Sound Thought 2017 Conference Proceedings and Documentation
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Sound Thought 2017 Conference Proceedings and Documentation Published December 2017 ISSN 1742-4542 http://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/esharp/issues The views expressed in the articles belong to their authors alone. They do not reflect the position of eSharp, the University of Glasgow, or its College of Arts. Copyright © in all contributions resides with the contributors Contents Editors’ Introduction ........................................................................................................1 About Sound Thought 2017 .............................................................................................2 Pictures from the Sound Thought Festival .....................................................................4 Tracing the Liminal: Autoethnographic Strategies in Soundscape Art ......................7 Dr. Iain Findlay-Walsh ‘Like A Nightmare’: Dissimulation and Dispossession in the Andantes and the Blossoms ...............................................................................................................18 Rachael Finney Editors’ Introduction On the 1st of June this year, two weeks after the Sound Thought festival, the 25th issue of the University of Glasgow’s postgraduate journal, eSharp, and the sister publication The Kelvingrove Review were launched at an event at the university. eSharp is an international online journal for postgraduate research in the arts, humanities, social sciences and education, and it is run entirely by students, as is the Sound Thought festival. Therefore, the editorial team of eSharp and the organising committee of Sound Thought, decided to join forces in the creation of this special issue of documentation and proceedings from the festival (which included both artistic works and academic papers). Three contributors from the Sound Thought festival came and presented their works at the eSharp launch. First, we heard Julien Lonchamp’s acousmatic piece ‘Hologram (augmented)’, which was based on a recording of his previous piece ‘Hologram’. Next, we heard and watched Richy Carey’s essay film ‘Camphill’ and last, Ollie Hawker performed an improvisational piece for solo performer and electronics. The sonic and visual touch that the contributions added to the launch was truly appreciated after months of writing, reading, editing and fine-tuning the eSharp and The Kelvingrove Review publications. The theme for the twenty-fifth issue of eSharp was ‘Rise and Fall’. While the editorial team chose this theme in response to a year noted for loss, conflict, antagonism and resistance, it also covers the rise of and change in aesthetic epistemes, including the rise of sound art which has been evident over the last decades, and which Sound Thought is one of the main proponents of here in Glasgow. It has therefore been a great joy for both the eSharp/The Kelvingrove Review editorial team and the Sound Thought organising committee to cooperate on this special issue documenting the Sound Thought festival 2017, which we hope you will enjoy. We have compiled visual documentation from the festival along with two full-length articles which were presented as papers during the festival. Pernille Ravn (on behalf of eSharp), Lina Tobler & Kevin Leomo (on behalf of Sound Thought) 1 About Sound Thought 2017 Sound Thought has been a regular event in Glasgow since 2007, when current lecturer in music at the University of Glasgow, Dr. Drew Hammond, established Sound Thought as a means to promote the practice and research of music postgraduates. Since its inception, students from the University of Glasgow have endeavoured to establish Sound Thought as a forum for showcasing the work of postgraduates and artists in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment, comprising a variety of music and sound research, composition, and performance. Held in Glasgow’s foremost hub for the arts, the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Sound Thought 2017 featured the work of a record eighty delegates from fifteen countries during the three-day festival (10th-12th of May). This included fifteen current students and recent alumni from the University of Glasgow’s music department. There was an extensive array of work exhibited, including paper presentations, lecture-recitals, installations, audiovisual and electroacoustic compositions, and live performances. This year saw our most ambitious programme yet in an effort to mark the tenth anniversary of Sound Thought. The event was open and free to the public; we attracted an audience number of approximately seven-hundred people over the three days. Sessions were organised by themes pertinent to the creative process: Collaborate: Exploring spaces and engagement – connections over time and distance Articulate: Finding a unique voice within the creative arts – perspectives Integrate: Formulating aesthetic strategies through technological developments Sound Thought 2017 had several key aims. The first was to facilitate dialogue and collaboration amongst participants. We endeavoured to provide a forum for, and to raise the profile of, postgraduate work by ensuring the entirety of the event was free and open to the public. Also, we wanted to address issues relevant to contemporary arts practice and research. Our last aim was to strengthen links between Glasgow-based practitioners and the wider international arts community. 