"We are the bugs who sing in the water
We are the reeds dancing below the surface
We are the oxygen bubbles released from hydrophytes
I am the omnipresent industry who haunts your nature
I am the water quaked by wind and sound
I am the orchestra you cannot always hear"

(Hamshill Fleet, Isle of Grain)

Waterbug Voices is a sound installation that explores the underwater world of a creek in the marshes of the Isle of Grain. Interestingly, the soundscape is divided in separate wavebands. The lowest zone we can hear underwater is the industrial activity in the area, although we can barely hear anything in the air; this is because sound travels faster in solids and liquids rather than in the air, and low frequencies can travel very far through the ground. The rest of the wavebands are divided between sounds of water beetles, rushes and gas bubbles. Water beetles produce sound through stridulation, that is, by rubbing parts of their body together. Rushes hit and rub their submerged stalks with each other as they shift in the wind. Aquatic plants produce bubbles of oxygen through photosynthesis. All these ‘performers’ jointly, they create an extraordinary underwater orchestra. The installation presents these different layers of sounds separately, in duos, trios and all together to create a tutti of an unseen and often unheard world.

Waterbug Voices is created for the research project ‘Liminal Spaces’. The first exhibition took place on board the Historic ship LV21, Gravesend, on 20 November 2021, for the Being Human festival.

Waterbug Voices

1st prize, International Sonosfera Ambisonics Competition 2023, Pesaro (Italy)
Finalist, Fixed medium, MA/IN 2023, Matera (Italy)

Stereo reduction of HoA composed at ICST in Zurich in July 2022.

"The peculiarities of the monad and the hebdomad are the most beautiful "

Khemenu

Full track available from electrocd.com
electrocd.com/en/album/5984/Niko…poulos/Micro-lieux

1st prize at the Open Circuit 2016 International Electroacoustic Competition / Mention at Foundation Destellos – VIII° Competition in Electroacoustic music.

The title of the work refers to a mode of seed dispersal. Fracturing of the seed pod releases stored elastic energy into kinetic energy launching its contents. The term reflects musical processes as well as timbral qualities of the work . .The events portrayed in this piece are fictitious, and any resemblance to real events, past, present, or future, is entirely coincidental but highly probable.

Ballistichory (Excerpt)

A male Superb Lyrebird giving mimicry and territorial song, recorded by me at Mt. Airly in NSW, Australia, 30th May, 1995.  This is a 3 minute extract from a sequence that lasted for over half an hour.  Equipment used, Sony TCD D10 DAT recorder, Sennheiser ME67 gun mic.


Superb Lyrebird

Full track available from electrocd.com
https://electrocd.com/en/album/5984/Nikos_Stavropoulos/Micro-lieux

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypWkeSrZOt8

Percussion Alexander Pepelasis

Granicus is the archaic name of a small river in northwestern Asia Minor, which was the site of Alexander  the Great’s first major military challenge. The name is also used for one of Mars’ great valleys. The rhythms of antiquity, through tradition, inspire here the coming together of different worlds in space and time. The work was commissioned by and is dedicated to Alexander Pepelasis.

Granicus, for Percussion and Tape (Excerpt)

https://www.kent.ac.uk/music-audio-technology/people/22/pasoulas-aki

Composer, Reader at the University of Kent.

Waterbug Voices

akipasoulas

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