My friend Alex Messer approached me with an opportunity to be a sound supervisor on his module for his Ba Photography degree. Moving image.
I was given the film treatment about the idea. The idea was based on Alex and his colleague’s ideas about wales. One of their colleagues grew up in wales and has experienced the deprivation of the country.
I read into the brief and really liked the idea, it gave me thoughts of using the atmospheres to really bring the place to life and showcase its vacancy.
Alex told me they had booked an Airbnb for 5 days in wales and for me to prepare my equipment to take to record sound on set. I decided to take the sound devices mix pre 8. MS set up with the 418 Sennheiser. I also took with me a set of DPA 4060 Omnidirectional microphones. I chose the 418 for directing the mics at specific sounds. The area we were going to was going to be very rural, even farmland at times and I felt the super-cardioid polar pattern allowed me to capture things more directly, and with the side figure of eight polar pattern for a wider range. The DPA mics were for a great field capture. They capture an area amazingly and are very hot on the gain. I’m going to be using the coat hanger method from Chris Watson.
The three days recording went well. Numerous locations in extreme / casual weather. This trip taught me even more so about gain structure than the previous work. Recording in extreme wind and figuring out how to avoid it. Recording animals and landscapes. Handling equipment and organising my bag. What to bring on a hike to record audio and how to look after my equipment on a solo mission. Making sure the files were backed up and safe. Supervising all audio on set.
I’ll update once we’ve started working on the post production. I’m waiting on the first draft to come through before I begin editing the audio.
An artist based in London, Rebecca Lennon works across media to produce large-scale multi-channel sound and video installations, musical releases, performances, texts and visual scores. Using rhythm and musicality within video and sound editing to disturb narrative flow, Rebecca evokes a psychological and neurodivergent relationship to language, words, loops and noise – meditating on memory and its voices, while spatialising layers of sound, vibrations and visceral texts that fragment and repeat. Recent video and texts focus on entanglements of ownership, forms of housing (and their collapse), embodiment, porosity and questions of what constitutes a voice. Rebecca graduated from the Slade School of Art London MFA in 2010, and is a visiting lecturer at universities such as Arts University Bournemouth and Royal College of Art, London. Upcoming/recent exhibitions include: Cafe Oto, London, 2022, Galeria Duarte Sequiera, Braga, Portugal, 2021, Kaunas Film Festival, Lithuania, 2020 and Whitstable Biennial, 2018 with solo shows at Southwark Park Galleries, London 2021, Primary, Nottingham, 2020, Almanac, Turin, Italy, 2019 and Matts Gallery, London, 2018. Rebecca recently featured in ‘On Care, an anthology of artists writing’, published by MA Bibliotheque, 2020, BBC Late Junction 2019/2020 and on a collection of artist interpretations of scores by writer Salomé Voegelin, released on vinyl in 2022. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Goldsmiths across departments of Fine Art and Music.
DUMB 2019
I find this work not that engaging. I think art is subjective so I’m not saying I don’t completely enjoy it. I get her piece to an extent, it speaks about the lesser needs of the working-class and minorities. But I find this sort of performance to be clichè. She repeats the statement and shouts dumb after. That the statement she makes is DUMB. I also find that from reading her bio she is more of a live performer and her installations and multi-channel work might have enhanced this piece more. I’m listening in stereo currently so I’m not as immersed as she might have wanted to with her ideas of this piece.
Liquid i
This piece has the use of the voice, and most definitely would have also been multi-channel. You see mosquitos flying and the buzz of the wings emulated by I assume Rebecca. The majority of her work isn’t described on her website simply shown and perhaps this is also intentional. As stated previously her work is mostly live and has multi-channel speakers in the room to enhance what’s being shown. And as much as I like abstract work I don’t enjoy this sort of work without a context. I think the visuals and the audio by themselves are interesting and not terrible but overall it’s not something I would go out of my way to watch.
I’m interested to ask her about her live installation work. The thought process behind it. Is it site-specific like the other visiting practitioners or simply how to adapt your ideas to the space?
