Dreamlands curated by Radio Arts
Dreamlands is a series of radio works by international artists commissioned by Radio Arts, an independent artists’ group who promotes radio as a site for creative experimentation.
The series explores the relationships, possibilities and potential of radio. This selection for radioCona:wolFMoon includes four works.
Michael McHugh/Noizechoir The Dream of the Dream Scientist
Carlo Patrão Down The Royal Road
Anna Friz Two Sleeps
Olivia Humphreys Dreamlands
Remote series curated by Anna Friz/Konrad Korabiewski (commissioned by Skálar FM for Soundproof on Radio National Australia)
‘Remoteness’ describes the experience of existing outside of the geographical and cultural centres of power or a feeling of having journeyed far away from populous areas across rough seas and rugged, far-flung landscapes to reach a so-called end of the earth. The Remote Series aims at expanding this definition beyond a colonialistic sense of centre versus periphery, and to consider the defining feature of remoteness as the experience of distance, however minute or vast, in time or in space.
Fernando Godoy Cu
Tumi Magnússon Voyage There and Back
Jana Winderen Eye to the Sea
Anna Friz/Konrad Korabiewski Trilogy for Night and Radio
Jean-Philippe Renoult/DinahBird The Hum
tobias c. Van Veen city_sound_a_sleep
Stéphane Claude Waves Array
Reveil Soundcamp
works:
Michael McHugh/Noizechoir, The Dream of the Dream Scientist, 2015, 60:00
The Dream of the Dream Scientist used biomedical data examining brain patterns during sleep, re-interpreted vocally through graphical scores. This eerie sound portrait of the sleep centre and the scientists working therein consists of building choral pieces performed and recorded by the Noizechoir with an explanation of the process and the science that underpins it.
Carlo Patrão, Down The Royal Road, 2015, 28:00
Freud described dreams as the royal road to knowledge of the unconscious – a pathway to the essence of wishes and desires of the human mind. This radio piece presents an intimate portrait of a group of dreamers trying to salvage information from their dreams by recalling transformative dream experiences. Also, a group of five psychotherapists share their views on dreams and how they can be helpful in the clinical practice to gain a deeper understanding of the patient. Dream debris, free association, and dream theory float through the ether of radio waves, exploring the concept of newness in dreams and the bridge between the unconscious and waking life. https://zeppelinruc.wordpress.com/
Anna Friz, Two Sleeps, 2015, 26:28
In Air and Dreams, Gaston Bachelard writes of the transformational potential of dreams and reverie, where he posits dreams and psychic phenomena as being marked by verticality, by rising and falling, as life cannot be lived horizontally. Bachelard proposes an aerial imagination, with the potential for rising, ascent, and sublimation. The inevitable fall tends toward water, the subsequent ascent back into air, again and again. I often have recurring dreams, where the scenography differs but the phenomena repeat: huge tidal waves pouring over a mountain, whales rising up in cavernous pools underground, or I have an experience of flying which is most like doing the breaststroke in the air, sometimes achieved by falling and not landing, but floating before ascending. The logic of dreams is immune to paradox, and effortlessly warps one scene into another. Two Sleeps offers two elements, a dream of air and and a dream of water, and my nocturnal efforts at verticality, falling and rising. http://nicelittlestatic.com/
Olivia Humphreys, Dreamlands, 2015, 26:12
This work looks at four bereaved people’s experiences of the dead returning in their dreams. These poignant, powerful visitations can both comfort and disturb the dreamer; they provide a final chance to say goodbye to loved ones, but also a painful reminder of their absence. http://www.oliviahumphreys.com/
Fernando Godoy, Cu 30:00
El Teniente is the world’s largest underground copper mine, located in Cachapoal Province in the Chilean Andes, 7,500 feet above sea level. The mine has been in operation since 1819, and boasts 3000 kilometres of tunnels and more than 10,000 workers. At the mine’s surface is the ghost town of Sewell, a place where the mine workers lived during the past century until the 1970s, but underneath copper (or Cu on the periodic table of elements) is still being extracted as the primary export and pillar of the Chilean economy. Chilean sound artist Fernando Godoy was given permission to record El Teniente for three days. Godoy’s acoustic experience of the mine was marked by the repetitive and constant sound of machinery but also by the sound of rocks, metal, the drone of tunnels, its electricity system and the low frequencies of sounds traveling through the tunnels. Cu was made exclusively with mine field recordings, with no sound manipulation during the composition except equalization and layering. http://www.00000000.info/