2 There was a vast wealth of practice and research presented, as well as musical discussion, at Sound Thought 2017. The occasion of the tenth anniversary of the festival demonstrated the necessity for such an event. It is vital for postgraduate work to be showcased outwith the university context; Sound Thought provides this platform. Once again, the festival has demonstrated the very high standard of music and sound research and practice taking place in Glasgow and throughout the UK and further afield. Wenxin Cui, Kevin Leomo, Hannah McGrath, Hannah Newham, Ela Orleans, Andrew Rae and Lina Tobler The Sound Thought Poster 2017 3 Pictures from the Sound Thought Festival Filip Sande & Vibeke Lunel (Nesodden, Norway) / Bubbletalk Micah Nye (Forth Valley College, Glasgow) / Lost and Found in the Volta Region 4 Frank Rossi (Mannheim, Germany) / So viele Farben Schwarz 5 . Ollie Hawker & Nick Smith (University of Glasgow) / For Two Heartbeats Sound Thought control room. 6 Tracing the Liminal: Autoethnographic Strategies in Soundscape Art Dr. Iain Findlay-Walsh (University of Glasgow) Abstract Listening in a present-day urban environment requires the reconciling of multiple orders of auditory space simultaneously. The prevalence of recorded audio transmission in everyday soundscapes fills the spaces of experience with additional ‘virtual’ spaces that listeners are tasked with making sense of, deciding between, and locating themselves amongst. In this sense, the listener's perspective can be understood as liminal – fluctuating on thresholds between actual and virtual environment, between sound, space and body, and between producing and receiving sound. The listener is (an) in-between space. In such a context, how might field recording and soundscape art practices, by turning the focus in on the recordist-listener, engage with changing relations between listening and aural environment? This article explores reflexive strategies in recording, producing, and presenting first- person environmental audio. Drawing on the ideas of Eric Clarke, Salomé Voegelin, and Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen & Anne Danielsen, and discussing pieces by Hildegard Westerkamp, Steven Feld, Christopher DeLaurenti, and Marc Baron, as well as my own recent pieces, I focus on soundscape work which explicitly re-stages and layers the personal listening experiences of the recordist. Through this discussion, I will present some specific ideas and approaches to recording technology, which have evolved through my own practice-as-research, highlighting strategies for generating sonic self-narratives that document, interrogate and re-present the listener’s changing relationship with sound and environment. Taken together, I propose that these methods and works can be understood in autoethnographic terms, and form part of a wider emerging discourse around reflexive soundscape work. 1. Introduction […] perceptual liminality is first and foremost a relation between one and an other; a space in which boundary is unresolved. (Dietz 2014, p.18) […] you’ve been Orbed if you’re sitting in a room and you get up and look out of the window and suddenly realise it was coming from the record (Ultrared 1997) The creativity with which autoethnographic pieces are often written, opens up a reflexive world in which the researcher/ researched join with the reader to create a story. (Grant et al. 2013, p.2) Listening in a present-day urban environment requires the reconciling of multiple orders of auditory space simultaneously. The prevalence of recorded audio transmission in everyday soundscapes fills the spaces of experience with additional ‘virtual’ spaces that listeners are 7 tasked with making sense of, deciding between, and locating themselves amongst. In this sense, the listener's perspective can be understood as liminal fluctuating on thresholds between actual and virtual environment, between sound, space and body, and between producing and receiving sound. The listener is (an) in-between space. In such a context, how might field recording and soundscape art practices, by turning the focus in on the recordist-listener, engage with changing relations between listening and aural environment? This article explores autoethnographic