sound of the day - blind wanderings

well, i was sitting here listening to the backyard compositions of tristan and sebastian when i heard a backyard sound of my own - a kind of knocking and scraping that sounded like it was coming from the backdoor. it was a little unnerving actually as my mind went through all the possible known sounds of the house and tried to ascertain what it might be. the cat doesn't usually knock or scrape at the back door - no it's not him as he is right now staring at me through the front window. the only thing left was to investigate. upon opening the backdoor this is what i found

landscape as musical score - playing the backyard

a fantastic project in line with my house study beginnings - this live improvisation by tristan louth-robins and sebastian tomczak using field recordings from their backyards. the material was processed in real-time using ableton live/plogue bidule.

more information about the work can be found on disquiet and tristan's blog. sebastian also has a blog here

dark

this is an excerpt from one of the compositions i completed last year during my studies. it is composed from the recorded and processed sounds of chocolate factory machinery.

typhanee spotted in the u.s.a

this drawing was sent by tim from buck creek, u.s.a in response to the sonic creature recording of the typhanee (see below). it was very exciting to receive this from the other side of the world via postcrossing. a very delightful animal and a great description. thanks tim.

Typhanee

the continuing postings of sonic creatures. these are sound creatures which were made in collaboration with various people. they were asked to intuitively choose three objects and explore their combined sound-making potentials. the creatures were then named and described. i enjoyed this intuitive and organic way of working - some of the sounds were processed by me and i still question this intervention but it was how i felt at the time.

more can be read about the process that led to the sonic creatures here

i am looking forward to collecting more drawings of the creatures based on their sounds. so introducing the typhanee.

the typhanee was created by Caitlin. she used a wine glass with items inside and a spinning top. the resultant animal sounds include sound processing.

Flyus Crackius gallery

the flyus crackius as interpreted by vaitoa - a whole storyboard in fact. i continue to marvel at the genius and creative playfulness of people like vaitoa. he has even added a new creature to complete the sonic wonderland - the beaver lizerd. it includes male and female iterations of the species, stray penguin, and what look like mangled fish.

rather excitedly, i played him the next creature - the typhanee - only for him to say, 'oh i know that one - that's a small mammal'.

you can listen to the flyus crackius here.

house study - deck

introducing maverick the sonic wonder cat - otherwise known as mav the pav, mav the rick, mr fluffy trousers, mr F.T.Rousers, black and white guy...need i go on.

sonic explorations of the house continue with recordings from the deck. in keeping with the sonic recipes of The Domestic Soundscape, i include here the ingredients for this kind of sound-making:

1 deck
1 cat
2 guitar strings tied to the deck
1 bowling ball
several ping pong balls (to taste)
1 small rock
1 metal magazine rack
1 oven grill (of course)
2 contact mics
1 zoom recorder


we set about playing to explore the deck with the above materials...mav specialised in experimenting with the guitar string, i rolled the bowling ball around and bounced/rolled ping pong balls.

here are the results:

The Long Playing Version



deck play1



deck play2