AudioSpaces #3
March 2024. The five continents, aqueous explorations and AudioSpace events.
Friends, it feels like a lifetime since we last spoke. This month has been admittedly a bit patchy on the newsletter front, but no worries: we’ve got a lot of March activity to report back on nonetheless. First things first, as per tradition, let’s have a dig through our favourite AudioSpaces picks from March.
AudioSpaces(s) of the month
We’ve been all over the world this month, quite literally. In fact, there are now AudioSpaces to preview (or in which to immerse yourself, if you pass by their location) in every single continent—in 27 different countries. When did that happen?!
There’s a real range of sonic diary entries to discover this month, too: from babbling babies in the Isle of Wight to bustling local ambiences all over Europe, from swooshing Pacific tides, to Bach in Marylebone, or a call to prayer on the island of Gili Trawangan.
Sounds of: The New Inn, ME10 3LB
by morgan
Well tempered clavier prelude no. 1 in c Major
by fernando mora
Ramadan on Gili trawangan 26/03/2024.
by hugz.
Sunrise at Wild Grass Lodge, Kaziranga National Park
by josh walker
I didn’t know hippos sounded like that.
We’re really happy to welcome our new users, and the rich sonic colour you all bring to the map. It’s also worth recognising those of you who have been with us consistently since the beginning, regularly sharing insights into your intriguing soundworlds.
A big shout-out to, for example (though by no means limited to):
roman roger, siobhan, jody, chiara, hello, fernando mora, pg_field-records, owolf, petestollery, spiegal and hassan rumi.
March’s posts
My highlight of the month was undoubtedly the launch of Jo Scott's Rio Cavalos Trio as our first featured Collection.
As we read in her reflection, the three separate AudioSpaces gently carry us on a journey along the shores of the River Cavalos, Jo’s snaking liquid neighbour in her new home near Tábua, Portugal.
It's a wonderfully written article to go with a thoughtful, exploratory set of sound works. Don't miss out on it.
You can always find the three recordings in their original locations where Jo pinned them, along the river. If any of you ever pass by the Cavalos, make sure to let us know you’ve come across Jo’s pieces.
One of the great functions of Collections, though, is being able to bunch up a group of AudioSpaces and place them in additional locations, to be listened to in full, exhibition-style.
We’ve pinned the Collection along two other rivers to allow for a multilayered listening experience alongside different waters. Both are in the UK, as the majority of our current users are living there. The Collection is public, though, so if you’d like to post it to a different location (maybe another river!) then feel free.
But for now, if you’re ever in Salford, make sure to take a trip to the River Irwell as it passes through Kensal Wetlands, or if you’re in East London don’t miss going to the River Lea. Go to the app to find the precise locations of where Jo’s pieces can be listened to in full.
While we’re in a watery mood, it’s also worth giving a mention to this fantastic soundscape posted by Sem Zeeman as an AudioSpace just off the Port of Rotterdam.
The concept is very developed, and his written description compelling. We also appreciate the details about all the processes, techniques and gear that have gone into the piece.
Rather than give any detailed commentary on the work myself, I’ll let Sem’s introduction do the job. Clicking on the title below will take you to the AudioSpace in-app. You can find Sem’s work on his Bandcamp.
Once Doggerland, an historical connection between Britain and continental Europe. Now an industrial area were fossils are found and traded, surrounded by salty water we today call the North Sea.
Located on the Noorderhoofd pier along the busiest waterway in Europe, in Hoek van Holland, The Netherlands. The waterway is a ship canal called de Nieuwe Waterweg, which makes the Port of Rotterdam accessible for seagoing vessels from and to the North Sea. It’s the largest port in Europe and specialised in the petrochemical industries and cargo transshipment handlings. Across the water of Noorderhoofd are the Maasvlakte and Europoort, which are very heavily industrialised with also petrochemical industries, as well as coal- and biomass-fired power plants, styrene- and propylene-oxide production and transhipment of ore, coal and palm oil.
This industrial area is surrounded by beaches where crabs, shrimps and starfish can be found. By dunes with foxes, rabbits, lizards and moles. By the air with sandpipers, polecats, buzzards and seagulls. And by the water with seals, sea bass’ and garfishes.
