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
UP IN THE VALLEY
Up In The Valley is a sound/listening workshop taking place on the mountains of ValSabbia (Brescia) each year around end july/beginning of august. Registrations open in may/june.
Presenting a series of listening pieces and exercises specifically designed for the location, the workshop explores the propagation of sound in space and the interaction between sound, space and listener.
During the 5 days of the workshop, acoustic principles and sound effects such as reflection, absorption, filtering, and distance are staged and performed live.
Focussing on the position of the listener, the threshold of audibilty, and the distance from the sound source, the workshop investigates the potential of the listener to perceive and produce sound.
All the listening pieces are site specific and take advantage of the affordances/constraints of the location. Mountain serves as unique setting providing specific qualities such as high silence/noise ratio, long-distance acoustic horizon and multiple reflecting surfaces.
The pieces/exercises are presented as part of a series of walking excursions. The average time of each excursion is 6/8 hours including breaks.
DOCUMENTATION
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE DOCUMENTATION FROM THE PAST EDITIONS OF THE WORKSHOP
ABOUT THE PLACE
The workshop takes place in Presegno (Brescia) and its surrounding area. Presegno is a small village with less than a dozen inhabitants. The village is situated 1000 meters above sea level in the mountains of the Sabbia Valley. Here you can read more about the place.
ACCOMMODATION
Participants stay in a shared accommodation house (the former school of the village). The house consists of 2 big sleeping rooms, dining room, kitchen and toilets. If you want more privacy you can bring your tent and sleep outside.
FOOD
In the village there are no shops and there’s only one bar. Food is prepared together in the kitchen of the house where we stay.
MONEY POLICY
1) Approx 60 euro for the accommodation (6 nights)
2) Approx 60 euro for the food (6 days)
PARTICIPANTS
Max number is ~10.
Not for those who suffer vertigo and panic attack.
EQUIPMENT
Bring approriate shoes (we’ll walk on steep mountain trails), long trouser (against insects), sun lotion, sun cap, water bottle/thermos, backpack, lunchbox, warm clothes (it might be slighlty cold in the evening, we’re 1000 meters high…), water proof jacket and everything you need in case of rain.
Bring your sleeping bag (there’re enough beds but not enough bed-sheets…).
If you have a history of anaphylaxis or any other allergic reaction to insect bites, bring your own epinephrine autoinjector and/or antihistamines.
If you have a mobile phone, download a white noise generator and a tone generator app (If you can’t find one, I will send you a couple of links by email).
HOW TO GET THERE
1) Flight to Milan, Bergamo/Orio al Serio, Verona or to any other city in norther Italy
2) Take a bus or train to Brescia.
3) Take a bus to Vestone/Lavenone.
I’ll come and pick you up at the bus station.
More detailed info will be sent to the registered participants.
REGISTRATION
send an email to: baitabaita AT riseup DOT com
Listening/Intervention
What
The workshop is open to anyone concerned with the possibility of interaction between sound, space and listening.
Through a series of pieces and exercises that stage specific acoustic phenomena, the workshop encourages the active role of the listener and his/her own potentials to perceive and engage with sound.
The main aim of the workshop is to offer a wide range of listening experiences in order to lead participants to recognize sound as a concrete presence that puts the listener in relation with space, materials and other people’s bodies.
The workshop resembles to an extended performance where participants becomes actively involved in the creation/experience of the proposed activities. Far from being confined to the sonic domain, Listening/Intervention introduces concepts and principles that can easily be appropriated and applied to other research fields. To this respect, the workshop functions as a stimulus for interdisciplinary practice and as a context for experimentation.
List of possible activities
Your footsteps in the room; closed-eyes walk to the wall; touch the others with a microphone; someone is listening from inside a cardboard box; “anolog” filters and white noise; ears at the wall; hit the microphone with a slingshot; try to avoid any feedback to occur while walking to the amp; find the spot where two different sounds are perceived at the same loudness; walk away from the sound source up to the point where you cannot hear it anymore; participants’ bodies functioning as absorption panels,…
Duration
The activities of the workshop are developed in relation to the given space and are distributed over a duration time of min 3 hours and max 18 hours (6 hours a day
for 3 days).
Technical needs
A silent room with windows and warm floor
Sound system + mixer + 50/100 meters xlr cable + 2 dynamic mic
Access to the space and rehearsals 1 day before the workshop
Documentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52_f4094wD4
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidetidoni/albums/72157650976176766
Soundstorming
Soundstorming is an exploration walk that invites participants to develop site specific interventions. Echoing the process of brainstorming, the workshop functions as an informal exchange of collective experiment with sound and listening.
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.
Besides being a direct process for fast prototyping of outdoor interventions, Soundstorming provides a context in which participants acquire emotional and practical experience about some of the most debated issues concerning the notion of place, the role of the context, the definition of private/public, the abandoned, the act of trespassing, the production and 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, Dusseldorf, 2011