Recording birds waking up during dawn chorus day 2021, from 5:50 to 7am, UTC+1, while participating to the international broadcast of Reveil, created by Soundtent. Reveil is a 24+ hour broadcast following sunrise around the earth on dawn chorus day. 

The recording was made in the exact same location as last year, during the first lockdown. Since then, we can hear way more planes and traffic, even on a sunday early morning. 

What do you think about the birdlife?

ORTF Oktava direct into Focusrite Scarlett, 
recorded in BUTT, with field recordist Grégoire Chauvot.

Dawn Chorus - Reveil 2021

Humeurs is a 4 channels sound installation (30 min) including postcards. It is a site specific piece, created for the exhibition "burble, gurgle, splash" at the Dietikon Projektraum (Switzerland, from 17.04.21 to 30.05.21. The audio piece works with the acoustical caractheristics of the exhibition room, and the visitors are welcome to take the postcards with them. 

I went back to record in four different locations where I had strong memories with the river. Following the Limmat, from Zürich to Dietikon, I wrote down those specific moments.

The piece explores the possible intimacy of the water. In French « humeurs », can be translated as « moods », but it also evokes the four organic fluids we have in our bodies.

Humeurs - installation stereo extract

Dropped two contact mics at the surface of an anthill

Recorded with JrF contact mics in Serrinha do Alambari, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil in Sound devices Mixpre-6 96kHz 24 bits

Ants swarming

Dusky-legged guan (Jacu) fighting in the morning

Recorded in Atlantic Forest in Serrinha do Alambari, Sao Paulo, Brazil with ORTF Schoeps in Sound-devices Mixpre-6 in 48kHz 24bits

Thanks to Felix Blume and Gregoire Chauvot for their gear!

Angry Jacu

Photosynthesis bubbles

Chroniques de terrain est une proposition radiophonique réalisée pour le festival Archipel 2023, présentée par Mélia Roger. Merci à tous les artistes invité.es pour la générosité de leurs partages.

Lien du festival : 
https://2023.archipel.org/fr/archiradio/ 

// Liens pour chaque épisode //

#Lê Quan Ninh
https://www.lequanninh.net 
https://soundcloud.com/lequanninh 
Nastassja Martin, Croire aux fauves, Editions Gallimard 2019
http://ryoanji.free.fr/lbdlm/ 

#Noémie Delaloye
https://www.audioblog.ch
https://www.ornitho.ch
https://xeno-canto.org
https://www.faune-france.org

#Sara Lana
https://saralana.xyz/diario-sonoro

#Grégoire Chauvot & Mélia Roger
https://soundcloud.com/gchauvot/tracks
https://meliaroger.com

#Elise Guillaume 
http://www.eliseguillaumeart.com

#Pablo Diserens
https://pablodiserens.studio

#Adèle de Baudouin
Cy Lecerf Maulpoix, Ecologies déviantes

#Nadine Schütz
https://www.echora.ch
https://www.nanterre.fr/evenement/6617/69-agenda.htm

Chroniques de terrain - #9 Nadine Schütz

Chroniques de terrain - #8 Adèle de Baudouin

Chroniques de terrain - #7 Pablo Diserens

Chroniques de terrain - #5 Grégoire Chauvot & Mélia Roger

Chroniques de terrain - #4 Patricia Jäggi

Chroniques de terrain - #3 Sara Lana

Chroniques de terrain - #2 Noémie Delaloye

Chroniques de terrain - #1 Lê Quan Ninh

« 100 vaches à l’heure » est une pièce quadriphonique pensée comme une installation sonore pouvant s’écouter en boucle. Réalisée dans le cadre de l’exposition photographique de l’artiste visuelle Anne Leroy intitulée « On voudrait pas se faire manger », la pièce nous plonge dans le quotidien d’une ferme de Haute-Marne. Les enregistrements de terrain (field recordings) réalisés sur place dialoguent avec des fragments d’entretiens de deux trayeurs.

Laura et Martial sont salarié.es d’une exploitation laitière sur laquelle trois cent vingt-cinq vaches sont traites matin et soir. Au quotidien, ils soignent autant les animaux que les machines : si la traite se fait encore en branchant les vaches à la main, l’alimentation des animaux est entièrement automatisée. Ensemble, ils nous invitent à réfléchir au sens du travail avec les animaux en élevage intensif.
 
C’est une version stéréo qui vous est proposée ici.

100 vaches à l'heure - création sonore (extrait)

In an industrial milk farm, the cows are being dehorned, in order to facilitate the work of the humans around them. In this case, around 20 calves are trapped, put under sedative and dehorned directly after. We are listening to one of them, after the process, having trouble to breath and calling the others.