The auditive beauty of these surroundings is abruptly disturbed by increasing buzzes, noise and suddenly appearing rhythmical radar frequencies presenting itself through electromagnetic signals. The infrasound from the petroleum industries across gets supported by a slowly growing even intenser engine rumbling. The waves crashing on the pier are rising, each one followed by a greater force.
An interference of low and high increasing frequencies, as a collaboration between human and nature, is resonating through a pole standing on the pier. Beholding the industrial infrasound and coastal acoustics, responding in the creation of abrasive metallic harmonics. This pole is holding a warning sign, to contain our behaviour on the pier.
“Dangerous waves from shipping. Enter at your own risk.”
All sounds are captured with a Zoom H5, LOM Geofòn, OrganicAudio Cjossul and Soma Ether at Noorderhoofd in Hoek van Holland, The Netherlands. The recordings are processed, mixed and mastered during post-production in Logic Pro X.
“Noorderhoofd [51,98021° N, 4,11153° O]” is also part of the long-form sound composition Upstream Ensemble, where mainly its infrasound recordings were used. This composition is initiated by TBA21’s Ocean-Archive, ocean comm/uni/ty and Pablo Diserens, who invited 35 field recordists to venture in the world and record aqueous sonic encounters. Upstream Ensemble navigates between the multiplicity of the water cycle as a sounding body. The work moves upstream through oceans, rivers, pipe networks, ponds, and glaciers while investigating the continuous flow of water and the environments that surround it. Here, the world’s aqueous fauna, flora, geologies, and technologies mingle into a synchronised motion that documents the sonic articulations of these wet zones. Upstream Ensemble is **released digitally on TBA21’s Ocean-Archive website and physically released on the label forms of minutiae as cassette.
In other post-related news, we’re still continuing with our Traces series. A growing archive of sonic residue, these micro-essays are exercises in pinning down, in words, all those sounds that are long gone—or maybe that never even existed vibrationally in the first place.
If you have anything echoing in your head that you’d like to include as a Trace, don’t be shy in sending it over.
AudioSpaces events
This month saw our first delvings into real life AudioSpaces meet-ups. Of course, if we’re being pedantic about it, as a tool designed to connect us with the spaces around us through sound, AudioSpaces always has at least one foot in the “real” world. But you know what I mean.
The idea behind these events is to see what happens when AudioSpaces is deliberately inserted into social situations, to see what can happen when we apply practices of recording, listening & mapping within (semi-)organised settings.
For last Saturday’s first instalment of the Panes event series, a collaboration between AudioSpaces and various artists in West London, it was also an excuse to show off our new stickers. More to come on these in the near future.
Sadly, living in a different hemisphere, I wasn’t able to make it to this one. But it sounded pretty sick, from what can be gauged from the different AudioSpaces added to the Panes Collection already. I’m looking forward to passing by and listening to the full clips—or if I’m lucky, coming to one of the events themselves when I finally return to the motherland.
Another AudioSpaces first was our pub sound-crawl from a few weeks earlier. Let’s let Ollie paint us a picture of what happened in Borough.
As we ducked past the heavy door of The George in Borough, the apparent passing of time seemed less relevant. The sense of past stories disposing the seven of us to new ones as we sat to begin our first AudioSpaces pub crawl.
We love pubs. Hubs for local community, meeting places for stories and fantastically human. The day out was a chance to see how the AudioSpaces app could be used in a group setting and an excuse to explore pubs on what seemed like the first day of ‘spring’.
AudioSpaces accompanied us for the afternoon. The odd mention of audio already on the map and audio that people would like to record provided a backdrop for story-telling and encouraged us to pay greater attention to the sounds around us.
The plan was to capture moments that we could share at the end of the pub crawl, but inserting the act of recording into a group setting was a little awkward at times. Keen not to disturb the flow of conversation, the group would record in secret, rendering voices indistinguishable from the surroundings.
Later, though, passing through The Rose and The Roebuck, we realised that AudioSpaces are a creative process much in the same way as capturing or creating images. In conversation, recording can be more creative than disruptive and recording openly allowed us to place the microphone to best capture a moment.
