Introduction

Field Studies is a four-day summer-school led by three acclaimed sound artists and composers. It explores the possibilities of engaging with places through listening, and working with recorded sound as a creative and practical tool in the context of architecture, the city and art practice.

Field Studies is organised by Musarc, a sound and architecture research platform at the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design (ASD), London Metropolitan University, and led by Joseph Kohlmaier.

Tutors and lecturers

2012
Brandon LaBelle
Lee Patterson
Davide Tidoni
Helen Frosi
Joseph Kohlmaier
Christina Kubisch

2011
Raviv Ganchrow
Liminal
Esther Venrooy
David Grandorge
Tim Ingold
Ian Rawes
Allan Seago

2010
Marc Behrens
Justin Bennett
John Levack Drever

Further reading and downloads

Review of Field Studies 2010, The Wire, December 2010 Download →

Joseph Kohlmaier, Sonus loci. The mediumship of sound in architecture, (Sound@Media, Korea: 2011) Download →

Context and programme

In recent years there has been a noticeable increase in the number of galleries that exhibit sound-based art; books that engage with the phenomenon of sound and the listener; radio programmes and blogs; symposia, teaching programmes and festivals around the question of sound. New, 'audial' histories of modernity are being conceived and written. Yet ‘sound’ still very much occupies a place outside the mainstream; it still holds the promise of looking at culture in a different way, and new opportunities to engage with the environment specifically in the context of architecture and the city.

The word sound conjures up an immensely colourful, and sometimes contradictory spectrum of associations. We may think of birdsong and churchbells ringing out in the countryside; the birth of polyphonic music in medieval cathedrals; Tyndall’s lectures on sound in the mid 19c; the ghostly voices on Edison’s wax cylinders; the industrial noises celebrated by the futurists and abated by American city councils; Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète; Murray Schafer’s invention, and Tim Ingold’s critique of the soundscape; the acoustic telegraph, the personal stereo, the mobile phone.

When we speak about sound we may in turn refer to a phenomenon of human perception, the act of hearing, an aspect of the environment, or music. Sound is the subject of legislation and manifestos, and of philosophical debate: do we hear sounds or objects? Is sound like light or like colour? Is it an event or a property?

Field Studies is a workshop that introduces students to a broad range of practical and theoretical expertise in this field. It is also an opportunity to take part in a lively critical debate. What do we gain by concentrating on sound and listening, and what do we lose? What is the place of recorded sound in music and composition? How do you notate and communciate sounds? How can listening exercises and recorded sound complement the more established creative repertory of writing, drafting and sketching, or taking photographs? How can something that is ephemeral, and ever-changing, meaningfully inform the making of things that have permanence?

The course is open to everyone with an interest in sound and the environment. Although the course syllabus was originally aimed more specifically at architects, urbanists and artists, Field Studies has attracted students from a broad variety of backgrounds and professions. It is suitable for those who are new to working with sound, and offers an engaging environment for those who already have an established practice in this field.

Field Studies is taught in the form of parallel masterclasses led by different tutors, each exploring the topic of sound and listening from different perspectives. Cross-masterclass talks by tutors and visiting speakers and a series of practical workshops complement a programme of sonic-capture field trips, discussions, performances and creative work following a set, but fairly open brief.

Brandon LaBelle

Brandon LaBelle is an artist and writer. His work addresses the relation of the public and the private, formal and informal cultures, sociality and the narratives of everyday life, using performance, sound, text and sited constructions. This results in situational projects, acts of translation and archiving, as well as narratives aimed at questions of common recognition. He received a MFA in post-studio art from the California Institute of the Arts in 1998 and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the London Consortium in 2005. From 2006 to 2009 he worked as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Copenhagen, and since 2007 he has been living in Berlin. He also collaborates within the urban working group, Surface Tension, and the collaborative team, e+l.

