Auto-phonobiography, memories of my youth time in Spain.'
 Life is not what you have lived, but what you remember and how you remember it', Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Winner EBU Palma Ars Acustica 2014

PHONOBIOGRAPHIE#1

KITTY and The QUALIA

The sonic response of a modular synthesizer to small variations on electric voltage is so mysterious to me, as that a of a balloon singing while forced to exhale the air by squeezing the opening. I have been working with those two sound devices to try to crack the enigma without success, but in the meantime, I produced this piece. It also draws on elements of the Pol Bury monotype digital sur canvas after Ingres’painting ‘Oedipe explique l’énigme du sphinx’ and of the work of Turkish choreographer Bahar Temiz with whom I have collaborated especially for the dance performance Punkt (2023) which speaks of various notions of perspective and depth, also reminding me of certain issues in Bury's work.

Le sphinx et Pol -Charo Calvo

Text: Sean Street
Field recording: Charo Calvo
Voice: Bavo Buys
Mix and idea: Charo Calvo
Language: English
Length: 15:30


The field recording captures a 15:30 minute time lapse of daily life at a junction of three small streets in El Albaicín, Granada. There is no editing, the capture is in real time from start to finish. The featured location is a corner on top of a hill of a popular neighborhood in Granada, three streets rise from the front and descend at the back of the terrace where I was situated. Because of my elevated position on that balcony, I could not see everything going on in the streets, but clearly hear invisible people and events mingling in all directions. Intrigued by that sonic chaos, I sent the recording to the English poet, sound recordist and radio man Sean Street with the request that he would write a few words inspired by whatever he happened to hear.  His wonderful response was that of a poet embedded in a place he had never been and, probably never will be. A young man recorded his words without ever having listened to the field recording. I simply blended them with the sounds - words and sonic images interacting - joyfully taking advantage of the wavy dynamics of the original soundscape. 
As Sean Street writes, "we can only be where we are, and beyond that, everything else is imagination and memory".

Nada Within Air - Poet's Impressions of a field recording -Stereo

Wild Tracks for you
Poem: Sean Street
Voice: Mira Matthew
Editing, recording, mixing, idea: Charo Calvo
Recording of frontline fighting in Ukraine: Pieter Jan de Pue

This piece is part of the Red Light trilogy around poetry and field recordings.
The poem Wild Track by Sean Street - English poet, writer and BBC radio producer - resumes the fascination of field recording and the infinite possibility it opens up to the recordist and the future listener. Writing with sounds, editing and mixing them is like facing a blank page full of possibilities. 
Transmission through sound is effective and extremely attractive. Here I make a selection of some of my peaceful recordings from Spain to Iceland or Russia, and sometimes, I insert a self-reference to some of my old radio pieces with transformed sounds. The sound of the fighting on the front line in Ukraine in 2014 was recorded by a good friend who was lucky enough to return for a while with that documentary wild track lasting for hours. He was there documenting the start of that war, and unfortunately  he's still there after 10 years. As Sean Street writes, the world brushes against us, and we should do our best not to shut it up, to listen, document it and transmit to others to and make a better world.

<Wild Track
Wild track they call it.  
The soundof air going on round us.
The moment happening while 
our back’s turned. To get away 
from it, build a box. Time switched 
on by a red light, its walls 
suddenly listening live. 
Perfect acoustic silence,
carte blanche. The infinite page.
A blank empty room filled with
possibility. Beyond 
it the wide transparent space
where the wild track waits,
beating wings on the air.

The world brushes against us. We may shut it out, but its voices are still murmuring, speaking, singing and shouting on the other side of the wall, beyond the windows, against the glass.>

WILD TRACKS FOR YOU -charo Calvo

Five women artists living in Brussels; each one from a different cultural background. They tell, in their mother tongue, an intense sensorial experience, that left a physical imprint. One of them is not telling the truth though. How to transmit this experience only through language when their words are translated, albeit ‘properly’ by another woman?.Qualia questions the body/mind problem, the impossibility of sharing with others the exact perception of a colour...
Technical information :
Voice and texts : Kitty Crowther, Zahava Seewald, Meryam Bayram, Sonia Pastecchia, Charo Calvo.
Translation and french voice: Laurence Vielle
Translation and english voice: Caroline Daish
Recordings: Charo Calvo, Bastien Hidalgo
Mastering: Bastien Hidalgo
Studio : Acsr and author’s studio. 
Produced by ABC Soundproof Australia, with support of ACSR Belgium and FACR de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.

