LEAH BARCLAY

The May/June issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine in London reflects on the need to find new solutions to environmental issues.

Join the Balance-Unbalance International Conference Live Streaming Workshop with SoundCamp in the North Devon Biosphere Reserve on Thursday 24 August. The workshop will introduce live audio streaming with the DIY Raspberry Pi streambox and the Locuscast app for iOS. Participants will experiment with a prototype solar stream station for remote locations as part of Biosphere Open Microphones (BIOM) - an emerging network of live audio feeds and long-term data sets from UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. This installation of the BIOM project is produced in collaboration with SoundCamp, Biosphere Soundscapes and North Devon Biosphere Reserve. The workshop will close with explorations of a live stream map including locations in Australia.

FRIDAY AUGUST 18, QUEENSLAND CONSERVATORIUM GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY, 7:30PM

The Biosphere Soundscapes concert will feature a program of new immersive electroacoustic compositions exploring terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in UNESCO biosphere reserves across the globe.

Featured locations include: 

FREE EVENT, SUNDAY 20 AUGUST 2017, 7.30PM

From the crunching of beetles infesting trees to the slow creep of rising sea levels, sound is increasingly used to document the effects of global environmental change. These changes are fueling pop music and composition, data sonification, field recording, radio and audio visual performance.

Artists and activists are using sound to comment on, and intervene in, the climate debate. However, while the aesthetics of ecological crisis are pervasive, replete with a dwindling dawn chorus and celebrations of a nonhuman nature, the broader contexts and stakes of these images or sounds are rarely considered. Against the drip drip drip of glacial melt, this evening showcases sound works that seek to confront environmental change.

An experimental, audio-visual radio broadcast featuring the work of Leah Barclay (AUS), Robin Buckley (UK), Kate Carr (UK), Minerva Cuevas (MEX), Graciela Muñoz Farida (CHL), Anja Kanngieser and Polly Stanton (UK/AUS), Andrea Polli (MEX), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (CAN), Ziibiwan (CAN) and more to be confirmed.

The new book ‘Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words’ published by Oxford University Press features a chapter on the development of River Listening 

Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words is an incisive and imaginative look at the international environmental sound art movement, which emerged in the late 1960s. The term environmental sound art is generally applied to the work of sound artists who incorporate processes in which the artist actively engages with the environment. While the field of environmental sound art is diverse and includes a variety of approaches, the art form diverges from traditional contemporary music by the conscious and strategic integration of environmental impulses and natural processes.

This book presents a current perspective on the environmental sound art movement through a collection of personal writings by important environmental sound artists. Dismayed by the limitations and gradual breakdown of contemporary compositional strategies, environmental sound artists have sought alternate venues, genres, technologies, and delivery methods for their creative expression. Environmental sound art is especially relevant because it addresses political, social, economic, scientific, and aesthetic issues. As a result, it has attracted the participation of artists internationally. Awareness and concern for the environment has connected and unified artists across the globe and has achieved a solidarity and clarity of purpose that is singularly unique and optimistic. The environmental sound art movement is borderless and thriving.

“Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words is an extraordinary collection of self-descriptions of wonderfully alive and often iconoclastic work being done by ESAs today. Extremely well organized, edited, and exampled by Frederick Bianchi and VJ Manzo, it will amaze, confound, entertain, and, most importantly inform those with open minds on the present and future of art made in the free world. Unencumbered by strict labels of their work, these artists breathe air into oftentimes stagnant and commercial versions and views of art as described and prescribed by constraints arbitrarily defined centuries ago. I can’t recommend it more enthusiastically.” – David Cope

Edited by Frederick Bianchi, Professor of Humanities and Arts, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Edited by V. J. Manzo, Assistant Professor of Music Technology and Perception, Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Frederick Bianchi is a composer and music technologist. Recognized internationally for his musical compositions, installations, and innovative music technology development, Bianchi has been associated with interactive music applications since the mid-1980s.

World Listening Day is an annual global event held on July 18.

The 2017 theme is “Listening to the Ground”

“Sometimes we walk on the ground, sometimes on sidewalks or asphalt, or other surfaces. Can we find ground to walk on and can we listen for the sound or sounds of ground? Are we losing ground? Can we find new ground by listening for it?”—Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016)

In addition to this year’s theme, WLD 2017 reflects and honors the life and legacy of Pauline Oliveros, who died at age 84 on 26 November 2016.

Dozens of organizations and thousands of people from six continents have participated in World Listening Day since its inception in 2010. Help share and grow participation in this annual event by adding your information to our online form: https://goo.gl/forms/Zwsiu5GU7Dz7DfNV2

Use hashtag #WLD2017 to connect our global community across social media.

Pauline Oliveros was a force of nature, a composer guided by her interest in harnessing cutting-edge technologies and her lifelong practice in deep listening.

In the early 1960’s, Pauline Oliveros composed with magnetic tape and prototype synthesizers at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. She was also an accomplished accordion player. A vocal self-advocate for her pioneering work, which remained consistently relevant throughout her lifetime, Oliveros held her ground as other talented female pioneers of electronic music went disregarded in the male-dominated field.

Her collaborations and improvisations were witness to her willingness to listen to others and to weave together a unique tapestry of talented musicians in marvelous acoustic spaces. And who is a musician? Anyone according to Oliveros. She wanted music to be free from specialists, and instead open to everyone regardless of status, experience, or ability.

In 1971, following a period of introspection triggered by John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam War protests, Oliveros published her Sonic Meditations, a set of 25 text-based instructions meant to provoke thoughtful, creative responses for anyone to carry out to expand consciousness and healing. “Native,” the most commonly cited sonic meditation resonates well with Pauline’s suggested theme for World Listening Day 2017, Listening to the Ground. Pauline defined deep listening as, “listening in every possible way to every thing possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds.” She urged us to, “Take a walk at night, and walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”

Let us all slow down enough to let our feet become our ears. Let us listen to the ground on 18 July, World Listening Day 2017, in honor of composer and deep listener, Pauline Oliveros.

~Andrea Williams, New York teaching artist

Preview from the opening night for ‘A View From The Cloud’ with Streaming Museum in Kvinesdal, Norway. This exhibition is an international program of art and technology to sharpen our worldview that will tour globally 2017-2019. Featured projects include Planetary (weareplanetary.com), River Listening (riverlistening.com) and Emergence. Emergence is a large-scale audio-visual work, inspired by a Yolngu creation story and made in close collaboration with a Yolngu family in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. Emergence is a prelude to MYTH, a global multi-year arts project featuring stories that reconnect audiences to their innate relationship to the natural world. MYTH will unfold through the global tour with Streaming Museum in 2017. Explore the project here: curiousworks.com.au/project/myth/

AURALITY is an augmented reality audio project exploring Queensland’s rainforests, rivers and reefs through music, sound and acoustic ecology.

AURALITY can be experienced by downloading a free mobile app that uses GPS points along the coast of Queensland to trigger audio based on location and movement. The free app for iOS and Android launches on World Listening Day (18 July) with 100 soundscapes activated across Queensland. AURALITY active locations include Brisbane, Noosa, Tin Can Bay, Maryborough, Hervey Bay, Yeppoon, Airlie Beach, Townsville and Cairns. AURALITY is created by Leah Barclay, a multi-award winning Australian sound artist working at the intersection of art, science, and technology. AURALITY is presented by Queensland Music Festival, Brisbane City Council, The Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Noosa Alive and Noosa Regional Gallery. The project launches on July 18, World Listening Day 2017.