Post Lecture Reflection
Rebbeca begins by speaking about her work Mouths. She performed behind a red screen and this is because she likes to obscure herself in performances to produce distance. For Rebbeca rehearsal is form. She likes to think of her work as rehearsals, sketches or taking different forms. She wanted to create a relationship between her writing and her performance and she used contact mics on her throat to portray her anger at being silenced.
There are many themes in her work, boundaries, landlords and the tenant appears in this work of different kinds of ownership and containment. Her mouth is covered and instead, you hear another mouth.
She was working with layering voices in stereo. She tested her idea of six speaker poly performance and found it incredible to work with. Speakers were arranged in a circle while viewers stayed in the middle, the vocal dissociation given by the speaker set up created in an immersive experience.
Rebbeca work is very interesting and multi-layered. I find her ideas quite fascinating as they truly are beyond my own understanding. The fine art aspect is something I’ve always been pushed away from due to exterior factors affecting me. Such as social and political settings involved with the higher fine art society. But after re-listening I do think there is always something to take from someone’s work. I think her motivation and choice of doing what she lives is inspiring in itself.
Cedrik Fermont is a composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, independent researcher, concert organiser and curator who operates in the field of electroacoustic, noise, electronic, experimental and improvised music since 1989, born in Zaire (DR Congo), he mostly grew up in Belgium and currently lives in Germany. Through his label and platform (Syrphe), Cedrik publishes and promotes electronic, experimental and noise music from Asia and Africa and to a lower extent Latin America. His writings focus on music from Asia and/or Africa: Sound Art in East and Southeast Asia. Historical and Political Considerations (with Dimitri della Faille) (2020), Power through networking: Reshaping the underground electronic and experimental music scenes in East and Southeast Asia (2015-2016), An introduction to electroacoustic, noise and experimental music in Asia and Africa (2014-2015), Not Your World Music: Noise In South East Asia, book written and edited together with Dimitri della Faille (2016), winner of the 2017 Golden Nica – Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Musics & Sound Art category.
Cedrik has performed and collaborated with artists across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He also performs in several projects such as Axiome, Tasjiil Moujahed, Marie Takahashi & Cedrik Fermont, etc.
A singularity of noise music in Asia and Africa.
I read a small four-page essay on the ideas of western society and the alienation of noise music from Asia and Africa. Some of the points made me consider even my own listening habits as I tend to mainly listen to western and south American music. But also why I don’t consider African or Asian countries versions of the music I enjoy.
I also read online while finding this essay about how Cedrik really fights for the awareness of Asia and Africa to be included in conversations. The western world can really isolate developing countries in their work and attempt to make them not relevant has succeeded in the past.
Now the question I have is. Are our western societies self-aware of this? Or just choose to ignore it?
This is not intentionally music’. A Cedrik Fermont Interview
Cedrik speaks on his daily life, working on the label and touring. He is a noise nomad he says, touring the world and engaging in cities he finds himself in. He usually likes to engage with the audience, the organisers and the politics of the area he finds himself in. He finds when touring he is so much more aware of the scenes around the world and in his head he can contextualise this when he researches about the cannon. He finds that a lot of non-western artists are left out of the narrative when speaking about the foundations of scenes.
Cedrik speaks on his love for field recordings. He says they are more detailed than a photo or a film. For him when hearing a recording it can bring him back to the place where he recorded it or even imagine how a place would be like when listening to someone else’s recordings. They are more vivid than a fixed image or film.
I agree with this so much. Field recordings really immerse you within the environment recorded, especially if done with specialisation in mind. I find that it reminds me of having my eyes closed and just embracing the atmosphere. I find field recordings to have benefits of wellbeing if playing back sounds of non-urbanised landscapes.
He also speaks on his music and experimental sounds. He starts by stating that music and performance have always been part of him. Since a young age, he’s sung and played instruments and his projects as an adult has reflected his broad love of sound. He is currently working on numerous projects under different aliases with different genres. He likes to experiment. He doesn’t want to copy what other people do and to him, breakcore was total freedom. He could do anything to an extent add jazz or punk. Make it political or a parody. Or just have fun.
I respect his views on creating, after all when one is making art. I feel it’s a separation between the logical thought driven process and the free creative left part of the brain. I can understand his views completely and I am really interested in his music. I’m going to find some to listen to.
