workshops

UP IN THE VALLEY

2013>2019


Up In The Valley is a self organised workshop led by Davide Tidoni that took place in Valle Sabbia (Brescia, Italy) from 2013 to 2019. The workshop consists of a series of listening exercises and performances specifically designed for mountain locations. Activities are presented as part of different walking excursions and explore acoustic principles such as propagation of sound over long distance, directionality and movement of sound, reflection, and the threshold of audibility. See logistics and documentation images from previous editions.

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TENSE EARS

2019



The workshop is an opportunity to research on themes such as: sound propagation in outdoor space, long distance listening, and context-specific sound intervention.

The location for the workshop is the TAV construction site in Valsusa. The acronym TAV in Italian stands for Treno ad Alta Velocità, which means high-speed train in English. Heavily contested by the No TAV movement, the construction site has been declared by the italian governement “sito d’importanza strategica” which basically means strategic military zone. The construction site appears fenced and patrolled by police and military forces.

The choice of the TAV construction site as context for the workshop is because of the following reasons:
- the presence of a red zone, prohibiting people’s circulation and action, which makes sound a means for reaching and crossing the construction site from a distance;
- the military forces and the technological surveillance protecting the construction site, which put the participants in a condition of alertness and attentive listening;
- the certainty of having an “audience” listening from inside the construction site, perceiving the sounds from outside as a sinister presence.

During the workshop, each of the participant is invited to develop an intervention and to perform it during a night excursion in the surroundings of the construction site.

MORE INFO HERE

LISTENING AS INTERVENTION

2008 > ongoing
listening workshop

The workshop is open to anyone concerned with the possibility of interaction between sound, space, and movement.

Through a series of exercises based on spatial listening, psychoacoustics, and sound-guided movements, the workshop encourages the active role of the listener and their capacity to perceive and engage with sound.

Grounded on the concept of “listening as intervention”, the workshop leads participants to explore their potential to touch, modulate, and interfere with the production and propagation of sound.

A short list of possible activities includes: listening to the sound of your footsteps; walking to the wall with your eyes closed without crashing against it; touching the participants with a microphone; listening from inside a cardboard box; playing the “analog” filter with your body; listening through the wall; producing sounds by blowing air on a paper sheet; moving in space trying to avoid any sudden feedback occurring between microphone and loudspeaker; finding the spot where two different sounds are perceived at the same loudness; walking away as far as possible from the sound source without loosing it; using the body of other participants as absorption panels,…

Documentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52_f4094wD4
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidetidoni/albums/72157650976176766

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SOUNDSTORMING

2011 > ongoing

soundstorming

Soundstorming is an exploration walk that invites participants to develop location-based activities. Echoing the brainstorming process, the workshop functions as an informal exchange of collective experiments with sound and listening in outdoor space.

Soundstorming begins with a semi-structured walk that interesects a certain area or territory. Participants stop the walk and start working whenever they find a potentially interesting location. The fundamental parameters for choosing where to stop relate to the spatial affordances of the place, its configuration and acoustic quality as well as to the freedom of movement it provides.

Participants bring to the walk their own technical equipment. Everything must be compact and easy to carry around. Bent electronics, small analog/digital sound instruments, sound generators, portable loudspeakers, megaphones, pre-recorded sounds, contact mics, sound playback/recording devices and found objects are some of the tools for developing interventions and situations.

In addition to being a direct process for rapid prototyping and testing, Soundstorming provides a context in which participants acquire practical experience about notions such as private/public, the abandoned, the act of trespassing, and the reappropriation of space.

Documentation
CONCEPTS from the workshop at STEIM, Amsterdam, 2012
IMAGES from the workshops at STEIM, Amsterdam, 2012
VIDEO from the workshop at STEIM, Amsterdam, 2012
VIDEO from the workshop at IMM, Düsseldorf/Köln, 2011