2022 in Sound
Introduction
This post contains assorted audio projects (in no
particular order) that I worked on during 2022. The purpose
of this post is mainly archival. All pieces are licensed
Public Domain (Creative Commons 0) and can be downloaded.
On most browsers this involves right clicking on the link
and saving the file. Feel free to use them in any way you
want!
Stereo Hydrophone Recordings
This section contains stereo hydrophone (underwater
microphone) recordings resulting from an interdisciplinary
collaboration investigating human-water relations in
Taipei, Taiwan (Jul – Aug 2022).
Jingmei River 景美溪, Daonan Riverside Park 道南河濱公園
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): ilmarikoria.xyz/jingmei
Songluo Creek 松羅溪, Datong Township 大同鄉
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): ilmarikoria.xyz/songluo
Tamsui River 淡水河, Guandu Pier 關渡碼頭
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): ilmarikoria.xyz/tamsui-guandu
Tamsui 淡水, Shizitou Fishing Platform 獅子頭釣魚台
This recording was shared at the 2022 CREATORS program, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, as part of the Ocean Encountering River: Aquatic Aesthetics of An Island project curated by Dr Hsieh I-Yi 謝一誼 (Taiwan NYCU). Note: This file is large (1.2G).
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): ilmarikoria.xyz/tamsui-shizitou
Tamsui 淡水, Shizitou 獅子頭
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): ilmarikoria.xyz/tamsui-shizitou-two
Xindian River 新店溪, Bitan 碧潭
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): ilmarikoria.xyz/xindian
52 Jia Wetland 52 甲溼地(五股排水), Yilan 宜蘭
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): ilmarikoria.xyz/yilan
Sound Portraits
Boat Rowing
This post presents a minimally edited field recording,
this time of me rowing a small row boat on Lake Saimaa in
Eastern Finland. This post is partly motivated by a
desire to reflect on my experiences over the past year
recording with binaural microphones. I have done most
such recordings with the same setup, namely using a
handheld recorder and in-ear omnidirectional
microphones1. What has
attracted me to this kind of setup is the way that I can,
in a sense, directly share what I have heard. Unlike
conventional microphones, my physiology (head size, ear
shape) will uniquely affect any captured audio, thus
making for a more “intimate” listening experience when
shared. Another factor is the unobstructed nature of
recording this way, being portable and inconspicuous (and
perhaps also less intrusive). Lastly, there is no
monitoring involved, with my body effectively being both
a microphone and a stand. In this sense, my own presence
is always apparent, if not only due to recording
imperfections, such as handling noise, etc. Through this,
I have certainly gained an appreciation for attentive
mindful listening, keeping my body as still as possible
for the duration of a recording.
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): e0fd96.xyz/boat-rowing
Sound Portrait of a Buddhist Shrine
This is a minimally edited field-recording2 of a small makeshift shrine
dedicated to Guanyin 觀音, on the way up to Hushan 虎山 in
Taipei. This post is partly inspired from re-watching a
documentary on acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton
[9].
The film highlights his method for capturing sound
portraits, the aural equivalent of unedited landscape
photography, with the “lens” being our microphone
[8]. He
argues against ’sonically Photoshopping’ such works,
drawing on the analogy of a fabricated landscape
photograph that haphazardly employs elements from
different parts of the world. Hempton suggests that
mixing different sounds together in a studio to make the
perfect portrait would not effectively communicate our
surroundings, and our relationships therein. For today’s
post, I tried to keep this kind of attitude in mind,
experimenting with microphone positioning and timing. The
recording presents a soundscape of a hiking trail,
wherein sounds of nature, people and ’electroacoustic’
religion permeate and help index one’s sense of place. In
the snapshot we hear, for example, the continuous
nianfo 念佛 emerging from a small Buddha-name
recitation device (nianfoji 念佛). This then becomes
layered with other electroacoustic sounds, such as those
from the nearby Zhenguang Zen Temple 真光禪寺. In terms of
edits, I reduced the original recording from seven
minutes to five, together with adding slight compression
and filtering.
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): e0fd96.xyz/portait-buddhist-shrine
Bamboo 竹
No commentary.