Cedrik describes this album as a different approach than his current workings. Since 1989 he has used acoustic sounds in his work although mostly electronic, this album is the first solo album where it has been mainly acoustic sounds and a few electronic.
Passage, the first track made me feel like I was in a dark cave system. The rolling sound which panned around the headphones gave me a sense of space and rhythm alongside the sub frequencies coming in. I liked the continuous sounds playing the rolling feedback tones. I could sense his curiosity about sound through this song as it was all acoustic.
Détails, the second track. I found the horror type noises to bring my awareness back to myself. In noise tracks, I find to drift away and embrace the environment that’s being created. Mainly a lot of noise music tends to abuse the idea of noise and go all into the loudness and extremes. Cedrick’s piece in this really does touch on that but has considerable self-awareness shown in his production. The sounds although still noise, ease your ears and thoughts into this environment that slowly feels like it consumes you.
Post Lecture Reflection
He begins his lecture by stating it’s important for him that in his bio it states hes from Congo. It’s something that he is proud of and wants people to know. Cedrik Grew up in Belgium and in his area/scene, he was the only brown kid in electronic music. He would ask himself why no one else was interested in this music that looked like him and he couldn’t understand. He then starts listening to alternative electronic music in 1986, he was 14. In 1989 he started his first band still in while still in Belgium. 1991 he started a tape label with no money, no internet. It was different, There was a Mail art network to trade and buy and sell cassettes or vinyl. And this is how he would discover alternative music.
He then started getting more music that was electro-acoustic from his mail network. mostly from northwest Europe and north America, hardly anywhere else. Nothing from Africa, Latina America, Asia. Even from eastern Europe. It was very difficult, especially without the internet. For these places to not have a scene it can’t be true he says. There must be people in these places
He then started making flyers in envelopes of tapes he shipped. On the flyer, he would state that he wanted people in whatever country, Africa Asia etc to submit for compilation. It would take months later to get an answer this was due to no internet. Reaching people outside of popular locations was difficult. and he then went on to release a few popular compilations.
Cassette human archives vol 1. Global alternative electronic, improvised music, noise compilation was the first one. And looking back, it was not really global in regards to what happens now. But back then it was difficult. In the first compilation, there were twenty-five artists, mostly from Europe in this compilation. Not enough from other places and although he was happy he couldn’t find more Asian & Africa.
In the early 2000s, affordable, accessible internet arrived which allowed him the opportunity to dive way more into his research and although it still took him a while because there was not enough information available on an academic or independent level.
Cedrik studied electroacoustic music in Belgium in the late 1990s, one module was the history of electroacoustic music with artists such as Pierre Schaeffer and it continued on. But to him, It felt odd. There must have been people before that for example John cage. Or from other countries. He had heard about Egyptian composers and none were mentioned. So because this history module existed, it gave him questions which he pursued.
So thanks to the internet, he managed to discover much more than what was written in most books. He went on and on with ongoing research and the internet made getting Access to music from non-western countries much easier. Soul seek was dedicated to electronic music and alternative music in general, it was a file sharing software. Some people sharing files were not westerners, but from places like Thailand, China. And these people had a huge collection of music, music from their surroundings and also western music.
He had a chat with someone from china, who had a huge collection of experimental and industrial music from western society. So this made him realise that in china they know what the western world is doing in regards to music, but we in the western world don’t know about what they are up to.
So on this platform, there were people sharing punk music from Iran and Thailand. You could buy and swap music and he started buying from there but this was not always well distributed. People didn’t know this music existed and the best way for him to start publishing these compilations he had been working on ways to go there as much as he can.
In 2003 he goes to Istanbul, he thought there must be people doing alternative music electro etc in turkey, so he somehow found noise / experimental noise concerts in turkey. So that’s the first step for himself. He stayed about a week in Istanbul and performed there. It was difficult as he got kicked out by a venue owner who said it’s not music what he’s performing and it was scaring customers away.
In Turkey, He performed for 20-25 people. It was all breakcore/noise music, a lot of those attendees were musicians and they would stay after the show and talk and share their music through CDR & cassettes. They would say that no one comes here, you are one of the first ones, but to Cedrik it was very odd, its connected to Europe and it’s not that far away to be this isolated.