With AudioSpaces, we share in each others experiences through audio. Preserving the sounds of places helps to provide context when recounting events in the future. Listening enhanced our experience of the pubs and made our memories just a little bit richer.
Thank you to all who got involved in the day out and special thanks to Tom and Rory for running it - hopefully the first of many.
As Ollie beautifully reports back here, the idea of going out of your way to record audio when you’re out in the pub may seem pretty weird at first. The sacred space of the few-pints-deep conversation might also seem a bit violated by a covert microphone—and it would be a fair judgement.
But in response Ollie makes an astute observation: once we shift our thinking to recording as a creative process, rather than a disruptive or extractive one, we make it possible to share and collaborate in deciding how exactly we intervene in a given moment, in a given place.
This one sounded challenging but fun. In whispers, I can reveal that this little crawl is just the first of a larger exploration of the topic of British pubs, with a few different exciting things already on their way.
Get involved 🤝
We’ve had a lot going on this month. It’s been a delight showcasing how people have engaged with AudioSpaces for their own creative projects, of all shapes and sizes. There’s even more of this to come over the next weeks and months.
Of course, being any kind of AudioSpaces user is already a real contribution. We’re all building the map together—or at the very least exploring it. But we know lots of you are involved in your own interesting endeavours, and as it happens, we’re on the search for new collaborators.
Do you reckon you have something that would be fun to bring to AudioSpaces? Or maybe you just like what we’re doing in general, and would like to get involved somehow?
Well, here are some easy ways in which you can.
Featured Collections
You might want to take your recording activities to the next level, and have an idea for a Collection with a specific focus. This could be an artistic work—along the lines of Jo Scott’s, for example—or it could be a wider thing that involves a call for contributions from other potential users.
We’re especially interested in ideas for how to apply audio recording to social causes. The world is your oyster here.
We are, for example, in the midst of a project-wide theme of wellbeing at the moment. Perhaps you’d like to use AudioSpaces to document a certain set of sounds that make you feel good. Or maybe the total opposite: maybe you want to gather up and expose all the annoying noises that ruin your day.
Of course, you can always just do this of your own volition and make a Collection without ever even telling us. But making it Featured will allow us to boost your Collection and to more easily support you in whatever way you need, so let us know.
Writing
If you’re an existing subscriber to the newsletter, you already know the gist. This Substack is, first and foremost, a supplement to the rest of the AudioSpaces project. Part of that is, clearly, talking about what goes on in the app. But also just as important for us is fostering a space for open conversations about all the issues and ideas that relate to AudioSpaces.
If you have something you’d like to say, or just want to practice writing in a friendly environment about stuff that interests you, then now is your time.
We’re looking to discuss everything from (audio) technologies to sound and listening itself; from space and placemaking to acoustic designs; from memory to heritage and the practice of history. And the list goes on. At the moment, we’re obviously keen on any reflections on how wellbeing might be related to any of the above.
We have, clearly, a social and cultural focus. We also believe in making all of these topics accessible to the non-specialist. But equally, there’s no rules for what kind of piece you’d like to contribute, or what writing style you prefer.
It could be an informative article, an opinion piece, a general rant, an essay, a review of something specific, a report back on your own project, or even a fiction. Possibly the lowest stakes activity here is to contribute to our Traces series, tiny exercises in creative writing about past sounds.
Events
Are you involved in an event that AudioSpaces might be useful for? To add some flare to a night you’re putting on, to make a group activity more interactive, or to use audio to document a particular get-together that you want to remember?
Maybe you’d like to incorporate audio recordings into an exhibition you’re working on? Or perhaps you have an idea for some sort of event that involves sound in-situ, but aren’t sure exactly how you’d like it to work? Just get in touch, and we’ll figure it out together!
Anyway, these are just the obvious ways you might want to get involved. But we’re really all ears for bringing into AudioSpaces any other proposed collaborations, campaigns, one-offs, projects, events, and anything else you can think of.
We can’t offer much by way of financial support for any contributions, at least at the moment. We are, however, very enthusiastic and can help with our hands and ears every step of the way. You know where to find us. Speak soon, happy Easter x
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