Vibrating Portraits
a project by Skyapnea / Nexsoundns58
Can we use sounds to portrait someone? Can we paint using vibrating air to obtain a sound that represents something? What if sound could be used to design features belonging to other sensory spheres? Choosing a particular frequency could help to evocate a thin nose? A granular light? The fragrance of morning after a sunrise full of small rain? The taste of a coffee?
All these questions were contained in a reflection about abstract music sent to nine sound artists and they were asked to start from those question marks to reflect about the possible uses of sound as a representative media. The result are some very different sound portraits, from the biggest eruption of history captured in the drones of italian composer Elio Martusciello(ReR Megacorp) to the processed field recordings of the Mimerlaven mine in Norberg by the Nottingham based Flotel(Expanding), from the free jazz tones of the audio picture of his father in law by Autistici(12k,Kikapu) to the micro rhythms constructed on sounds captured from a Lomo camera by Maps and Diagrams(PAUSE_2,Smallfish,Cactus Island). The other artists who answered this unusual call are Lawrence English (Room40,Quatermass,Baskaru,Cronica), Salvatore Borrelli aka (etre)(Baskaru), He Can Jog(audiobulb,hippocamp), Gregg Kowalsky aka Ossobuco (Kranky, Nosordo) and Motion (12k,Fat Cat) who all gently took part in this challenge.
Cover by Henrik Lundström: Front, Back, Label
- Gregg Kowalsky - Sicksealiner
http://www.greggkowalsky.net/
- Motion - Issin m
vibraphone & electronics by stefano tedesco
additional source material by emanuela de angelis
produced at motion
- Maps and Diagrams - Oval Opal
"Oval Opal is based around a form of photography called lomography and a method
of developing film called cross-processing which is deliberately
low-fi and results in over-saturated colors and off-kilter exposure. the process used for creating Oval Opal used a technique which mirrors
the above photographic techniques to recreate a song into something more unconventional,
saturated and low-fi."
- Lawrence English - Beyond surface,scatter skyline
written and produced by Lawrence English 2007
special thanks to leighton craig
produced and mastered at 158
http://www.lawrenceenglish.com/
- He Can Jog - Saint Paul
"Here's what I think of when I think of the city I was born in, Saint Paul. Open, green spaces. Small businesses and familiar architecture. Cats that shed their hair everywhere, lego sets on Christmas morning. I've done my best to synthesize my memories of Saint Paul into something that conjures those same feelings for me."
http://www.hecanjog.com/
- Flotel - Malmkärra mine, Norberg
portrait of Malmkärra mine, Norberg
"The track is built from an environmental recording that I captured at the end of the norberg festival in 2005. The sounds were generated by expanding records artists Benge, Cathode, Holkham, Tench & my good self. I was captivated by the reverb in the structure and its decay and thought how vividly the size of the space was captured in the recordings. A function of a portrait is to be recognizable as the subject being represented. I hope that anyone who has ever visited the Malmk?rra mine in Norberg would recognize it in my track."
http://www.myspace.com/flotel
- Elio Martusciello - Katmai
composed in 2007, suggestion: 1912 eruption of Katmai
http://xoomer.alice.it/eliomart/
- Autistici - Reflected from Edward Seed
"Edward Seed has a tremendous reserve of inner strength. Now in the later part of his life he tends his garden and is a fanatic follower of jazz. In his youth he was an accomplished jazz drummer, playing the clubs of his homeland across Newcastle upon Tyne. Ultimately he is a family man and his love for his wife and children is boundless. This piece through its accents, parts and transitions tries to capture an essence of Edward"
http://www.autistici.com/ - (etre) - Reprocessing the voice between memory, drone-memory, frequency-memory as a painting
http://www.freeglitch.com/