So in 2004, he goes Thailand. On Soulseek, he got in touch with someone from Thailand. So he wrote, hey is anyone interested in booking me for a show in Thailand, I’m going to Bangkok. So he managed to get booked in an art gallery with other people. Most people who attended the concert never heard this music, and out of curiosity came and listened.
Bang the name of the organiser said if he wanted to go to Vietnam he could put him in touch with people. So Cedric flew for 6 months in south-east / east Asia, to perform and meet as many people/artists as possible and to see if he could find sound arts and experimental music and so on. He brought 70 records, tapes and CDs back home.
Once he returned he published the compilation two years later, that included artists from Asia and the middle east and Africa where he went a bit later. He wanted it to be an archive as he had never found any collection of so-called electronic and experimental music from Asia and Africa. No one had published something like this before, and there were previous compilations in the 70-the 80s of electroacoustic music. But they always had big named composers and to him with his compilation, he felt it was a very important archive. It was important to him because people said it was a waste of time to go visit these places. Saying he would find nothing but he did.
So for him, this was an important document, this compilation was called, Beyond ignorance and borders. It was ignorance to pretend no one outside the west was making this music. So all this pushed him to document and travel as much as he could, unfortunately not filming as he couldn’t afford it. But he would take notes, and interview where possible.
So now Cedrik runs a radio show and his label releases compilations and albums of artists from Asia and Africa. So he’s been accumulating an insane amount of documents and above all thanks to the internet.
His huge document and archives have led him into deeper questions and to find out why it’s so own known and isn’t a part of history. Why isn’t it taught in universities art centres etc? To him it’s the same old story, the west has colonised and written off a huge part of the history of people that aren’t western. And we need to update this history of sound arts & electro-acoustic etc.
In the twenty-first century, we can’t pretend that we can’t access this information. So he’s made his own database, not the easiest. But he started many years ago and when he put it online it only contained only a few hundred references. So he got a lot of responses from people telling him, hey this person is missing. So it pushed him to go further.
I found Cedriks lecture engaging and very much authentic to himself. Sometimes there can be a feeling I assume for these practitioners to be aware of what they are communicating. Perhaps to reframe themselves to an academic setting and dilute their topic for the sake of academia. I really enjoyed Cedriks lecture and found it at times making me question what I do in my own practice and my listening habits.
I spent the last few days giving myself a break from listening and watching the piece I’d made. I had a crit and showed my work to Sam. He gave me advice that really stuck with me. He spoke mainly about the sound mixing being too loud with the footsteps and cloth sounds, as well as in the beginning the atmosphere sounds changed a lot when zooming into the paper rustling. Apart from that, there wasn’t a lot to change.
I did a previous session on Friday and did the editing and did volume automation on each track to take everything down a notch as after taking a few days out I felt the same as Sam in relation to my mix.
On Saturday the 4th of December I spent the day at university referencing my mix to the Genelecs. I found the hiss hard to remove. I did a basic eq on a few channels and compression. As well as a limiter for the master. I did find that my initial foley recordings were perhaps a bit too quiet and I had to turn the preamps incredibly loud to record them. In hindsight, I should have recorded the foley and sound effects louder so the hiss from the preamps wasn’t so prevalent. Although my thoughts at the time were about mimicking the actors on screen. I didn’t anticipate the hiss being this much of an issue. Apart from that, I’m really content with my work. I worked incredibly hard and did a lot of editing and recorded all the sounds myself which was a great practice, I’ve learnt a lot.
I’ve gone back slightly to the drawing board after having a few sessions with academic support. Rethinking about my planning and research. I also watched a few videos on other people explaining their research process for essays and there was one that really stuck with me.
First, create a table book name or source, then the quote or bit of information you wish to use or find interesting or even gives you ideas to speak about. Then the page and finally the publisher.
See example.
I’ve been doing research through a few books on noise pollution and its ideas/themes. I’m not at a stage of continuing my script draft/essay and if parts are needed to add to it.
Last Night I focussed on the most delicate part which was in the scene the mother is looking for pills, she finds the one she needs and rolls the pillbox towards her and gives it to her child.
