath of the highway becomes a lovely place to sit and listen to the sounds. No longer full of noise pollution and invasive sounds but something else instead. I watched the video and listened to the sounds converted from the noise polluting street and I was impressed. This really relates to my audio document and I’ll definitely be quoting his works into it. I wonder how he chose this location? What about pushing him into using it? I know he spoke about the noise pollution separating the two towns that sit between a highway. But what else is there?

Harmonic Gate

Is a new permanent sound installation in Zurich. Sam was invited to come up with a concept for the space surrounding a railway line that the council had set up. Sam decided to use the space for a permanent sound installation that converts the noise pollution of the city into a field of harmonic sounds. As a humane gesture for the city livers.

Using the ideas of sound and the physics of sound. The installation receives the noise pollution from the city and converts it into harmony. All in real-time. This harmonic sound is then delivered at the exact same moment to a specially designed sound speaker designed for this specific sound installation.

I find this idea really interesting. The thought of public permanent sound installations to feed noise pollution into something better for our wellbeing. As cities get more and more populated and as the earth gets less and less landmass I really think this will be the future of City architecture. Or at least involved in it. There have been numerous studies on the negative effect of noise pollution on the human mind. And I don’t see a reason as to why architects and city designers don’t incorporate the thought of noise and sound into the designs.

sonic vista Frankfurt /D 2011

In 2010 the city of Frankfurt invited sam to study the sound sources. He studied acoustics the social usage and social planning and they strove to try to understand what the site offered the users in terms of sound. They found an old railway bridge that connected the north and sound sides of the city of frankfurt and you could see and hear the city as a living organism. From the start of the project, it would require the support of the entire city of frankfurt.

He wanted to design a sphere loudspeaker to convert the noise pollution into again another harmonic permanent installation. They made a low b for the south side with the busses and roads. And a high c for the north side with the construction and pigeons.

Their job was to attract people to slow down. listen to tot eh city as an organism. gain new information about the city. what can you hear when you really listen to your city? The vibrations of power, economy. What does it take for a city to really work? He says we won’t understand ourselves until we truly understand our noise.

Again in similar to the first and second pieces, it seems using permanent sound installations could be a thing cities use on a larger scale to combat noise pollution. Or perhaps as sam says to gain more information or to attract people to listen and slow down. I wonder what the role of a sound artist is in social city planning. Is it to help create and design scientific and psychological instruments to combat noise pollution. To design and understand the acoustics of situations? Perhaps. But it could also be to raise awareness of the subject. To, like sam says. Bring attention to things.

Post Lecture Reflection

Sam begins the lecture reflecting on his past, he thinks it’s important to speak on his past to indicate how he became interested in sound. He was born in 1956. He is much older than us. He grew up on the edge of industrial areas in the countryside and for him growing up in this area sound was information and music was social. This means that people in his area could run a farmhouse or their daily lives and they needed the auditory information to function on their land for example. His grandfather when he was a kid would put hay next to his ear and forecast the weather. This afternoon will be a storm his grandfather would say. He could hear the moistness in the hay and know the weather.

Well, hay absorbs the moisture levels and changes very fast. If you know the difference between dry hay and wet or hay with moisture then you would know. Another example of auditory information would be the goose making noises when someone foreign approached the farmhouse. He would also read comics, which wasn’t appropriate at the time and he would know the steps of his parents and have that as information to his comic book so for him sound has almost always been a daily practice. I find the idea of sonic information in even the littlest things to be really fascinating. I usually only associate sonic information with bigger things. But we underestimate the power of sonic language.

In contrast to current times, it’s getting harder to know what sounds we are hearing. What aesthetic are specific sounds? And when we start embracing the auditory in the environment. What we can hear is sometimes very different to what we can see. And he notices as he gets older how he still relates as a child to the same mentality of auditory information.

He begins to speak on his work. At first, he says, “Imagine you have to build something and have to be able to hear someone do public speaking for 200 people? Well, architecture needs to be planned with the acoustics in mind for the sound.”

