the feedback of the anthropocene a speculative research in acoustic ecologY -about the emergence of musical instruments
conducted by Anton Peitersen and Petja Ivanova
Project Methodology
Concept // Context
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
study
the workshop creating a community
the fieldtrip
presentation
Workshop with artstudents from National Art Academy Sofia making Solarsoundmodules, DIY bagpipes and other instruments for outside (countryside music). Giving an overview on th efield of soundart, introducing texts for further investigations and self studies.
-Tour with the shepherd, equip him and his herd with digital extra senses - Analyse manifestations of anthropocene influences in his environment through drawing and photography - Digital hack on the bagpipe and related musical/sound experiments
This will culminate in an exhibit, where the results of the tour and the workshop will be displayed and performed. The exhibit will take place in Denmark (GIG, Copenhagen) and if possible also in Sofia and Berlin. It is accompanied by a publication with images of the project, of the body of work and texts.
Acquire and study bulgarian mythological texts and poetry surrounding topics like the shepherd, music, musical instruments and natural forces for our research as poetic theorie. This will mainly take place in Varna at the Institute for Folklore Studies. -Get introduced to the production and playing of the Kaba Gaida in Smolian at a manufacturers studio and Varna at the National School for Folklore Music.
In 1977 Murray Schafer introduces his research on the world’s soundscape the following way : “The soundscape of the world is changing. Modern man is beginning to inhabit a world with an acoustic environment radically different from any he has hitherto known.” (1) We can relate to this observation not only when being reminded of the sounds of the rural or the pasture. The natural soundscape for him and earlier studies consited of animal sounds, like sounds of warning, of mating, exchanges between mom, dad, elderly kin and offspring, food sounds, social sounds so on. There can be traced an onomatopoetic mimicry of the natural soundscape by men. We also growl, howl etc. The german ethnomusicologist Marius Schneider studied instensly such mimicry & expressions, especially with indigenous peoples and their application to music: “ One must have heard them to realize how extremely realisticaly aboriginls are able to imitate animal noises and the sounds of nature. They hold nature concerts in which each singer imitates a particular sound (wave, wind, groaning trees, cries of frightened animals)...” (2) Ethnological researches show that man echoes the soundscape in speech and music, casting back sounds of the acoustic environment. How much influence does our natural environment/ the soundscape have on our musical expression? We find early suggestions (100 B.C.) like that one from the roman poet Lucretius (3) that shepherds may have gotten the hint of singing and whistling from the sound of the wind as means for long distance communication. Lucretius concludes that the flute as a shepherds instrument is an expression of his experience with the sounds of the wind - and probably the birds - on the fields. This is a striking observation for our research. If we assume that the sounds of the pasture have an influence on the development of the flute - could it be possible to take an agency and develop in dependence of the nowadays soundscape of a shepherd another instrument and how would this comment on our society. In the following we will explain why we find the bulgarian bagpipe Kaba Gaida a very useful subject for this research.
We love the subtle role the natural soundscape has in shaping musical instruments.
If ‘Androids dream of electric sheep‘... Looking at the bagpipe from our newly gained point of view, not only can you hear that the experiences of the wind are the background of this instrument - wind in the form of breath is being collected and released in a long duration as to mimic the never ending sounds of the breazes. Furthermore it is made out of the sheep - the shepherds most important companion. The sheep provide him with work, food, clothes. Almost everything he needs. He uses the sheeps guts/skin to make the instrument he breathes into - he breathes life in again. And one wouldn’t argue that the sound of a Gaida resembles the sounds of the sheep. In voodoo the Gods - the loa - life in storages. Their ancestores souls are contained. One can say that the shepherd plays to his sheep the voices of their ancestors which he reanimates with his breath. (4) (Media)-Technology in its development strives to the animation of mere objects. If ‘Androids dream of electric sheep‘ (5) then maybe sheep dream of the electric reanimation of their ancestors and this is what we are about to do - developing a digital hack on the Gaida - letting the souls flow out - automatedly.
our understanding of nature has changed...
Our experiences with the natural composition of the world shapes our cultural artefacts. Having started with archaic approaches we switch to our contemporary understanding of nature. What Murray Schafer partly anticipates through acoustic ecology, has found a sientific term: ‘Anthropocene’. The “Anthropocene” conceives humans to be a geologic factor, influencing the evolution of the globe and all living beings. How we change our natural environment consequently changes us. This can be regarded as a feed back process in a deeper time relation. Through observation of the shepherds experiences and surroundings, we aim to conclude in creating musical instruments, cultural artefacts or manipulations on already existing objects. These shall be poetic visualizations and audifications of the unnoticed impact of our changed environments. The digital part is added because it is a way of recreating our environments and it provides us with possiblities which are invisible - in the analog reality. Paradoxically most of the invisibilities which affect us in reality are technically and digitally generated.
Technical clarification
The Rodopi Mountains reach out to Greece and here you see a greek Gaida Player. (photo:wikipedia)
We will equip the shepherd with a wifi-sniffer (to see if we pass through wireless signals), FM receivers and transmitters, accelerometers on the dog and the sheep, track the herd, compare the amplitudes of the sheep sounds, collect garbage, photograph the environment, make drawings, place solarsoundmodules and compose with them, record our interventions and experiences.... The accumulated data will be only for us and in order to use it to feed it back into the Kaba Gaida and have a way to extract ‘agency’ from the sheeps omnidirectional intentions. Probably we will use this data as parameters for generating sounds on the Gaida. Maybe we will built a throughout new instrument. This can not yet be predicted as we will react to our observations.