His work has been featured at the Whitney Museum, NY (2012), Mario Mazzoli gallery, Berlin (2011), Sonic Acts, Amsterdam (2010), A/V Festival, Newcastle (2008, 2010), Museumsquartier, Vienna (2009), 7th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Allegro (2009), Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade (2009), Casa Vecina, Mexico City (2008), Fear of the Known Festival, Cape Town (2008), Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (2003, 2007), Ybakatu Gallery, Curitiba (2003, 2006, 2009), Singuhr Gallery, Berlin (2004), and ICC, Tokyo (2000). Also a prolific author, his books include Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (Continuum, 2006) and Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (Continuum, 2010). His writings have also appeared in numerous books and journals, including the publications Kunst-Stimmen, Experimental Sound and Radio, Soundspace: Architecture for Sound and Vision, Parole #1: Body of the Voice, and Re-inventing Radio: Aspects of Radio Art. Since 1995 he has been running Errant Bodies Press, acting as co-editor for the anthologies Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear Vols. 1 & 2 (1999, 2011), Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (2001), Surface Tension: Problematics of Site (2003), and Radio Territories (2007), as well as a series of artist monographs and research documents on spatial and media practices. In addition, his work Prototypes for the Mobilization and Broadcast of Fugitive Sound was exhibited at Plex, Copenhagen and the Enrico Fornello gallery, Prato (2007), and his ongoing project on radio memories was presented at Radio Revolten, Halle (2006) and published as an artist book, Radio Memory, in 2008 (Errant Bodies Press). He has produced numerous audio and radio works, notably for Kunstradio in Vienna (1999, 2001, 2007, 2009), DeutschlandRadio (2009) and Croatian National radio (2012). He is an active lecturer in the fields of social practices, performance and sonic art, and was recently featured at the conference SCL 2110 in Santiago de Chile. He also recently served as jury member for the Transmediale Award, Berlin (2011), and is currently Professor in new media at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway.

www.brandonlabelle.net
www.errantbodies.org

Lee Patterson

Lee Patterson works within the closely related fields of sound and experimental music. Graduating from The University of Salford’s soon to be abolished Visual Arts course with 1st class honours in 2002, he has since gone on to collaborate with a number of acclaimed artists and musicians including David Toop, Rhodri Davies, Toshiya Tsunoda and the current Turner Prize nominee, Luke Fowler. In addition, his solo and collaborative works and performances have featured in a range of national and international exhibitions and festivals, as well as on UK TV, BBC Radios 3 and 4, Resonance FM and on radio stations worldwide.

New works have been commissioned by SoundTrackCity/41st International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012, 25th MIMI Festival, Marseille and AV10, Newcastle. His collaboration with film maker Luke Fowler, A grammar for listening pt1 featured in The British Art Show 2010: In The Days Of The Comet.

Between 2009 and 2011, he completed a residency at Stour Valley Arts, Kent with the works, Elemental Fields (July 2010), and Fold, (September 2011). Solo releases include Egg Fry #2 (Cathnor) and Seven Vignettes (Shadazz). Temperament as waveform with Texas based musician, Vanessa Rossetto is due for release in Summer 2012 on the Another Timbre label.

Primarily concerned with listening and the sonic, he attempts to understand his surroundings by using both the aided and the naked ear. The use of sound recording and amplification as methods to expand and educate perceptive ability has led him to work across disciplines including improvised music, environmental sound recording, film soundtrack and installation. After recent commissions and residencies, he has begun to consider elements of his work as a form of landscape-based practice, exploring how sound is produced as a by-product of energy transferral between different material states, and how sound may betray such transduction and energy flow according to a variety of environmental factors. Equally concerned with differing notions of sound and/in space (– gaseous, fluid and solid), he has developed several techniques for accessing and recording sound from unlikely situations and thus has come to consider various environments (urban, rural, aqueous, etc.), as well as selected processes and objects, as sources of sonic material and/or music. He works outside of the academic context as a freelance artist and currently resides in Prestwich, near Manchester, UK.

Photo: Layerscape recording sessions, North pennines, by Laura Harrington

Davide Tidoni

Davide Tidoni is an emerging artist whose work is uniquely situated in a space between performance, activism and teaching. Graduating from the University of Bologna’s DAMS programme in 2007, Davide has since developed a broad repertoire of work that focuses on different modes of listening through site-specific interventions, soundwalks and ethnographic field work.

Since 2009, Davide has led a number of exploratory workshops under the title Soundstorming in different cities across Europe, including at STEIM, Amsterdam; the Link Center for the Arts of the Information Age, Brescia; the Festival for Applied Acoustics, Köln; the Institut für Musik und Medien, Düsseldorf; and the Ecole supérieure d'art de l'agglomération d'Annecy, France.