He says to take it as a question about the science and physics of sound. Do we think about these things when working with sound?

Going to a music university in the early 80s. Just doing sound at that time. You had to think about how to describe the sound. What are the contexts and properties of sound you are skimming through? He had no idea at the time and he was shown artists such as Pierre Schaeffer doing music concrete and he didn’t know about any of these experiments.

One of the most interesting experiments for him. Was when they started cutting parts of the tape and took away the attack of the envelope of the sound recorded. And the human ear wasn’t able to identify the type of instrument it was. So it took quite a long for us to understand the envelope and how important it is to us. When trying to design an imaginary sound with synthesis its difficult to imagine something that hasn’t been done before. It’s almost impossible once you know the principles of sound. It’s repeated over and over. Why do we react to specific types of sound?

When he started doing the permanent sound installation works such as blue moon there was no sound artwork released. Only people working with sound. There was nothing like sound arts. So where ever they could do these types of things was mainly media festivals that allowed them to take part.

With blue moon. He realised in Manhatten was full of huge skyscrapers. And the acoustics of the materials reflected sound in horrible ways that caused mass noise pollution. The harbour in Manhattan was beautiful but open. Which aloud all the sounds of the city to reflect to that specific spot. They found a location which was beautiful but conflating as it was open but had noise pollution.

The Blue Moon his installation had harmonic pipes which moved the tide and changed the pitch based on the blue moon which was on at the time of his installation. He has a few permanent sound installations that have been at their locations for years and he thinks it works because they have become part of their environment.

He speaks about the pebble he carries around to use to learn sound in general. He taps surfaces with his pebble and it becomes a reference point. And you can tap places and hear what it sounds like and after a while, you know what things sounds like. You can walk into a room and be aware of what things sound like. Letting the pebble fall or tap on walls. The space will be known and the resonance of the materials will be saved in your brain.

We did the pebble exercise and I found myself intrigued by the sounds and the resonance and curious to see what they sound like. I want to carry my pebble around now as a daily practice to listen more to my environment and how sound reacts with surfaces.

Q&A

In the sonic commons essay you write of how upon leaving the tuning tube installations, both yourselves and visitors would continue to hear a trace of those harmonies even after leaving the sites and walking around other parts of the city.

I was curious if this trace of the sound that would arise is something that only lasted momentarily, or if the work acts as a way of training the ears to perceive these harmonies in the city soundscape at will, in any moment?

He says you might notice this phenomenon when people work in music specifically. He speaks on chords and that after hearing a major chord you can never unheard it again. 

What was the technical process of harmonising ambient urban sound with tuning tubes?

What pushed you to go into the noise and create harmony out of it?

He says the tubes are acting like resonators. The tubes hanging on the wall, When they resonate you not only hear one note but you hear a spectrum of overtones. Overtones are defined in this installation.

Overall I found Sam’s work to be really interesting and specifically relates to my audio document as I want to speak on noise pollution. The well-being and also speculate on the role of a sound artist in sound designing cities. I think I want to do some more research into his work and include that in my paper as he is a literal working practitioner trying to combat noise pollution with permanent sound installations. It’s an interesting reflection in contrast to the last practitioner as her work was more about bringing awareness with sound installations to the planet and its issues whereas in this context it’s actively using noise pollution as a source to create sounds.

I thought I’d keep an update on my thoughts on my audio paper. Since the initial few ideas that I had on writing my audio paper. Either on escapism from reflecting my mental health blogs on my first-year website. To hip hop and how the culture uses rapping and freestyling as escapism from their existence. Escapism in sound art and the thoughts around using sound and art to escape negative thoughts and a sad reality.

I wanted to write an audio paper script that challenged my ideas instead of rehashing information I’ve gained over the years. To dig into something relevant towards the twenty-first century and with current social-political messages about current sound art practice. I thought about using sound and nature as escapism and took out a book from the library on escapism which lead me to think about nature. The book speaks on graphical escapism from original nature to cities and now cities to nature to feel safe.