The first part of the recording was the pillbox being moved and then rolled. I searched through the foley area looking for something similar. I started with using little stones and putting them in a plastic cup but when hearing and doing the foley I found the stones to be too low pitch and sound heavier than what is on screen. Mathias came to help me and offered me this box of pins in a plastic container and it sounded very alike. I recorded in time to the video and captured what I needed.
I then concentrated on the roll that pillbox does, I found a plastic lid and rolled it on the glass of the painting. As the pillbox rolls on a glass shelf. I did a few attempts and it sounded perfect on screen.
Then the last part of the moving of toy at the very end before he drops it off the metal shelf. I layered up some plastic pieces into a bowl and scraped and moved them in time on this piece of metal I found. It sounded ok, not perfect. I will need to do a bit of post-editing to make it work. Again, I feel like I need to do a long sound editing session and see what else I need to record instead of just recording a lot of sounds.
Today I planned to transfer all the recordings I did on logic back to pro tools. I bounced out individual stems of each channel and transferred them into the pro tools session.
I then imported the atmospheres and got to create a rough edit. I colour coded each group category and edited the gain structure on pro tools.
I also trimmed the audio files and left a little tail on each side for when I get to the real editing stage. This was just a rough edit as I wasn’t sure exactly where I was in the whole process. I had a Pro Tools file with feet sounds and a Logic file with other sound effects as the video engine doesn’t work on my M1 Macbook Pro.
I now feel a little more aware of the whole clip and where I stand with work. In terms of recording, some of my foley work has spill of bass from the synth bench and the comp room of other people using the spaces. I also found my interior atmos weren’t too good and everything has a lot of hiss. Now, this is without any mixing so I’m not being too negative. I would say I only need to re-record a few things and should be on the editing/mixing stage in the next day or two.
Today I continued on from last weeks session. I needed to record the rest of the cloth tracks. I brought with me denim jeans to record the sounds of the denim jacket the daughter was wearing. I also brought with me my housemate’s knitted jumper for the mother. I performed the clothing sounds differently to the child from yesterday. As the daughter was older and more aware she moved more quietly. And the mother even more so. She was the most careful.
Foley solo session
I also recorded the child drawing on the floor. To create this noise I brought my paintbrush and recorded the sound of the wooden handle and the actual brush in synch to his movements. I didn’t have a crayon so had to improvise. I will layer these sounds in post.
Foley pit & Paint Brush
The next session and all I have left to record is the toy moving on the shelf and the mother handling the pills before passing it to her child. This will be the most tedious foley part yet.
Andrew Pierre Hart’s practice is inter-disciplinary based in painting. The main focus of his work is the symbiotic relationship between sound and painting. His practice is an ongoing rhythmic research and play of improvised and spontaneous generative processes, through various mediums: sound, video, performance, found object and image, language, photography and installation, and themes of: improvisation, collective memory, cross-modality, spatialisation, musicality and rhythmology .
Andrew studied MA Painting at The Royal College of Art 2017-19 and BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art 2014-17. Hart is an associate lecturer on the Painting pathway at Camberwell College and Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art .
Andrew is currently showing at Mixing it up Painting today at The Hayward Gallery. He also presented ‘S:3 E:3s The Alter-native Trace ( Bass and Space)’ a series of paintings at Frieze London. He was part of ArtAngel’s ‘Thinking Time ‘ 20/21 and a resident at Beaconsfield Gallery.
Liquin Live ( Andrew Hart & Janek Nixon) in Session
Liquin Live ( Andrew Hart & Janek Nixon) in Session @ ‘ The Grid of The Secret Blueberry Paintings & Other Documents-Degree Show 2019 Royal College of Art –
I listened to this live performance with Andrew was involved in. It’s described as.
I wonder how these speakers were built according to specifications? and the actual performance context. There isn’t a lot on this except a 1hour audio clip which I listened to for about ten minutes.
The sounds were captivating. Sometimes vocals would come in and out of the recording. It felt emotional and perhaps improvised? It would be cool to see the actual set-up as it sounds really interesting, especially the handbuilt speakers.
Sound Painting
I found a section on his website called Sound Paintings. I read that it was his reaction to sometimes albums other times his friends improvising on their instrument. He wants to capture his emotional state reacting to the music.