Violence can be so silent. Having a close recording this calf not being able to breath makes the situation of the milk industry very hard to listen to. The farm I was recording in France is supposed to be exemplary regarding animal treatment. Still, this dehorning technics is happening every day, because of animal confinement and for humans to work in safer conditions, in order to provide constant production of milk with the 350 cows around. In this recording, you hear the stillness, how peaceful and quiet the rest of the place is, with the distant birds and chatting. But still, this calf is suffering, and no-one hears it.

SOYA : 'most unpleasant sound' of year 2022 / Calf Trying To Breath After Dehorning

In a summer night in Morvan, a duet of two tawny owls with great green bush crickets and wood crickets.

Tawny owls duet in summer - recorded in Morvan (France) w/ Gregoire Chauvot

Thousand of sand fleas (talitrus saltator) were eating a large jellyfish on the beach at Oleron island (France). We put 2 hydrophones inside to listen. We can hear the fleas jumping around but also the waves from the inside perspective of the jellyfish.

Recorded with 2 Aquarian H2a on a Mixpre 6-II with Grégoire Chauvot at Oleron island in 2022.

Thousand of fleas eating a jellyfish - w/ Grégoire Chauvot

Poème extrait de la 9ème élégie de Duino de Rainer Maria Rilke, traduit en son avec les voix de Pierre ROGER (voix en allemand) et Charlotte RAMOND (voix de la transcription française).

9ème élégie de Duino - Rainer Maria Rilke

Le Palais des Bretons, un documentaire radio réalisé par Mélia Roger et Dimitri Kharitonnoff. 

Le Palais des Bretons parle de la mélodie des voix bretonnes. En traduisant les paroles de ses chansons, Ernest nous parle de ses souvenirs d'enfance et de ces voix qui n'existent plus. Le duo musical Hon Daou évoquent le lien entre le rythme parlé et les rythmes de danses... La musique et les chants sont peut-être notre lien le plus intime à la parole ?

Le Palais des bretons

Whatsapp vocal message - Female Voice

Concept : Mélia Roger 
Réalisation technique : Etienne Montpied
Collaboration scénaristique : Victor Jestin 
Messages laissés lors de l'installation sonore Ghost Me au festival Résonances, Bruxelles (mai 2018) - extrait. 
// "Le téléphone sonne tout seul. Lorsque tu décroches, tu entends qu'un certain Paulo ne répond plus à son meilleur ami. Une messagerie vocale t'invite alors à laisser à ton tour un message vocal (de maximum 30 secondes) à quelqu'un qui ne te répond pas. Tu peux ensuite écouter au hasard 5 des 82 messages laissés lors du festival" // 
L'installation parle de notre nouvelle façon de communiquer, utilisant des messages instanées (whatsapp, messenger...), nous pouvons malgré nous espionner si notre destinataire a bien reçu / lu nos messages. Et lorsque quelqu'un cesse de nous répondre, alors qu'il est si facile de s'écrire, une question nous confronte à notre solitude : pourquoi tu ne me réponds pas ? 
Cette installation sonore rassemble ces solitudes, ce besoin de donner de l'amour et notre incompréhension face au silence de l'autre.

Msg12

"Bonjour, je suis la voix de synthèse de Mélia Roger". 

Voix synthétisée à partir d'un corpus de 1 171 phrases en français. Sample rate : 44.1 kHz, microphone : TLM 103, salle insonorisée, interface : Focusrite Scarlett, programme : ircamTTS (http://anasynth.ircam.fr/home/english/category/logiciel-associ%C3%A9/ircamtts)

French artificial voice - vocal clone of my own voice - IRCAM TTS

DISCOURS DU RIEN

The Palace of Justice - Дворец Правосудия

Security cone, fluo light, hidden illustration, flowers, sound (Stereo, 6 min) / Illustration : Marina Gafurova / Sound : Mélia Roger 
QWAS exhibition ZHdK - December 2018

I live in front of the future Polizei and Justizzentrum of Zurich. I moved this summer and since this time, the sounds of the cranes rhythm my days. Since the beginning of winter, the bright light inside this empty building draw a large shadow in my room. The shadow of fear, the shadow of instability, the shadow of security and safety. Have you ever felt unsafe ?

That’s the question I asked to Marina, who lives with her two sons in Almaty, Kazakhstan. 

Have you ever felt insecure ? 

Marina sends me pictures of the grill which protect everyone windows. But in the streets, the pavement is full of holes, cause people are stealing the metal rolls that cover the canalisations. 
Last summer, a famous ice skater, Denis Ten, was murdered because he tried to stop two guys stealing his car’s mirrors. This drama affected all the country. 