This thought process lead me down to the path of acoustic ecology. how we react to our environment. How has that changed? How do modern cityscapes make us feel in terms of our wellbeing? Is our brain wired to experience such loud noise polluting sounds daily? These were questions and ideas I had towards my paper and something I wanted to research more but was unsure about.

I decided to pursue the idea of noise pollution our mental health reaction and how sound artists can play a role in sound designing cities. What are the effects of noise pollution? examples of sound designing cities.

I’m in the process of gathering information that will lead to the initial draft by the end of this week. Record the first rough recording next week and begin to whittle down the roughness and make it concise.

In regards to the tutorial, it helped me a lot to gage a plan on the structure which I need to also write before doing the script. The loose amount of time I want to speak on each subject and possibly convert it to words. The loose structure currently is to speak on noise pollution and how it affects our wellbeing. The ways we can combat this. And my thoughts and speculation on what role a sound artist can play in fixing the issues towards cities.

Richard Pheonix’s bio is this.

Richard Phoenix is an artist whose practice includes painting, music, writing, and collaboration. His current interests include looking at access, learning and structure and how art and music can create spaces that remove barriers and make new forms of normal. He looks to create nuanced and impactful ways to evaluate and communicate his role in different collaborations: as an associate artist within learning disability arts organisations; a musician within D.I.Y. punk bands; working with school groups within an arts institution; as a “student” within non-institutional arts education. Recently a part of the Conditions Studio Programme in Croydon, he also works for the learning disability arts organisation Heart n Soul as their Associate Artist. He was an artist-in residence within Tate’s Schools and Teachers department; founded the not-for-profit organisation Constant Flux and wrote DIY as Privilege: A Manifesto which was published by Rough Trade Books in 2020.

Fusing Time / Tentative Ideas

This piece is a piece of text adapted from Derek Jarman’s artist manifesto “Tentative ideas after one year at an Art School”. He speaks a lot of themes and ideas about how art schools teach us perhaps the wrong thing. Intercommunication and how arts must stay together. The lack of audience interaction.

“The painting school says you are not a painter. I am proud” I felt this deeply. I feel we are always told what to do. What the correct work is, how we should execute things. Art is always subjective there is no right or wrong. Better or worse.

I found the piece engaging and captivating. I always try to look beyond production and with this video even though the sound recording was not that great I decided to listen and embrace his words and the video rather than nitpicking. It felt at times a waffle of information and catchphrases. But the structured poetry words really hit home after I paid attention. It was like little messages of beautiful wisdom.

I really enjoyed the drumming and saxophone playing in the background of the vocals. Really set the scene.

D.I.Y.as Privilege – 3 Point Manifesto for Musicians

Richard Pheonix published a manifesto via Rough Trade Books about his experience working since 2006 with and supporting people with learning disabilities. He wrote the manifesto after watching a band play in Brighton on stage. They were all people with disabilities and he said it was one of the best gigs he’d ever seen.

The manifesto is about the privilege of doing DIY work. The idea that anyone can do it themselves. The manifesto speaks about how to rethink the idea of DIY scenes and work in the points back in the scenes. How they are not just a linear concept. Its fluid. I also feel like it’s been made to redefine how we can help people with disabilities. Amplifying voices and sometimes being invisible helps others be visible.

Here are some of my favourite manifesto points.

7. Don’t assume what’s accessible; ask and learn.

9. There is an audience for everything and ideas of what is ‘good music’ will always be political.

1. See the privilege in being able to Do It Yourself.

12. The more invisible you make yourself, the more visible others will be.

Post Lecture Reflection

Richard had a very calm aura about him. He seemed dedicated to everything he spoke about. It was very nice to see a practitioner stand behind his ideas and his work and seem really proud of what he’s doing.

Richard began the lecture by speaking on his background and growing up in Watford. At age 16 starting punk bands with his brother and his best friend. He began getting involved with the DIY punk scenes in the area and had a real sense of the community. Through all this work in the DIY scenes, he really came to understand the scene.