I found these paintings really simple on the surface but I felt they conveyed a deeper meaning. I would like to know what the source was that made him paint these.
I find this sort of idea of transmuting one thing into another really interesting. Reminds me of the other work of Åsa Stjerna. She did sonifying the data of scientists into sounds for installations. This is the reverse. Taking audio and morphing It into something else. I’m curious to hear how this was developed.
Post Lecture Reflection
Andrew begins his lecture by speaking on his love for sounds, the rattle of a bike. The turntable and the record, he states he loves the shape and design of these two things.
One of his earliest works would be that he would find spaces that were empty in university. And he wanted to almost do graffiti but not leave marks or stains. He was interested in the space that was dormant and then he would throw balls down a slanted flooring to hear the acoustics in the room. He was interested in space and how it reacts.
Another piece was a video he filmed in Amsterdam with bikes riding past. It felt like a static sound walk. Tuning in and out were themes in his ideas. The space became something alive and you can see and feel the rhythm. How do we make our own sounds then? That’s the next step for him.
The ideas of listening, through the pandemic. The black lives matter, the storming the capital. Were all important themes in his work over lockdown when he received his artist residency.
He was given an arts residency during the pandemic and he wanted to relate it to a few things, one was the idea of the past and improvisation. Using stones as cavemen were improvisation. He invited a few artists to collaborate in these spaces. People that hadn’t performed in over a year.
He invited the artists to sit down and communicate without speaking. He would ask questions and they would reply without lyrics. The reply was interesting, he felt and knows that music is another language and it was interesting. carving out space, if you’re trying to create a new space. Try to shape it to be different. he would think about pathways and how we can relate and connect through doing. And to him, sound arts is a new pathway in a way especially in fine arts.
I found Andrews work captivating. He uses sound in a different context to the other practitioners so far and combines it with his other disciplines. Painting and turning his favourite albums into artwork was a good idea. Other uses of sounds in spaces and installation work I haven’t seen before.
I think one of the most interesting parts of his lecture was his self-awareness. As someone like himself who isn’t formally trained in audio, he really approaches it completely from fine art. An almost relieving thought process occurs when there are no boundaries set.
I did a foley session yesterday with Raul and forgot to export the files back to my laptop so I lost around three hours of work. We mainly did foley for cloth and a few little SFX in the clip. I decided to go in alone today and redo what we did. Try and be more efficient and see if it was possible to record alone.
Foley setup
I had my laptop hooked up via HDMI to the tv and a smaller interface to record the 416 in. I also had to use Logic Pro X to record as the Pro Tools video engine doesn’t work yet with the new M1 chip MacBook Pros.
I began by recording cloth entirely for the smaller boy child. He was wearing a sleeveless puffer and my jacket had the same texture as his. I record about 5-6 scenes and performed them with my jacket.
I then recorded an SFX of a bottle being opened and poured into a child’s mouth. I had my own water bottle to do this. I made sure to follow the script and concept of the movie and really keep the movements minimalistic and not loud.
I then recorded the atmosphere scene at the beginning of the film clip. There was a bag of tape of different thicknesses and materials in a basket. I used the thinner brown tape for the wind rustling grass, and the thicker black tape for the leaves moving in the second scene. The thinner brown tape had a lighter gentler sound in contrast to the other tape.
I also recorded the sound of the toy falling off the shelf which the daughter catches. I felt it would have more than one layer to it. I recorded three parts. An apple mouse for the light plastic sound when caught. A large clock for the more beefy sound of the toy. And a light layer of this thing I can’t describe but it had a rattle to it which a toy would have and I will add that as a final layer.
I also recorded a small plastic cup, in the scene the small child is on a milk crate trying to grab the rocket ship toy. I felt like the crate would be quietly creaking. I also recorded and squeezed the cup as an SFX.
The last recording I did today was of the wanted posters, the posters fluttering on the board. There was a notebook full of old paper that felt and sounded like the ones on screen. Not quite perfect A4 paper but the right consistency and texture. I recorded a few as I want to layer them up to immerse the scene.
Now I need to do at least a rough edit and plan the next foley session tomorrow. I’ve got a lot done today and plan to do the rest of the recordings alone. Unless someone decides to help me as I managed to be a lot more efficient.
