This summer I was spending a lot of time researching and exploring sound and energies in the nature, our environment and working on methodologies of how to deepen our connection with it via sound art practice. The summertime creates opportunities for such research as it is possible to go outside somewhat comfortably if you prepare enough and spend a lot of time in the wilderness, practicing and experimenting.
First half of the summer was spent researching mosquitoes and other insects, exploring ways to attract and record them using light.
In the second half of the summer I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a week in a remote territory in Skujene, Latvia and host a workshop as a part of a plain-air SIMBIOZE, organised by Kefiirstudio collective. 10 participants joined me in this exploration with various levels of previous experience, some of them coming from music background and others were visual or interdisciplinary artists.
The week started with listening exercises and discussion about our relationship with sound, our understanding of it and its’ role in our daily lives.
The workshop consisted of multiple exercises and techniques, it was partially improvised and partially relied on previous preparation by me and the participants. A DIY sound art lab / studio was set-up in the middle of nowhere.
During the week we explored, we built contact microphones and wind harps to grasp and feel the materiality of sound. We did listening exercises and discussed sound, its’ role in our lives, perception of the world, relationship with sound and environment related to sound. We built simple oscillators, radio transmitters and antennas to hear the electromagnetic field around us. We explored materials and objects around us and what sounds did they make. We did a lot of field recording as a group and individually.
Some of the experiments resulted as experiences – passing, wonderous; as well as opportunities for learning and contemplation. Some of them resulted as a temporary sound objects and instruments. Some others were recorded and are in our hard drives now. Combinations of all that resulted in various performances by the participants – each of them completely different but all of them connected in the environment and time we spent creating it. The collective performance presented to the rest of the plain-air participants, the guests and the sky in the end was special, but the most special ones are always the ones not planned or scripted; the moments of genuine surprise and delight when discovering something, hearing something previously unheard or unnoticed.