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): e0fd96.xyz/bamboo
Compositions from Field Recordings
Cottage Pier Composition
For this post I have compiled a short “drone” (or
noise) inspired hydrophone composition made during the
previous summer. All sounds are from Lake Saimaa
(Finland), recorded from a cottage pier with a single
Jez Riley
French hydrophone. As with my previous sound blogs, I
used a limited palette of effects, however, this time
with the addition of a delay. Today’s post arises from
considering potential research questions within sound
studies, and the ecoacoustics of water bodies and
underwater soundscapes. Not having a background in
ecology, I have been focusing on the contributions that
humanities scholars and artists have made in this area
[1,11,7]. I am
especially curious about the potential of what Kim De
Wolff and Rina C. Faletti et al. have termed as
hydrohumanities [3]. For
future posts, I plan to experiment more in this area,
utilising cultural approaches to the study of underwater
ecologies. This includes questions of environmental
change, and especially the rising levels of underwater
noise pollution worldwide [5]. I am
keen to read these issues through the lens of sound
epistemology (“acoustemology”), involving efforts to
understand the didactic role of sound and listening
[6].
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): e0fd96.xyz/pier-composition
Laptop Composition
This post stems from further explorations of the
“lowercase” [2] genre of
sound art, taking inspiration from the seminal work by
Steve Roden, Forms of Paper [12]. For this blog,
I attached a Jez
Riley French contact microphone to my laptop and
recorded any sounds picked up during a period of
university studies. The resulting taps and hums were then
liberally experimented with, however, keeping in mind a
limited set of effects as per my previous sound blogs.
The result is a somewhat hectic compilation of sound,
distantly reminding me of free Jazz improvisation, and
one of my favourite experimental albums by DJ Sniff
[14]. Looking back at
my interest in electronic music production, a reoccurring
theme has been a fascination with the “gaps” between
electroacoustic recordings. This involves minute details
that, when amplified, reveal unexpected textures and
further sonic “threads” to follow. All this, combined
with my seemingly unending interest with banal sounds
(refrigerator hums, air conditioners), gives way to the
following piece. While still a little rough, I look
forward to honing this kind of approach more in the
future.
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): e0fd96.xyz/laptop-composition
Quarantine Composition
In this post I have collected and pieced together
different sounds heard during my recent travel to Taiwan
and quarantine just north of Taipei. The motivation for
this (and future sound blogs), is to improve my
understanding of phonography informed soundscape
composition, involving minimal editing of field
recordings [17]. This is
in addition to improving my skills in composition, field
recording and digital audio workstations in general. To
facilitate this, I established some arbitrary ground
rules to guide this process, involving namely tools and
techniques used. Firstly, I only use sounds recorded by
me, and secondly, I limited palette of digital effects to
an equaliser, compressor, pitch shifter and reverb
2. Lastly, as this is a blog
post, I decided to set a hard limit of five minutes for
the final composition. While looped, samples were not
“played” via plugins (or MIDI sequencers), rather I
sought to maintain any original flow in the recordings. I
used layering liberally to enhance this, all the while
trying to keep in mind the original context and
recognisability of the sounds. Although still reminiscent
of a consolidation of “soundscape holiday slides”
[4],
this is an area that I nevertheless hope to develop
further.
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): e0fd96.xyz/quarantine-composition
Taipei Metro Composition
This post arises from consolidating and experimenting
with different field recordings of the Taipei Mass Rapid
Transit (MRT) system. During my time living in Taipei,
riding on the metro has been one of my favourite
occasions for urban listening. This is especially due to
the fruits of the 2015 “Taipei Soundscape Project,” an
urban sound design initiative for developing the acoustic
environment of the MRT [15,10]. Based on the
protogenic musings on soundscape design by R. Murray
Schafer (1933 – 2021) [13], a direct goal
of the project was to encourage awareness between space
and sound. These design choices have certainly made an
impact on me, and I always look forward to exploring more
of the soundscapes of transit in Taiwan. In this sense,
the following sound composition is also a humble nod to
Barry Truax’s 1996 piece Pendlerdrøm (“Commuter
dream”) [16].
Commissioned for a Danish audience, this “soundscape
composition” involves exploring themes of commuting and
transit, with recordings from the Danish Railway system.
In terms of this post, I kept the same limitations in
terms of effects as before, however, with the addition of
Xenakio’s
PaulStretch plugin, and also a delay effect. I
recorded all sound assets with a pair of Soundman OKM II binaural in-ear
microphones and my trusty Zoom H5.
