The Host Tale

https://www.nts.live/shows/ernesto-chahoud/episodes/beirut-daze-w-ernesto-chahoud-26th-november-2021

Beirut Daze w/ Ernesto chahoud & Radio AlHara 261121

This is a 66 minute audio essay on The Travelling Archive, an archive of field recordings from Bengal, written and presented by singer and writer Moushumi Bhowmik. The essay was written for presentation on Baba Betar, an internet radio, that partnered Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography 2021 and was hosted by Arfun Ahmed. The theme of the festival was Shunyo, which could mean both zero, emptiness or the point from which to start all over again.

In this essay, Moushumi remembers people and places by listening to voices from past and continuing journeys within and around Bengal. Bengal is both a physical space and a space of the mind in this story. Wistfully told, it draws the listener into a very personal field of listening by weaving song with sound and sound with silence. Moushumi sits in her room in Kolkata, and as she talks, recording herself, the night moves towards dawn. Dogs bark, the last trains pass through the station, a plane goes swimming in the sky, people call out, they open and shut doors and windows, while slowly in the dark a map unfurls.

This soundtrack has been mixed by Sabyasachi Pal. 

The voices we hear come in the following sequence:
1. Chobi MelaX team, hawa mithai sellers and others at the Dhanmondi Lake tea stall area. Recorded by Moushumi Bhowmik on a Redmi phone in February 2019
2. Aseer Arman’s song playing through speakers during The Travelling Archive installation at  Abdur Razzaq Biddapeeth, Dhanmondi. Recorded by Moushumi Bhowmik on a Redmi phone in February 2019
3.Barindra Das recorded at Shankar Hotel, Silchar on a PD150 camera by Sudheer Palsane in August 2005
4.Naseema recorded in Dhaka on a Sony minidisc recorder by Moushumi Bhowmik in December 2004.
5.Binoy Roy recording from cassette Pranto Prantarer Lokgaan Volume 8 of series Shikorer Sandhane, produced by Bhromora, Kolkata in 1993.
6.Putul Sarkar recorded in Gouripur, Assam by Sudheer Palsane on a PD150 camera in August 2005.
7.Deben Bhattacharya voice from interview with Aly Zaker for Ekushey TV, Dhaka in February 2001. 
8.Muhammad Safi recorded by Deben Bhattacharya in 1971, released on album Echoes of Bangladesh. (Fremeaux, 2008) 
9.Munda women of Munshigonj, Sundarban, Bangladesh in conversation with Moushumi Bhowmik recorded by Sukanta Majumdar on a Sound Device 633 recorder with a Sennheiser 418 mic in January 2018.
10. Abdul Hamid Jalali and others recorded in his home in Sylhet by Moushumi Bhowmik on a Sony minidisc recorder by Moushumi in December 2004
11.Ranjit recorded in Rajghat Tea Garden, Srimangal, Bangladesh by Moushumi Bhowmik on a Sony minidisc recorder in December 2004. 
12.Naren Hansda and Chapalabala recorded in Jahajpur, Purulia on a Sony minidisc recorder by Sukanta Majumdar in February 2007.
13. Sultana and Jadab Sarkar recorded in Sonai, Cachar, Assam on a PD150 camera by Sudheer Palsane in August 2005.
14. Nityagopal Das Baul song from album Inner Knowledge released by Real World Records in 1997. 
15. Chintamoni recorded by Soumya Chakravarti on a Sony TC D5M cassette recorder in Santiniketan in 1984.
16.Hajera Bibi recorded in Faridpur on a Sony minidisc recorder by Sukanta Majumdar in April 2006.
17. Bhaktadas recorded by Sukanta Majumdar at home on a computer in Kolkata in 2010 (mistakenly remembered as 2009 in the essay).

Songs   Grow  Out  Of  The  Land

Cultural practice in general is a slippery but deeply felt affair, where practitioners are often tasked with communicating the »underside of meaning« (Barthes, 1976). In algorithmic times, focusing on this task when working with machine learning outputs can offer an alternative to the pressure to consider quantifiable and easily machine-readable datasets as complete repositories of human knowledge. The multimodal knowledge held in sound and human experience is difficult to parse with data tools, e.g. machine learning, but the failures and messiness of these outputs add to our toolsets of constructing and reconstructing the worlds we offer in our stories. Through a presentation of some of Sinha’s discoveries navigating the worlds of theatre and machine learning-based audio research-creation, this audio paper offers examples of the possibilities of engaging with algorithmic failure as a deliberate strategy of discovery, to uplift the exploration of cultural possibilities and engage alternative models of community building and connection.

Audio paper by Debashis Sinha.

Part of Seismograf Peer: Sound and the More-Than-Human Worlds

Algorithmic mythologies: Failure as a cultural tool

Recientemente nos hicimos de un micrófono AMBEO VR de Sennheiser, y obvio que nos salimos a jugar con él a distintos lugares. Aquí algunas pruebas de las grabaciones en Formato B.

Ciudad de Mexico Calle Madero_1

Am I Here? for eight-channels of recorded audio and live performer(s). In Am I Here? Cathy Lane takes the listener on a journey through time and space – from sounds of the stone carvers of Mahabalipuram, the Bangalore laundry ghats and the temple of Madurai in South India through the glacial lagoons of Iceland to birdsong in a domestic garden in inner London stopping off in Chile, Italy, Norway and Scotland along the way to question the nature of “here” and “now”. Her live speaking voice is mixed in with recordings of the places that she has recorded in in the past as well as her recorded voice from other times and places. 
‘Am I Here? gently questions the nature of a recording and the various degrees of embodied or disembodied presence in a recorded artefact. It challenges the commonly held belief that field recordings are an ‘objective document’ and reasserts the inability of the recordist to escape their own physical and subjective presence.
This version of Am I here? was made for RADIO OUTSIDE: A PHONOGRAPHY OF THE WORLD  a project by Dramaturgie Sonore au theatre which toured Quebec Province, Canada and broadcast online in October 2017. http://radiodehors.dramaturgiesonore.com/le-projet/

Am I Here? (RADIO OUTSIDE) Stereo extract 2

As a composer one of the most rewarding activities is teaching people about soundscape composition. In my workshops participants learn about the soundscape and take part in field recording and composition activities. These workshops bring a variety of people together all with an eagerness to learn something new while sharing their own creative experiences. Their own experiences of their sonic environment and connections to place offer the composer a fresh insight into a new place, such as Trafford, Manchester.

This piece is a celebration of cultural diversity, a showcase of creative ideas through the exploration of our sonic environment. The recordings gathered from these activities have been used to create a new soundscape, one in which is inspired by the creative explorations of the participants during the workshops.

I would like to thank all of the participants who attended the workshops and the staff at Seed Studios for making this happen. I would also like to thank Gemma Bass and Gary Farr for inviting me to collaborate with them on this project.

Sowing Seeds

A pumping ghetto tech tinged mix from DJ SPIT (aka @handjobberlin) is sexy hard dance personified. Nasty n groovy bby.

HARD DANCE is going on tour – https://harddance.boilerroom.tv/

HARD DANCE 022 - DJ SPIT

The House in the Woods

Cathy Lane is a composer, sound artist and academic. Some of her  work uses spoken word, field recordings and archive material to explore aspects of our listening relationship with each other and the multiverse.

Am I Here? (RADIO OUTSIDE) Stereo extract 2

playingwithwords