El Hierro is the smallest and most distant of the seven main Canary Islands. Exploring its contrasting landscapes and sonic environments, the composition wanders through reverberating deep ravines, the interiors of wind-bent juniper trees, human-animal interactions, energetic trade winds blowing in deserted beaches, and the late-night wails of shearwaters nesting in the cliffs. 

Headphone listening recommended.

Environmental sonic matter recorded in El Hierro Island in May 2021. Composed in El Charco, Puerto Cabras, Fuerteventura, June 2021. Special thanks to El Hierro Island Council.

This piece is part of CANARIAS DC SOUNDWALK, a project exploring the sonic ecologies of the Canary Islands, presented as a series of geolocated compositions throughout chosen locations in Washington DC.

HIERRO was premiered during Sound Scene Festival 2021 (26-27 June), organised in collaboration with DC Listening Lounge and the Smithsonian Hirschhorn Museum.

CANARIAS DC SOUNDWALK is a permanent public invisible artwork available through the Echoes app from September 2021.

https://pablosanz.info/canariasdcsoundwalk/
http://bit.ly/CanariasDCSoundwalk

CREDITS 
Commissioned and produced by the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in Washington, D.C. Fieldwork and production assistance: Palma E. Christian Martínez. Additional support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI), the Swedish Arts Grants Committee (Konstnärsnämnden) and the Visby International Centre for Composers (VICC).

HIERRO was a finalist at the Phonurgia Nova Awards 2021 and Grand Prix Nova 2022.

HIERRO

Until the middle of the 19th century, there was no recorded sound. A performance had to be seen to be heard, with no record left beyond the audience's recollections. Much of music was forgotten by time.

Then, in 1860, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville captured the first sounds as waveforms. Still, the idea of actually hearing those sounds again did not seem possible. Instead, he imagined people would read waveforms like a new language, and hear the performances imaginatively in their "mind's ears."

A Brief History of the Waveform follows the evolution of sound recorded as a wave, from Scott de Martinville to SoundCloud.

Featuring the voices of: Patrick Feaster, sound media historian; Karen Topp, senior lecturer in physics, Bowdoin College; Jonathan Sterne, sound historian, McGill University; Carlene Stephens, curator, National Museum of American History; Eric Wahlforss, co-founder and CTO, SoundCloud.

A Brief History of the Waveform

48Hz

Multi-channel installation
Presented at Platform Arts, Belfast
28 – 30 March 2014

The sound installation attempts to unveil and present to the listener the inner world hidden in the drone of the telecommunication boxes.

Each drone, with a fundamental frequency close to 48Hz, is unique and presents different sonic characteristics. For this installation I have selected two of the boxes as the single material for the composition: Sunnyside Street and Lockview Road.

The field recordings were analyzed in order to determine the key frequencies from each drone. By applying narrow band-pass filters it was possible to subtract the ambient noise and isolate the drone.

The 3-part composition progresses from a more “objective”perspective towards a more “subjective” one. Firstly it introduces the original recordings. Then, each individual frequency composing the drone is presented through a partially random selection and accumulation algorithm. Finally, the same material is played at different octaves with phase-shifted envelopes.

The installation generates a new version of the composition at each playback, creating a slightly different listening experience each time. The space is designed to invite the listeners to lie down on the floor and fully immerse themselves in the sonic experience.
X Marks the Spot
Matilde Meireles

‘X Marks the Spot’ is a web-archive, a slowly growing and playful map of Belfast assembled by tagging specific telecommunication boxes, only those emitting a drone (continuous hum).

The tagging process aims to engage people with the space around them, to understand how sound shapes our experience of the city.

By inviting other people to participate in the process, this activity is designed to spread throughout Belfast exploring alternative ways to relate with the urban environment and connect from A to B.

‘X Marks the Spot’ is also a curatorial project. Three artists were invited to explore different aspects and processes within the project. Miguel Negrão will show the first result, ‘48Hz’.

‘48Hz’ is an immersive imaginary soundscape of Belfast. A multi-channel sound installation that uses field recordings from ‘X Marks the Spot’ as the ground material for a drone composition.

// ‘X Marks the Spot’ was constructed using a fully responsive web-layout allowing it to function on all browsers and mobile devices – enabling you to augment your experience of each tagged location.

http://xmsbelfast.com

Event partners
PLACE, Sonic Arts Research Centre and Recomposing the City

48Hz @ Platform Arts Belfast

Visions in meditation for Stan Brakhage.
Live at CRATER LAB (Barcelona). Ciclo Ultrasons.
Modular Synth in just intonation
2017/11/28

http://crater-lab.org/ciclo-ultrasons-visions-in-meditation-para-stan-brakhage/

Live at CRATER LAB (Barcelona) 17/10/28

15 March, 6 pm, temperature about 0 degrees of Celsius. The last pieces of tiny ice on the bank of water channel.
The first half of the recording made with contact microphones, the second half - as it sounds in the air. Roaring waterfall not so far...

The last ice: two perspectives

Contact microphones recording. Strapping tape outstretched on the meadow and making "helicopter-like" sound in the wind.

Strapping tape in the wind

immersive ambisonic multichannel installation and live performance
ongoing project series, duration and dimensions variable

entangled explores the nonhuman worlds of the Amazon rainforest, focusing on the fascinating complexity of the continuous sonic flow created by insects, birds, amphibians, mammals, reptiles, fish, plant species, soil, water and the weather.
The work facilitates a profound, active and sustained listening experience, cultivating intimate sensory encounters in which affectivity is favoured over signification and representation. The listener-participants find themselves in almost total darkness, without images or objects, within a sound field generated by a multichannel sound system.
The work is a durational composition made from several hundred hours of environmental sound materials recorded in terra firme and flooded forest (várzea) ecosystems within the territories of the Amanã and Mamirauá reserves in the central Brazilian Amazon. The fieldwork was carried out over two months in the dry season of 2015, in collaboration with local inhabitants.
entangled is experienced as a series of immersive installations and live performance events, featuring variable sonic materials and extended durations. 

The project uses higher-order Ambisonics. This audio is decoded to stereo (headphone listening encouraged).

HIERRO

pablo sanz

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