Joonas Siren: Can You Hear the Grasshoppers Sing? 
Avatar co-op, Quebec City, Canada, 5.12.-20.12.2013

My project for Avatar co-operation deals with aging. I find it really interesting that almost the only sonic phenomenon people can loose from their hearing is the singing of grasshoppers. Grasshoppers and crickets sing in a very high pitch, between 12 kHz - 20 kHz. Many people will loose these frequencies from their hearing due to normal aging. My own father doesn't hear the grasshoppers any more.

I did many field recordings of grasshoppers and crickets in Quebec City during my four month residency. The final project was a  7 channel sound installation, where the field recorded grasshopper sounds shifted in pitch and were triggered randomly for different speakers. The pitch was constantly going up and down; enabling everyone to hear them and then  again really high, past the human hearing threshold.

http://joonassiren.fi/hear-grashoppers-sing/
http://www.avatarquebec.org/en/projects/#!/en/projects/residence-au-studio-international-de-meduse-joonas-siren/

Can You Hear the Grasshoppers Sing?

Fall/Rapture

http://joonassiren.fi/fallrapture/

How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
Isaiah 14:12

Fall/Rapture is a 16-channel sound installation which is located in a six-storey stairwell next to the lobby of the Academy of Fine Arts. Speakers are attached to a wire and lowered down from the ceiling to the floor. Sounds are continuously rising and descending, creating a spatial experience.

The theme of my work is to contemplate the idea of transcendence with sound. I have included pieces from two very different musical genres in my work – black metal and gospel – which can be thought of as representing the same kind of longing for transcendence, although from widely differing perspectives. The name of the work is a direct reference to the Biblical story of Lucifer being cast down from heaven, and also to the notion of rapture used by fundamentalist Christians.

Fall/Rapture

Sustained Magic

Sun 15.2.2015 12-20 Vapaan taiteen tila (Free Art Space)

I have vivid memories of the trip to see Jurassic Park in the Autumn 1993.

Before the movie started, after the mandatory commercials and trailers, there was a sound.

I can't remember if it was the first time I heard it, but I know I heard it then and many times afterwards.

The sound was magical.

A loud, glorious synthesizer drone, gliding from a low note to a high one, approaching almost physical.

It was accompanied by the bright, metallic and futuristic letters T H X.

I fell in love with that sound.

THX was a quality assurance system built by Lucas Arts corporation. During the 90s many film theaters in Helsinki adopted the standard, but during the 00s it lost its relevance and the sound was not heard anymore.

Sustained Magic is a sound installation based on a time stretched THX sound. The sound is stretched to two hours, an average length of a movie.

Sometimes going into movies was less about the movie itself than to be able to hear that sound again.

Sustained Magic is my own personal aural remembrance of that period of life.

-Joonas Siren





Sustained Magic

Time Fractures
http://joonassiren.fi/time-fractures/

BS Projects 2013-2014 -exhibition, Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany (22.10.-7.11.2014)

“Time Fractures” is a sound installation about different sonicification of time and the artificial concept of our time itself.

Atomic clock gives us the scientific concept of a second. There is an atomic clock in Braunschweig at the PTB institute. In the clock caesium atoms are evaporated and after 9 192 631 770 periods one second has elapsed. This is hardly a natural phenomenon. Human kind needs to have a strict, rigorous concept of time, which is for nature totally unnecessary, so our concept of time is in a sense completely artificial.

“Time Fractures” also links the concept of time to music. In a sense making, playing or listening to music is an act of time keeping. Almost all genres of music are tied to more or less strict time signatures. It seems that music is needed to make sense of time.

The installation consist of two objects placed on a table; a wooden clock and a wooden metronome. Back of each is a small transducer speaker which vibrate the wooden objects. A generative program plays and modulates randomly different sonificiations of time; different metronome time signatures, clock samples, time values in English, Finnish, Swedish and German sampled from talking clocks, the sonification of the PTB atomic clock signal and other time sounds. The program randomly modulates the the different signals creating a highly unstable, unreliable clock/metronome. Sounds will be heard from the clock and from the metronome, but not at the same time. The program chooses the output object also randomly.

 

Time Fractures

audio from  sound installation

more info:
http://joonassiren.fi/genetic-transformation-betula-pendula-particle-bombardment/

genetic transformation of betula pendula by particle bombardment

Audio from a site-specific sound installations, Cork Ireland Sep 2011

More Info:
http://joonassiren.fi/shandon-bells/

Shandon Bells

Mylly (the mill in English)

audio from a site-speficif sound installation, Fiskars, Finland

More info:
http://joonassiren.fi/mylly/


Mylly

Glossolalia installation documentation recorded by Elin Øyen Vister
http://joonassiren.fi/glossolalia/

Info:
A tree made out of different cables is growing from the ceiling. Upon the branches of the tree are 15 speakers, which play generative modified Glossolalia (aka speaking in tongues) samples collected from YouTube.

Glossolalia is my final work for Nordic Sound Art MA-program (nordicsoundart.com) and is displayed at Roskilde contemporary art museum (27.4.-3.6.2012) as part of Soundings 2 - Nordic Sound Art Graduate Show.


Glossolalia

Materian taajuudet (Material Frequencies)
Site-specific sound installation, Sibafest Helsinki Music Centre 27.1.-4.2.2012 

Material Frequencies investigates the formant frequency of different materials in Helsinki Music Centre. Every material has its on frequency, where it starts to resonate. I find this physical aspect of sound very interesting and I wanted to make a sound installation, which uses this phenomenon.

Seven transducer speakers has been mounted on different materials in the Music Centre's foyer. I have searched the formant frequency with simple changing the pitch of sine wave oscillator. I programmed a computer to play this frequencies in a matter of random composition. The programs also plays each frequencies overtone.

I want to direct focus to spaciality. Sounds from different sources creates a spacial experience, which can be experienced from different parts of the building.

Materian taajuudet

Joonas Siren - Ether Vortex

From the Ether Vortex and other fantasies about infinity exhibition. The Gallery of Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 22.3.-7.4.

Documentation of a sound installation.

A completely dark room. Processed white noise vortexing around the listener.

Ether Vortex

spatial.aural.temporal.visual art // various.kinds.of.electronic.music
www.joonassiren.fi

improvisation/experimental electronic music with tuukka salonen:
http://cleavage.bandcamp.com/

solo experimental electronic music:
http://francis-younghusband.bandcamp.com/





Joonas Siren

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