QUALIA -ENGLISH version

Opening performance Bahar Temiz In Love, 02/02/2024

Music for spiders

Fragment of the soundtrack from Actes de Parole, theatrical concert performed and created with Benedicte Davin

TU N'EST PAS EN BELGIË

PLANKTON SONG

Opening track from PUNKT, dance performance by Bahar Temiz, 2022, KVS Brussels

PUNKT Opening

Part I - Featuring  Said Gharbi - Michèle Noiret - Wim Vandekeybus
All three are professionals with over thirty years' experience on the Belgian national scene and with a major international impact. All three have changed contemporary dance with their revolutionary ideas. The surround recording sessions made with each of them in the dance studio provide listeners with a sonic image of their energy and physicality. This sonic presence of the bodies takes on as much weight as their words; movement is their language.

LES DANSES PHONIQUES I PHONIC DANCES

Two opposite environments trapped in a labyrinth. Two separate timelines, two contrary textures that struggle to find their way out, one dry and the other wet. Their only point of contact is sound.

1917 October

THE GRASS – L'HERBE
2018
8 pistes

Commande du Ina GRM
Développement logiciel et prise de son : Fabrice Moinet
Enregistré au Studio für Elektroakustische Musik ADK, Berlin
Mixé au studio de l'auteur et au Ina GRM, Paris.
Composé à partir du poème 'The Grass' de Jeffrey Yang
Voix: Jeffrey Yang


	..沙 沙 shasha through the pass-
es, whispering seeds
			will pass, will pass
	    within leaves 
listening
	    grasses, not only
the revelation
but the nature behind 
               to sustain it, over-
land grasses seeds 
spread and grow, rhizome, 
stolon to sod, curly
            mesquite cotton-
            top, draft 
to draft 草
ten thousand 
            grasses, 草 dancing

Ces quelques lignes tirées du poème 'The Grass' du poète sino-américan Jeffrey Yang furent suffisantes pour provoquer l'émergence d'un flot d'images sonores dans mon esprit. Le beau mot
anglais 'graze' qui apparaît souvent dans le poème, avec ses multiples signifiants tels paître, frôler, érafler, froisser, m'a fait penser à la fonction dynamique des filtres sur le spectre des sons. Fabrice Moinet a donc développé un patch Max utilisant la synthèse croisée, le morphing et le modèle de source-filter. Le son des mots du poème, lus par l'auteur, fait moduler le reste des éléments sonores: une brosse dansant autour de microphones binauraux, un piano éraflé, des percussions grattées, du vent. 

	Devinez qui parle

THE GRASS

the primitive character of the voices and double bass enhanced by the electronic frequencies in a inspiring cluster of intensity and energy; and whne the energy was spent, the piece was finished.
Voice: Diana Miron
Double Bass: Laurentiu Cotac

all the ME pass before you

Originally soundtrack for a photo exhibition by Pablo Castilla, after the years a darker version for the dance performance 'Hands do not touch your precious Me' by Ultima Vez

O.W.L.

Charo Calvo is a Spanish electroacoustic composer, sound designer and teacher, living in Brussels. After having performed as a dancer with the influential Belgian dance company Ultima Vez, she started her studies on Electroacoustic Composition in 1992 with Annette Vande Gorne at Brussels Conservatory (now ARTS2 Mons). Graduated in 1999.
From 1992 her work as composer is being developed through different media, widely diffused on international venues and festivals, dance performances, theatre, film and radio. She has received several important awards such as Palma Ars Acustica 2014 EBU, Phonurgia Nova Awards Paris 2017, Prix Marulic 2018 Croatia, Grand Prix Nova Bucharest 2019 and was shortlisted for Prix Europa Berlin, Hearsay Prize Ireland.
Charo Calvo has been a guest of the prestigious residential program for international artists in Berlin DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm during the year 2017/2018. More at charocalvo.org

charo calvo

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