Thinking about sound
08:39
Is it possible to compose a still life in the acoustic area?
To capture the essential energy in an infinite loop?
Music and sound exist in the flow of time.
An acoustic still life is a contradiction per se.
This composition is created in this field of tension.
The integrated language is intended as a kind of acoustic subtitles, a guide through the piece.
"Thinking about sound" was nominated in the Phonurgia Nova Awards 2021

Thinking about sound

In "Disturbed Waltz" I use 3 waltz themes, as well as voice fragments of public figures. An automated voice speaks the dance instructions.
The splinters of men's and women's voices interweave with each other, with the music and the sounds to form a complex structure.
The basic idea of this composition is to lead the listeners into a world of ambivalence and controversial feelings, a sonic journey characterized by a mixture of familiarity and strangeness.

Disturbed Waltz (Phonurgia Nova Jury Prize 2023)

These six fragments are an homage to Summer - sound-snapshots of intense moments of fugitive moods.

Pictorial expression is essential, as well as brevity, density and economy of sound material used in these acoustical miniatures, which have been assembled from bits of music, little noises and background sounds, which in turn have been extracted from remembered, supposed and dreamed mood moments.

Summer fragments

An acoustical poem, which, due to its manifold suggestions, invites us to investigate imaginary spaces.
Sound material:
Phrases from a popular soap novel and a soundfragment (Bouzouki-melody, ready-made object) conjure the poem's beginning mood.
Texts and melodies are spoken, hummed, dressed with noises and electronic sounds, stakes off and spread out, without striving toward form or meaning.
Due to this "quasi-narration" fantasy and imagination can grow and thrive.

some funny stuff

Dans le domaine audio je m'interesse surtout des méthodes de la réduction, des techniques de supprimer le son.
L' utilisation des signes acoustiques comme déclencheur des "autres images".
Eclairer l'ambivalence du moral.

Le bonheur: en Allemagne et en Angleterre matière facultative à l'école. Je m' avais occupé de la diversité et l'ambivalence de cet état temporel et incalculable.
Une réflexion sur un sentiment fugitif.

Le Bonheur

A laboratory for listening experience on the border between trash and violence.
Acoustic material, that controls and triggers our moods. A lot of musical "clichés" are arranged in a playful composition.
Auditory perseption is observed, questioned and „disturbed“. It's a matter of tracing otherwise parallel and hidden experience spaces.

fragmented moods

Fragments of music, noises and electronic sounds become mixed with varying audio dimensions and integrated into an imaginary landscape.
2013

Playscapes - with Beethoven in the mountains

A free acoustic figuration.
Artificial or real? 
"Liberty - a game" questions the listener's perception.
The compositional approach: I use sound fragments as if they were musical instruments.

Vivant ou artificial? Lutte ou jeu? Dans l'art sonore j'aime laisser les possibilités interprétatives. Ainsi cette pièce manipule les concepts sonores et interroge la perception de l'auditeur. L'approche compositionnelle consiste à utiliser les fragments sonores comme s'il s' agissait d'instruments de musique. C'est une figuration acoustique libre.
BeJoh 2019

Liberty - a game

My little bit of liberty - a stumbling waltz (My little bit of liberty) 
Proposal for the Work Overture Project IMEB Bourges 2008 (from revolts to revolutions)
The waltz was a sign of social revolution.
This "grinding" waltz (in the sense of a hurdy-gurdy) just never gets off the ground.
The soundmaterial consists of: One sample of two waltz measures One improvising voice
Some noises
duration: 3'46"
BeJoh 2008

A Stumbling Waltz

Looted Cityscape - acoustical poem -  2009 -  Duration: 08:31 
An acoustical poem is an autonom soundwork. Pictorial expression is essential, as well as brevity, density and economy of sound material.
The aim of the acoustical poem is to focus all imaginable sensory perception, as if under a burning glass, thereby transforming it into the audible realm. 
The sounds follow a clearly musical dramaturgy and their own associative grammar of narration. A musical fragment is vocalised, ornamented, compressed, imitated, multiplied, disguised, distorted..using digital and analog electronics. 
Virtual and actual workspaces communicate with each other in a language consisting of sounds played on a toy musical instrument and recorded audio material discovered in a city.

Looted Cityscape

Bernadette Johnson  is author of acoustic poems, radioart and other sound projects, based in Basel. 
Auditory perseption is observed, questioned and „disturbed“. It's a matter of tracing otherwise parallel and hidden experience spaces.

Bernadette Johnson - acoustic poetry

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