Free Associations
When the French writer Roland Barthes went to a plastics exhibition in the mid-1950s, he interpreted what he saw in mythical terms. Not only did these substances have “names of Greek shepherds (Polystyrene, Polyvinyl)”, but they were the products of a kind of alchemy: “the public waits in a long queue in order to witness the accomplishment of the magical operation par excellence: the transmutation of matter. (6)
The transmutation of matter. In a certain kind of daylight these objects seem to strive to adapt themselves to their new environment. Photos taken at the Danish coast in August 2013, Petja Ivanova
Artist Statement
Finances // Budget Plan Electronic Parts for Tinkering, Sensors etc.
Technical Equipment In our artistic practice this step is another yet more precise one in the direction we want to evolve towards. For Petja Ivanova social practice, artistic research and educational topics have gained importance and found a shape throughout her studies. (It is almost funny if you compare your ideas of what art is when you start at art school and what it then becomes after you have entered the professional context). On the contrary Anton Peitersen has had the grounded and stable understanding of art from early on. Mastering crafting processes, developing a language in art and finding the inner adjustment necessary for creation have been his agenda and he inspired other art students with his will and dedication. An unexpected gain for him were definitly all the collaborative approaches he took throughout his studies. This project evolves as a symbiosis between our both ways of working on and with art and its place in life. Of course there is more than a professional side to it - Personaly the project serves as a symbol of our commitment in understanding eachother and furthermore it is an exercise of finding living space and ways. We have always included experiments in lifestyle and at the boarders of the socially accepted in our practice. What is a great and appreciated surprise for us is the synergetic effect of our backgrounds leading to such an intersting and broadening exchange and collaboration project. We are proud of connecting Sofia with Copenhagen and Berlin. Impatiently we expect the reaction and further development that this project will generate. We are looking forward to get into a new community and connect. Our overall state of mind towards the educational and publicational approach is to work on an abstract tail of knowledge production and absorbtion, where we keep our obligation to our beliefs of how people learn about a subject. This should be an amusing and inspiring experiance to read/see and work on many layers of cognition, talking to mind, soul and body. We will end with a multimedial piece, working with traditional means of documentation in bookform, such as illustration and photography, but also take these further in drawing/painting, video/performance and photos of created objects. It could be understood as a cloud of fragmented poetic material, much like the Cut-Ups from the Gyson-Borroughs thoughtcolletive.
Digital Photo and Video Camera , Nikon d610 Zoom Lenses , No Name, 15-80mm Microphone , No Name, Condenser Mic Audiorecorder, Zoom Hn AudioMixer, 2-4 Channel, used condition Soundcard, used condition
1310 300 30 150 50 100
Analog Material Painting remedies 200 Office 200 Weaving and Kaba Gaida 850 Travel Costs Flights To Bulgaria approx. 500 Car Rental in Bulgaria approx. 250 Gas approx. 200 Flight costs participating Artists approx. 1200
Wifi Sniffer Stereo Microfone FM board parts Beagle Bone Microcontroller Arduino Microcontroller Parts for Solarsoundmodules Material Costs Publication Print Fees Graphic Designer
150 20 100 60 25 120 3000 2000
Rental for Exhibitions Speakers, Beamer & Multichannel Mixer Already funded Gains Overall IN Overall OUT to be financed
planned 300
1200 50
1250,-€ 11145,-€ 9895,-€
The first part - lessons and readings is already covered by DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst). We are looking for partners for the workshop and exhibit as well as the publication. Contribution receits can be handed out by the University of the Arts, Berlin.
References (1)
Raymond Murray Schafer, (born 18 July 1933) is a Canadian composer, writer, music educator and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World (1977).
(2)
Marius Karl Alfons Schneider is a german ethnomusicologist (1903-1982) who studied on mythology and sound as means for understanding of reality.
(3)
Titus Lucretius Carus ( 99 BC – 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem ‘De rerum natura’ about the beliefs of Epicureanism, and which is translated into English as ‘On the Nature of Things’ or ‘On the Nature of the Universe’.
(4)
Philip Kindred Dick (1928 – 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely accepted as being in the science fiction genre. Reference to his science fiction novel ‘Do Androids dream of electric sheep?’
(5)
Siegfried Zielinski is a German media theorist. He holds the chair for Media Theory, Archaeology and Variantology of the Media at Berlin University of the Arts, he is Michel Foucault Professor for Techno-Culture and Media Archaeology at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, and director of the International Vilém-Flusser-Archive. This is a refernce to his theory on Expanded Animation. (Expanded Animation: A Small Genealogy of the Idea and Praxis that Breathe a Soul into Dead Things in Pervasive Animation by Suzanne Buchanan)
(6)
Roland Gérard Barthes 1915 – 1980) was a French literary theorist, philosopher, linguist, critic, and semiotician.specifically post-structuralism.