Richard then moved to Brighton and started working with Carousel. A charity that works with people with disabilities. He remembers the first important moment that sparked his thoughts on the whole idea of DIY privilege. He saw a band playing live in the Blue Camel Club. Disabled people were the complete band and it surprised him. He had never seen a band full of disabled people and it made him wonder why we never see that. He says it was one of the best gigs of his life. I can understand this statement he spoke of. When I think properly I can relate to what he’s said. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a live musical performance with solely disabled people. I wonder why that is. Do we as a society exclude these people? Or are the barriers too large for them to overcome that society sets?

After this moment he decided to start creating a scene and help disabled people. He contacted a finish band and got them involved in the London scene to tour with another UK band. He said he loved facilitating and wanted to help other people.

It came to a point where he moved back to London and one of his friends put out an open call for a zine for artists to do a one-page submission. He started thinking about his work and what he does and where he stands in the scenes. He wanted to engage in the scene that he came from and really talk to that scene and almost ask them and himself a question.

He did a one-page print relating directly to DIY scenes and what they are part of. What can they do to make the scene more accessible? The privilege was the idea. What is the DIY privilege? He decided to write a manifesto. He then felt he hadn’t written enough and followed up his manifesto with a full book pitch to Rough Trade Books. It was accepted.

He also speaks about chapter 9 in his book and the idea of mainstream music and his hatred for it. Coming from an underground scene he found it tasteless and not as interesting or as much depth as the other things he would listen to. Through working with a young disabled woman. He found himself loving the classic cheesy pop music he would hate when he was younger. This sparked his thought process to think about the privilege he has to be able to find and listen to underground music. Perhaps his hatred for it had been ignorant. Not thinking about why people like mainstream music. The access? The ease? This made me think about my own passions and weigh the differences between them. I’m questioning my own privilege.

He then spoke about what he does now and he works for a charity in Deptford helping disabled young people create music and he also paints and does other things. He showed us some of his work and I was really amazed. The band he works with who are entirely disabled have toured the world. I wonder why I’m amazed by this? Is it societies expectations of disabled people that have already given me an idea of what they are capable to achieve? Richard said something that really struct with me which was about the story the media chooses to present about disabled people. It’s always about a disabled person overcoming their disability or someone really struggling. It’s never just that they are normal people. It’s almost impossible to be normal in the media narrative of being a disabled person.

I found the lecture to be really uplifting. It gave me food for thought of my privilege and how society can hinder progress and make people disabled as Richard put it. I will put more accessibility decisions into anything I plan now. I think it’s important to be inclusive.

This audio document investigates the role of a sound artist in the fight against noise pollution. More specifically the noise pollution of cities. Through research of books and academic journals. Websites, podcasts and videos. And personal experience. I will reflect on the well being of the average person who is affected by noise pollution. The negative impacts it has on us and our mental health. Then speak on the ideas and speculate what role a sound artist has to sound design cities.

Åsa Stjerna’s bio is this.

Åsa Helena Stjerna  (born 1970 in Stockholm) is a Swedish artist using sound and listening as her artistic modes of exploration. Through her site-specific installations, she explores sound’s potential, making the embedded conditions and underlying narratives connected to a situation perceivable, drawing connections between past and present, local and global, as well as human and more-than human. By this she seeks to reframe the act of listening, evoking a sensibility of places as complex ecologies.

Also active as artistic researcher, she has been specifically interested in exploring the contemporary conditions of sonic situated practice and its ability of being transformative, i.e. what it actually means “to make a difference” in the era of Antrophocene and advanced capitalism. Guided by methodologies of  feminism, ecosophy and posthumanism she proposes an understanding of site-specificity as an aesthetic–ethical practice  and engagement between specific and diverse “bodies” with agencies—human as well as non-human, spanning across and connecting the material, social, discursive, artistic, and technical realms at the same time in a given situation. 