He has presented work at Visual Sounds, Köln, 2011; the Venice Architecture Biennale (2010); Raum, Bologna (2009); the American Academy, Rome (2009); and Digital Art Weeks, Basel (2008). Davide’s sound work includes The New Shape of Public Architecture for Radio Papesse (curated by Lucia Farinati; forthcoming 2012); Amicizia con la Ciòca for Kunstradio Ö1 (2011); and Anemico: il Sangue dalle Rape with Meteor, Sangue Dischi (2010).

In 2011, Davide presented A balloon for… at Tuned City, Tallin, and received an honorary mention for A balloon for Linz at Ars Electronica, Linz, a series of walks that allowed participants to pop balloons and listen to the acoustic architecture of urban space. A balloon for the Barbican was presented at Musarc’s salon during the OMA/Progress exhibition at the Barbican, London, in January 2012.

Prior to Field Studies, Davide will spend two weeks guiding a group of itinerant listeners through Belgium as part of expedition/festival Sideways. Read more about the workshop here.

www.davidetidoni.name

Photo: Survey 3, Florence 2012, by Laura Arlotti

Keynote speakers

Christina Kubisch

Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she has artistically developed such techniques as magnetic induction to realize her installations. Since 1986 she has added light as an artistic element to her work with sound.

Christina Kubisch's work displays an artistic development which is often described as the "synthesis of arts" – the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a redefinition of relationships between material and form on the other.

www.christinakubisch.de

Joseph Kohlmaier

Joseph Kohlmaier is an artist, curator, writer and teacher. He is a senior lecturer in the history and theory of architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design, London Metropolitan University, where he leads a number of research and teaching programmes related to sound and the environment, including Field Studies and a new diploma module on the history and practice of listening. He founded Musarc in 2008 and is its creative director. He is a baritone in Musarc's choir and a member of B.A.T.S., an informal improvisation and musique concrète ensemble that recently premièred at Musarc’s A sonic view event at Bold Tendencies in early July 2012. Joseph is also a founding director of graphic design practice Polimekanos. Recently, Joseph edited Human space, the English translation of O.F. Bollnow's 1964 work Mensch und Raum which is available from Hyphen Press.

www.musarc.org
www.polimekanos.com

Guest speaker

Helen Frosi, SoundFjord

Helen Frosi is an independent artist, curator and co-founder of SoundFjord, a gallery and research unit dedicated entirely to the sonic arts, supporting current research, practice and facilitating education in this field. SoundFjord is London's most progressive hub for research and events in and around sound art practice, an occasional venue for live performance within the field of experimental music and sound art performance, a host to lectures, workshops, talks and critiques.

In addition to her curatorial work at SoundFjord, Helen has curated audio programmes for Café OTO, Dragonfly Festival (SE), Galerie8, Gorey Arts and Film Festival (IE), GV Gallery, ICA, AudioLab.12, Oboro (CA), and The Pigeon Wing, amongst others. Most recently, Helen has curated and produced SOUND//SPACE, a three-month programme of audiocentric activity with a pop-up record store at its heart. Included in the programme are workshops, talks, masterclasses, artists- and labels-in-residence, as well as in-store and large-scale performances within V22's cavernous, ex-biscuit factory halls. Events ran from 05 May until 29 July and featured both local and international artists.

Helen has also written for 3LEAVES, Liminal's Organ of Corti project, Art Licks magazine and Sound and Music, and has taken part in discussions at the Phonography Colloquium (Goldsmiths University); Sound:Space (South Hill Park Arts); Supersonix (Exhibition Road Cultural Group Programme); What Now? Symposium (Oxford Brookes University), and The Wire Salon.

Helen was on the selection committee for the Supersonix artist-in-residence (V&A), and is currently on the judging panel for Yinka Shonibare's Guest Project 2013.

Helen has recently curated Opus Pericardium by Sarah Harvey (collaborating composers and medical specialists), a sci-art project focused on exploring the poetry and topography of the heart, through the sonification of electrocardiogram digital data

www.soundfjord.org