Tumi Magnússon, Voyage There and Back, 30:00
In the distant villages of Iceland small fishing boats are a way of life. Some of these boats have old engines with a very slow stroke, producing a special sound that can be heard on quiet nights, framed by the fjord and surrounding high mountains. Magnússon focuses intently on this listening experience, tracing the voyage of a lone craft, simply by manipulating the timing of the sound of a boat engine. The gradual speeding up and slowing down of a boat engine’s stroke connects directly to the sense of time, movement, narrative: with sound as a vehicle for time travel. Working in a very minimalist and conceptual way, Magnússon made only small adjustments to in situ recordings made in Seyðisfjörður. http://www.tumimagnusson.com/
Jana Winderen, Eye to the Sea, 30:00
Right under the surface of the water exists a sound environment which is quite alien to us. Our ears are not adapted to listening underwater: our ears have air inside. Fish hear through their bone structure by sensing sound waves and vibration, as well as through their swim bladder and lateral line to their inner ears. They use sound to communicate, hunt and protect their habitat. Artist Jana Winderen specializes in recordings with hydrophones underwater and recordings of ultrasound. For Eye to the Sea, she made recordings from inside 10,000-year-old ice in Greenland, of one-year-old ice in Iceland, and of shallow waters where the icy surface melts and drifts into waves. Immediately beneath the surface you can hear underwater insects, crustaceans, snapping shrimps and fish eating shells. A little deeper you can hear cod and toadfish. Jana hopes to evoke curiosity, humility and respect, and also to try to establish a closer relationship to the underwater world, our largest habitat on the planet, which is so near to us, right under the surface. http://www.janawinderen.com/
Anna Friz/Konrad Korabiewski, Trilogy for Night and Radio, 2015, 45:00
Trilogy for Night and Radio is a radio art work in three parts that explores remoteness, the descent into darkness and the long Northern winter night. Trilogy is a collaborative exchange between two traveling sound artists – Anna Friz and Konrad Korabiewski – that meditates on feelings of place using the materiality of signals, overlapping remote geographical spaces. http://nicelittlestatic.com/, http://www.korabiewski.com/
Jean-Philippe Renoult/DinahBird, The Hum, 2017, 42:00
Have you ever night sleepless in bed, trying to identify the surrounding noise you? Is that the refrigerator or the pumping bass of speakers? If it comes from outside? Or is it inside you? If this sounds so familiar, you may be a victim of the Hum.
Those who hear it often describe it as a low pulsing drone with no obvious source. No one cause has been clearly identified, though various features of modern life have been blamed – power lines, satellite debris, mobile phone masts, micro-seismic activity, even low-frequency submarine communications.
Originally a radio installation created for Radio Revolten 2016, the Hum explores different perceptions of this unexplainable phenomenon. Using ear witness accounts, field recordings, electromagnetic interference and drones, intertwined with our own human hums, we wish to reclaim the Hum as a companion, an acoustic ally that soothes your ills away. http://bird-renoult.net/
tobias c. Van Veen, city_sound_a_sleep, 2002, 20:08
…and what if, at night, in the dark, when no one suspects, the quiet, west-coast air of the Pacific NorthWest sneaks a peak at lovers, arms gently touching, bodies sweaty with salt from the open sea and the Nordic mountains, dew from green forests and grime from the asphalt of Broadway, and what if, we might ask, at night, in the dark, when no one suspects, two suspects wander the streets, eyes shut and ears awake, seeking the sounds of the city sleeping, and who would suspect, at night, in the dark, this city to be Vancouver? http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
Stéphane Claude, Waves Array, 2009, 4:00:00
Waves Array is a four hour real-time recording session/performance, a sound piece for the airwaves, originally curated by Emmanuel Madan for the series Simulcast 2.0, 2009. It combines a Blumlein stereo recording of an empty room with real-time sound synthesis and short-wave manipulations. These wave elements, living on their own and colliding with one another, are mixed and assembled into a vertical compositional structure with minimal intervention on the part of the composer.