Stjerna has participated in an extensive number of exhibitions internationally, among other Klangstaetten Stadtklänge Braunschweig,  the Transmediale Media Festival, Berlin; the Nordic Music Days, Stockholm; the Ultima Contemporary Music festival, Oslo and the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Her works include several public permanents commissions: Earth Song (2020), commissioned by Stockholm Konst; Sky Brought Down (2017) Sahlgrenska university hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden commissioned by Västra Götalandsregionens konstenhet and The Well (2014) at Swedish Institute in Paris commissioned by the Public Art Agency Sweden.

Stjerna represents professorship sound art at Hochschule für bildende Künste in Braunschweig, Germany, 2020-2021.

Earth Song

The first project I looked into was Earth Song. In this project Åsa Stjerna captures the vibrations of the earth moving underneath our feet into this permanent sound installation. She claims the earth is singing underneath us. And through this sound installation, the installation acts as an interface to translate the Earth’s seismographic movements into a sonic experience.

I saw the photo of what seemed like a speaker system underneath these circular pieces of wood. I have an installation proposal coming up and all these visiting practitioners are helping me and influencing me into ideas quite a lot. I think the idea of connecting the speakers to a system that is already online detecting seismographic activity and then converting it into vibration and sounds is really fascinating. The only thing, in my opinion, is I’m not sure if the earth is actually singing. I would say instead that this is perhaps a deeper way for us to understand the movement of the earth. Humans have a tendency to ignore things that aren’t right in front of us, including climate change issues and worldwide famine and poverty. An installation like this really reminds us how not in control we are and the power of the earth.

I am interested to see what Åsa thinks about permanent sound installations and how you approach that idea. In comparison, let’s say for example a temporary sound installation whose intentions are different than something which is meant to be in public for the foreseeable future. How does a sound artist plan and think about that as an idea?

MARE BALTICUM

MARE BALTICUM is an artistic exploration into the sound pollution of the Baltic sea. MARE BALTICUM is a sound installation based on research into the Baltic sea taken from four different locations across the Baltic sea. Thirty-eight hydrophones were placed and recorded for one hour at the exact same time every day for a year to understand the sonic environments underwater. The recordings were then placed in a room where each loudspeaker represented one area of recordings from the Baltic sea. The sounds would merge and harmonise throughout playing to showcase this underwater sonic landscape.

I also watched the short four-minute documentary explaining the process and the final sound installation. I’m in the current moment doing research on acoustic ecology and this helps inspire my research for my audio paper. I’m doing it on noise pollution in cities and how sound artists can help design cities in the future to avoid negative outcomes. I never thought about the human activity to harm even underwater as I thought it would drown out through the ocean. I find this interesting, as humans, we usually think about us taking over landmass as what is ruining the environment which it definitely does but I also think we undermine the effects of noise pollution on animals. There have been studies into how animals change their instincts when faced with loud noise pollution from humans. Cicadas in cities are shown to make louder cries than in the wild as they have to combat noise pollution to mate.

I’m tempted to ask about her experience with this particular sound work and what she thinks about noise pollution amongst our existence and what a sound artist role could be. I guess this has opened up my idea that it might not just be a physical role for example helping to design cities but more of a showcase role. To perhaps also create works that bring attention to noise pollution.

Currents

Currents is also a piece I believe fits in a similar theme as the previous. Eighteen channel speaker system setup within the Oslo opera house in Norway. This piece is the “sonification of the North-Atlantic currents”. The eighteen channel speaker system is fed information from a Swedish research team which is continuously fed into the speaker system. The research team is studying and measuring the changing patterns of overtime of the flow of the North Atlantic currents which is directly linked to the ice caps melting. The information is then used to manipulate and control the sound textures created for this installation. The North-Atlantic sea was not used as a sound source but instead its information to control the sound textures within the opera house eighteen channel system. It also speaks on that this piece isn’t to bring answers just to bring awareness of the issues towards climate change.

This has brought a lot of information to my paper. Tied with the previous installation I think sound artists can and do have a responsibility to use their art to convey political and social issues. I think it’s a powerful medium to make people think without directly showcasing a message. Just to lay the ideas in front of people to realise what is going on. Again following up on the previous questions I want to ask I think I want to speak about, what role sound artists can play in bringing up social issues and political problems.

