The deeper I am investigating field recording as both artistic and listening practice, the more I become aware that each recording session is an intrusion into the landscape and that the landscape, whatever historical, biotic, or environmental system defines it – is sentient to my presence.

No matter how considerate my “intrusions” are, an abstract form of communication always takes place, and it largely depends on my ability to maintain this connection, which goes beyond the soundscape and sonic properties of the place. In this sense, my capacity to employ deep intuition and activate a specific neural architecture developed through a compound of skills also defines the recording process and its future aesthetic transformation. Thus, making a field recording fully personalized practice and soundscape composition a discipline of open interpretation, as well as a vast field for misuse and false representation. Regardless of an evaluation system, whether we contemplate an act of listening through scientific observation of one’s cognition event boundaries or through the capacity to comprehend the existential phenomenology of Zulu spiritualism, the possibility that two or more listeners can have the same listening experience is minuscule.

We are all deeply rooted in a diversity of psychological constructs; neural and sensory imprints, memory compounds, cognitive abilities, and many body-mind pathways determining our current psycho-physical state. Therefore, if the field recording practice is based on any form of active listening – it is a discipline based on interpretation.
With that in mind, I am asking: How do we approach the landscape of severe devastation and a dense history of warfare? Knowing that serious ethical and moral consequences are involved in the effort to interpret a particular soundscape.

In the work “ghosts” I am using obsolete instruments – a modular synthesizer built in 1970, a discarded wheelchair wheel salvaged from the Adriatic Sea, and the piano fallen in disuse which belonged to the Austrian conceptualist, filmmaker, improviser, photographer, environmentalist, and writer – Karl Katzinger aka John Tylo (October 1953 – April 2021). Next to these elements of the past and their voices rediscovered, I am incorporating hydrophone and field recordings from several locations appropriating them through the discourse of critical tourism and a culture of memory – more specifically through listening to the inherent memories of environmental devastation due to exploitation of natural resources as well as warfare – in the South Adriatic (Old town Dubrovnik and island of Vrnik), and the Czech-Austrian borderlands nearby of Mauthausen–Gusen concentration camps. 

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Instruments:
EMS Synthi 100
Wheelchair wheel salvaged from the sea
John Tylo’s old piano

Field recordings:
Dubrovnik – Stradun air conditioning units and collection of rubbish containers
Vrnik Island South Adriatic – crickets in an ancient limestone quarry
Adriatic dolphins *hydrophone recording by Robertina Šebjanič
Harrachstal village on Czech-Austrian borderlands – crickets in the abandoned granite quarry
Hydrophone recordings of the river Schwarze Aist
Train coming into Freistadt train station in Austria

All sounds performed, recorded, composed & edited by Manja Ristić
Some sounds gathered at the SHAPE + musikprotocoll residency, July 2023

Hydrophone used for an underwater recordings made by Jez riley French
jezrileyfrench.co.uk

Mastering by La Plant Studio
laplantstudio.com

Bandcamp

ghosts

Opening track on the 'left hand drive ep'. Out now.

bricolageglasgow.bandcamp.com/album/left…rive-bc083

Before The World Awakes

Night chorus into dawn chorus

Leeper, PA
2024-05-26

Cook Forest 6:26am

Five String Sculpture is a composition/sound sculpture exploring the disposition of two different acoustic (geometric) formations - one long, straight and slightly angled and another smaller one in a convex shape. Each structure is built from the combination of electronic and acoustic sound that spreads between loudspeaker at one end, and acoustic sound of the instrument at another end. To explore the idea of an electro-acoustic piece in which sound can propagate into various directions and can be localised in a couple of fixed
configurations, I have defined 5 “strings” of sound each between one instrument and one loudspeaker, and I have used this to delineate the acoustic space of the work. “String" is therefore the main structural unit of the piece and their activation and
musical treatment, shape the overall form of the work.

Premiered by the Vortex ensemble, Geneva, May 2024

5 String Sculpture

For trio, electronic sounds and custom-made instruments

Premiered by Funkloch:
Lara Stanic, Flöte, Elektronik
Petra Ronner, Klavier, Elektronik
Sebastian Hofmann, Perkussion, Elektronik
Zurich, January 2024

Video: https://www.youtube.com/live/GU6UWonCwKw?si=FA2wPx0fTYg4IMne&t=3701

Things are changing properties

Recorded live 18-06-2024
https://soundcloud.com/emmyhush
https://soundcloud.com/telesumo

Lalitā (LIVE 18-06-24)

Il y a une balade de confinement de https://soundcloud.com/melaine-dalibert au piano
Il y a https://soundcloud.com/ladrache de Bruxelles au chant polyphonique post-punk
Il y a la voix et le synthé ombrageux de https://soundcloud.com/elisaflores
Il y a les mélodies chaleureuses de https://soundcloud.com/fairiesareback
Il y a les ritournelles enveloppantes de https://soundcloud.com/finfilm composées dans le secret de sa voiture
Il y a une reprise par https://soundcloud.com/glabre d'une des plus belles chansons du monde
Et puis quelques morceaux d'artistes qui n'ont plus besoin d'être présenté-e-s, mais encore et toujours écouté-e-s, oui

Mix enregistré le 18 juin 2024

Image: https://www.instagram.com/camille.tsering/

Playlist:
Melaine Dalibert - 'Confinuum' 8
Ladr ache - Op Stilte
Unknown - Three More Times (= 3 times slower Britney cover)
Elisa Flores - As Cold As Warm
Calla - Elsewhere
Fairies Are Back - Cheval de fer
Glabre - The Sound Behind The Silence
Fin Film - It's a C
Clarice Jensen - Daily
Drekka - Sickness Subsides
Janis Joplin - All Is Loneliness
Explosions In The Sky - Remember Me As A Time Of Day
Ladr ache - Trafic de grues
Fin Film - Tripping Without A Trip
Fairies Are Back - Flowers Shall Grow
Low - Shots & Ladders

Mélancolie douce XXV

Some Random Source Serge modules on electro duties, pulling out some of those gritty sounds that these things do so well.

Big respect to Serge Tcherepnin for such bad ass circuits!!

Featherstone - Out Of Reach

Saša Delimar - Be Quiet

stref scre

Composer and sound artist. Professor of Creative Music Technology and Co-head of Electronic Studio - Basel. Ex Head of Radio Belgrade's Electronic Studio
www.svetlanamaras.com
marasoffice@gmail.com
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Maraš has presented her work internationally, at venues, festivals and events such as  Ruhr Triennial, CTM (Berlin), Ars Electronica (Linz), House of Electronic Arts (Basel), Ruhr Triennial, Espace Multimedia Gantner (Bourogne), Musikprotokoll (Graz), Heroines of Sound (Berlin), Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), Ausland (Berlin), Izlog Suvremenog Zvuka (Zagreb), ICMC (New York), International Rostrum of Composers (Wroclaw), ISEA (Dubai), International Music Institute (Darmstadt), Orpheus Institute (Ghent) and many other places. Her music was used in theatre plays, experimental and documentary films, presented at places like MOMA (New York), Aubagne International Film Festival and Bitef theatre (Belgrade).
​
Svetlana Maraš was SHAPE artist for 2020, and co-curator of 4fakultät concert series in Hamburg.

Things are changing properties

Svetlana Maraš

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