The sounds you are hearing were taken in Zurich, at the closet place of the construction site of this future Palace of Justice you can come. They resonate in an ice-skate room. You can hear Marina’s boys laughing. They are safe at home. 

In the security cone, you can whisper your own misdeeds. But if you look inside, you will see one of Marina’s sketches of one street in Almaty.

QWAS - installation soundtrack

Bugs eating horse dung

Still rivers, group audio experience

Climate & the City Eco Art Lab intervention - 29.08.2020 | 16:00
Frau Gerolds Garden, Zürich

Do you think that we are just motionless, still little stones? «Still Rivers» brings you in the course of the Aare, listening to the underwater, the intimate voice of the river.

This group audio experience is born with the reunion of artists and scientists around a transdisciplinary approach of ecology. It has to be listened while holding a stone.

Voices of Ruth Buck and Hélène Walter
Sounds recorded and edited by Mélia Roger
Eco Art Lab and Crowther Lab project initiated with Ruth Buck, Mélia Roger, Hélène Walter, Thérèse Laubscher and Iris Hordijk

---+ Quotes sources
« Der Wald lebt » which concludes this recording is extracted from the Yanomami-Shaman Davi Kopenawa’s book The Falling sky 

---+ Read more
- BAFU BERN 2017
- BirdLife ZVS Zürich: www.birdlife-zuerich.ch
- Yanomami-Shaman Davi Kopenawa from the book „the falling sky„
- www.liga-vogelschutz.org
- TAGESSPIEGEL Prof. Jens Kersten public law and administrative science

---+ Hear more :
- Sounds of extinct birds in switzerland: Information from Vogelwarte Sempach 
- birdsound www.xeno-canto.org
- Bartgeier, Fischadler, Haubenlerche, Rotschenkel 2019: Schwanzwürger, Raubwürger, Rotkopfwürger
- Sound of Kauai‚ O’o. www.liga-vogelschutz.org

still rivers - audio group experience

Underwater insect recorded with self-made hydrophones in Sihl river in Zurich (CH), automn 2020.

Recording and hydrophone made with Grégoire Chauvot

Underwater insect in Sihl river

Melting ice recorded with stereo pair home made hydrophones, January 2021, with Grégoire Chauvot. 

The sounds you hear are the ice breaking and transforming under the temperature difference. 

Experiment about heat in process...

Melting ice - recorded with home made hydrophones

2021 ongoing project in collaboration with Eric Larrieux and the support of the Umwelt- und Gesundheitsschutz Zürich and Kuratorium Oekologie (ZHdK).

The air listening station is a cabin, where listeners can enter and experience a soundscape live streamed from the rooftop of Toni-Areal, sonically modified by the measures of the particles in the air, in the same location. Through this transformation, the public can experience the variations of those particles and get a sense for “Air Quality” via “Ear Quality”.

The process called ‘sonification’ allows the listener to hear data which is normally silent. In real time, we hear the changes of the respirable particulate matter (PM10), nitrogen oxides (NOX), ozone (O3) and ammonia (NH3), all assigned to specific sounds.

This project will allow us to contribute to a broader study on air quality measurement and world live sound mapping.

More informations will follow!

The air listening station - aesthetic direction

(FR) D'abord pensée comme une installation sonore dans l'espace, THE VOICE IS VOICES met en scène une voix organique et son clone numérique (vocal deep fake). Entre les voix, se crée un espace de doute et d'ambiguïté sur la véracité de la parole. La voix de synthèse a été réalisée à partir d’un corpus vocal de plusieurs heures d’enregistrements qui ont permis de générer des phrases en synthèse ‘text-to-speech’. Ainsi, chaque phrase artificielle a été écrite, puis lue par une machine. La voix organique devient le miroir de son clone et brouille les pistes de l'identité de la voix. Vous écoutez une version binaurale de l'œuvre.

Ce projet a été réalisé en collaboration avec l'ENS Louis-Lumière (Paris), l'Ircam (Paris) et l'ICST (Zurich).
(EN) Firstly created as a sound installation in space, THE VOICE IS VOICES is a place of doubt between an organic voice and its vocal deep fake. The artificial voice has been constructed from a vocal corpus of many hours of recordings, and each word is generated completely by the machine, via text-to-speech synthesis. The organic voice becomes the miroir of its clone and blurs the boundaries of the vocal identity. You are listening to a binaural version of the work. 

This project has been made with ENS Louis-Lumière (Paris), in collaboration with Ircam (Paris) and the ICST (Zurich).

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