Post Lecture Reflection

Åsa Stjerna started the lecture by reflecting on her work for the last 15 years. She spoke on how sound and listening is her main forefront. She spoke about sound installations and her ideas of how to work with site-specific work. About engaging with the site and not just placing your speakers there and expecting to fit in. In one specific installation, she dug up one kilometre of dirt to fit in cables around a cemetery. And in her other work in the Oslo opera house, she used the wooden sculpture as a speaker stand. She believes that site-specific work is something that can’t be repeated and each site is to be treated as a new area and everything is done from scratch. I agree completely with her words here. About not just using a site but contextualising your installation to the site and how it can fit in. Maybe add or accentuate the site as it stands.

She also spoke her opinions on sound art and how when receiving commissions a lot of companies limit the artist in their work. She finds it frustrating that over the years since sound arts has been officially recognised as an art form it has shifted and been taken out of context. A lot of companies already have a predetermined idea of what they want from the commission. Of what sound arts are before even asking the artist. She believes commercial commissions are holding back and creating a negative aspect. They are not allowing the artist to think or create.

Another big part of her work is sonification. She enjoys representing non-audible information into something sonic. She also does a lot of research into this subject and believes there is a huge issue in sonification within the translation process.

MARE BALTICUM was also spoken about. The process of working with the scientist was through her PhD work. and she found herself and even the scientist fascinated with what she could do with boring numbers and data that they collect.

I also asked the questions that I thought of earlier. In regards to my first one, which was. What is the process of working towards a permanent or temporary sound installation? She spoke about how they are pretty much alike, although the length of time allows the creation or expression of different ideas that a temporary installation offers.

I found her work interesting but also a bit confusing and challenging for me to accept some thoughts. I liked that she used her work to speak about climate change issues but when asked with her thoughts of using large corporations who create the majority of climate change issues to make an installation about it she didn’t really speak on it. I also really agreed and it did make me think differently about site-specific sound installation work. Thinking more into how to fit in the site not just bringing or using the site. I believe this creates greater meaning.

I’ve created a basic instructional score for myself to follow at least initially for the first stage. I’m going to write a script and record myself to see how long the timings will be when doing my audio document. I don’t feel like implementing any instructions in this audio document unless maybe at the beginning or in certain aspects when I play extracts to make the listener reflect on how the soundscape made them feel. My goal for this paper is to bring the idea of sound design for cities into the conversation again.

Instructional Score:

Startup jingle music plays.
Introduce myself
Introduce the subject that I have decided to do my audio document
Then describe the thesis that I will be discussing.
Discuss the initial idea of noise pollution and its effects.
Reflect the notions of noise pollution with recorded soundscapes.
Play short extracts to immerse the listener in the effects of soundscapes.
Discuss the social-political issues of noise pollution.
Reflect on artists work such as Sam Auinger. (maybe extract of interview)
Discuss the design of cities currently.
Discuss how sound artists can play a definitive role in designing cities acoustically and with sound installations.
Conclude on my opinion of how important this should be.
Ending jingle plays.

I’ve created a short glossary of some terms I might wish to use in my audio paper. I’ll add more eventually but I feel like this will also help me during my scriptwriting.

Glossary

Acoustic Ecology – The study, communication and understanding of our relationship with our sonic environments.

Sound Design – The act of creating sound with a specific intention

Sound Installation – Creating a sonic experience usually timed and specific to a location.

Noise Pollution – Unwanted sounds that can cause harm or annoyance.

Soundscape – The ambient sounds and atmospheres that our cities produce.

Acoustics – The property & qualities of sound in a space.

Reverberation – The reflection of sound within its space. The resonance. When sound waves reflect and continue after the initial source.

Psychoacoustics – The psychology of sound and its effects.

Urban – Cities or people who live in cities.

Survey – To look closely or inspect a person object or environment.

Noise barriers – A structure designed to keep out unwanted sounds from inhabitants in the local area.

Diffusion – to scatter sound away from its reflection.