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): e0fd96.xyz/metro-composition
Zazen Composition
In this post, I have explored some of the subtleties
of sounds arising and heard during Zazen. Taking
note of the “lowercase”
pieces of Steve Roden 3, this post
amplified subtle noises recorded during different
25-minute meditation periods. The scarcity of (musically)
interesting sounds meant that various electronic hums
(fridges, air conditioners), played an important role via
creating layered drones. As with my previous sound
blog, I kept the same restrictions in terms of
technology and effects, however, with the addition of the
LKC
Variator. This is a fantastic REAPER script that
randomises a sound file in terms of different parameters
(such as pitch, length, position). This created the
chaotic bleeps found through the composition, which could
potentially serve as an apt metaphor for the monkey
mind! I recorded all sounds with a Zoom H5, and a
pair of Soundman OKM II binaural microphones.
🎧 Listen (with visualisation): e0fd96.xyz/zazen-composition
References
[1] | Leah Barclay. Acoustic ecology and ecological sound art: Listening to changing ecosystems. In Milena Droumeva and Randolph Jordan, editors, Sound, Media, Ecology, pages 153--177. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. [ bib | DOI ] |
[2] | Peter Batchelor. Lowercase strategies in public sound art: Celebrating the transient audience. Organised Sound, 18(1):14--21, 2013. [ bib ] |
[3] | Kim De Wolff, Rina C. Faletti, and Ignacio López-Calvo, editors. Hydrohumanities: Water Discourse and Environmental Futures. University of California Press, Oakland, 2021. [ bib ] |
[4] | John Levack Drever. Soundscape composition: The convergence of ethnography and acousmatic music. Organised Sound, 7(1):21--27, 2002. [ bib ] |
[5] | Carlos M. Duarte, Lucille Chapuis, Shaun P. Collin, Daniel P. Costa, Reny P. Devassy, Victor M. Eguiluz, Christine Erbe, Timothy A. C. Gordon, Benjamin S. Halpern, Harry R. Harding, Michelle N. Havlik, Mark Meekan, Nathan D. Merchant, Jennifer L. Miksis-Olds, Miles Parsons, Milica Predragovic, Andrew N. Radford, Craig A. Radford, Stephen D. Simpson, Hans Slabbekoorn, Erica Staaterman, Ilse C. Van Opzeeland, Jana Winderen, Xiangliang Zhang, and Francis Juanes. The soundscape of the anthropocene ocean. Science (New York, N.Y.), 371(6529), February 2021. [ bib ] |
[6] | Steven Feld. Acoustemology. In David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny, editors, Keywords in sound, pages 12--21. Duke University Press, London, 2015. [ bib ] |
[7] | Stefan Helmreich. Underwater music: Tuning composition to the sounds of science. In Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld, editors, The Oxford handbook of sound studies, pages 151--175. Oxford University Press, New York, 2012. [ bib ] |
[8] | Gordon Hempton. Earth is a Solar Powered Jukebox. Quiet Planet LLC, Port Townsend, 2016. [ bib ] |
[9] | Gordon Hempton and Nicholas J. Sherman. Soundtracker: A Portrait of Gordon Hempton. Fou Films, 2010. Format: Digital Download. Total Time: 83 minutes. [ bib ] |
[10] | Jennifer C. Hsieh. Piano transductions: Music, sound and noise in urban taiwan. Sound Studies, 5(1):4--21, 2019. [ bib | DOI ] |
[11] | Bernie Krause and David Monacchi. Ecoacoustics and its expression through the voice of the arts: An essay. In Almo Farina and S. H. Gage, editors, Ecoacoustics: The ecological role of sounds, pages 297--312. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, 2017. [ bib ] |
[12] | Steve Roden. Forms of paper (remastered). line_053, 2011. Digital Download. 54:00. [ bib ] |
[13] | R. Murray Schafer. The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Destiny Books, Rochester, 1993. [ bib ] |
[14] | DJ Sniff. Ep. psi 11.02, 2011. Compact Disc. [ bib ] |
[15] | Cathy Teng. Open your ears and listen anew - redesigning the metro soundscape, 2018. Translated by Phil Newell. [ bib | http ] |
[16] | Barry Truax. Islands. Cambridge Street Records – CSR-CD 0101, 2001. Cambridge Street Records. CSR-CD 0101. Compact Disc. 63 min. [ bib ] |
[17] | Barry Truax. Soundscape composition as global music: Electroacoustic music as soundscape. Organised Sound, 13(2):103--109, 2008. [ bib ] |
Footnotes
Zoom H5 and Soundman OKM II binaural
microphones.
Equipment used: Zoom H5 +
2x Clippy XLR EM272 (mics ~25cm apart).