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 performers in a condition of alertness and attentive listening;
- the certainty of having an “audience” listening from inside the construction site, perceiving our sounds 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.
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workshops
TENSE EARS
SOUNDSTORMING
What
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