05.10 – Vector Synthesis, SIMULTAN Festival, Timisoara RO (pictured)

09-10.10 – Field recording workshop, 7 DAYS of SOUND, Klaipeda LT

13.10 – Vector Synthesis, Meq Festival, Centre Dramatique National de Montpellier, Montpellier FR

14.10 – SoundBoxes workshop, Meq Festival, Centre Dramatique National de Montpellier, Montpellier FR

11.11 – Vector Synthesis workshop + performance, sound art festival, Copenhagen DK

18.11 – Vector Synthesis, Piksel Festival, Bergen NO

22.11 – Vector Synthesis, MuTe Festival, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki FI

24.11 – Vector Synthesis, Noisy November, Viljandi EE

27-29.11 – Vector Synthesis workshop, Piksel Festival, Bergen NO

04-10.12 – SoundBoxes workshop [w/ Björn Eriksson], Hola folkhögskola, Prästmon SE

11-15.12 – Neanderthal Electronics workshop [w/ Jeroen Vandesande], RITCS Academy, Brussels BE

A soundscape project I worked on in 2005-6 was just featured on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” in the USA last week. Click the player above for the 3 minute feature, or visit Soundtransit to book a journey around the world through sound…

Soundtransit is a collaborative website that features evocative and everyday sounds shared by people around the world. The audio recordists who contributed sounds to this story are (in order): Tim Hayes, N. Ege Gural, Kamen Nedev, Matthias Kispert, Dmitry Urupin, Keith de Mendonca, Laurie Principaud, Arno Peeters and Seb Bassleer.

Sound+Space Awareness
an acoustics workshop with Derek Holzer (US/D)
8-12 participants – please register!
(workshop language english)
11.-15.April 2011 daily 12-17

Buildings, urban locations and architecture are traditionally described in visual terms, but it is our sense of hearing that assists us in experiencing and navigating through the spaces we inhabit. Sound is an essential part of social experience, and that should be of the utmost concern to architects, planners and artists alike, yet this is overlooked all too often. When the sound in a space is disruptive or dysfunctional, then the aesthetics, communications and perceptions in that space are likewise disrupted.

Therefore, the first step for anyone wishing to work with sound is learning how to listen. We will spend the first workshop day doing a series of listening exercises, using a collection of field recordings to tune the participants’ ears to the various sounds present in them, to think about what kind of information those sounds transmit and to reflect on the effects they have on the listener.

The following book will provide participants with a list of concepts useful for discussing urban sonic experience:

Jean Francois Augoyard: Sonic Experience–A Guide to Everyday Sounds
http://mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=1780

The second day will focus on fieldwork out in the city, using new listening exercises, digital recorders and the observations on the nature of sound from the previous day to experience the city with new ears.

On the third day, we will listen to the recordings gathered by the participants to see what they can tell us about the locations each person visited. And finally, on the fourth day, participants will develop and present a one-sheet concept for a project related to the sonic experience of the locations we have visited.

This workshop is directed towards sound interested laymen as well to architects and planners.

http://macumbista.net/?page_id=499

Yes indeed I have been traveling and working almost nonstop since the start of the Year. A quick rundown of my activities:

09-15 Jan 2011 – Mechanical Sound Instruments workshop, TAIK University of Art and Design, Helsinki FI

Workshop = awesome! Design students built Arduino-powered electro-acoustic instruments like this one below. I’ll be editing video docs I made in Helsinki soon.

Electro-Acoustic Musical Instrument from Palash on Vimeo.

Hotel room = passable. Töölö Towers is the University’s home for wandering academics, with a very institutional vibe, spotty wifi coverage and full length mirrors for me to shoot very serious-looking self portraits in…

18-21 Jan 2011 – Tuned City: sound+space workshop, Estonian Academy of Arts Media Dept, Tallinn EE

Workshop = 5.5 out of 10. I’m still figuring out what kind of tools are necessary to crack the shells of the Estonian oysters. After some prodding, most of the students really gave their best in making and discussing the recordings. One girl Facebooked and texted the entire workshop until I pointed out that her computer was “broken” and she’d be better off at home.

Hotel = decent. Maneezi house, guestrooms of the Estonian Arts Academy, has everything you would ever want in a post-Soviet flat…a long flight of stairs, some heavy metal doors, a warm radiator and even running water.

01-05 Feb 2011 — Regenwald2011 workshop+installation, West Germany/Club Transmediale, Berlin DE

Workshop = mostly good. Trying to wrangle seven very different artistic personalities into one piece in only five days is never easy. I have decided that giving them less freedom rather than more is the only solution. The audience response to the piece, on the other hand, was quite positive and enthusiastic.

Hotel = not applicable. One of the longest stretches I’ve been able to sleep in my own bed in ages!!!

07-11 Feb 2011 – Field Recording workshop, Royal Music Conservatory, Aarhus DK

Workshop = one of the best! Very high level of capabilities by these composition students at the Electronic Music department there. I gave them one hour to take three random one-minute field recordings from their neighbor and make a short piece out of them, and they all pulled it off! And that was only one of the exercises. If only every group I taught had their shit so together.

Hotel = comical. The Cabinn is a concept hotel, they told me. As near as I can figure, the concept was to make the hotel room itself as much like the sleeping couchette on an overnight train as possible.

A few weeks later I saw an exhibition of living/working spaces by French-Israeli artist Absalon at the KW Berlin. Made to the measure of his own body, and likely inspired by the fact that most of the artist’s short life was spent in the Israeli military, the constructions impressed me as the ideal prototype of future dehumanizing architecture for the 21st Century.

12-14 Feb 2011 – Tuned City:sound+space, Estonian Academy of Arts Architecture Dept, Tallinn EE

Workshop: another five and a half. The concept here was to teach architects to experience urban space through sound, and this worked pretty well. The students brought in recordings of various spaces around Tallinn for us to listen to and analyze. My mistake was in giving them “homework” for the last day. Despite assurances from everyone that they had time and energy to do it, only two came back the next day.

Also during this week I braved the -25C weather to investigate some locations for next summer’s Tuned City event, such as the lobby of the Linnahall, a disused auditorium/ice rink constructed for the 1980 Olympic games.

Hotel: deceptively posh. Somehow I was taken in by the spacious rooms, tall windows, tacky wallpaper and inoffensive framed prints of the Old Town Maestro. Until I realized that the strip-club-disco downstairs wouldn’t stop the party until 7am.

23-27 Feb 2011 – Neanderthal Electronics, NK Project, Berlin DE

Workshop = can I call this an 8? What should have been a warm homecoming was dampened by some kind of breakdown in publicity. The three guys that did show up for the workshop kicked some serious ass though, and made really nice boxes which they played the following Monday for the Experimontag at Madame Claude. Photos and such soon.

Hotel = forget it! I locked the door to my flat and stayed in bed for three whole days when all this was over.

Now Playing

ben frost–live at berghain, berlin 24.02.11
earth–angels of darkness, demons of light I[2011 southern lord]
eleh–radiant intervals[2011 important]
flower travellin’ band–anywhere[1970 philips]
tim hecker–ravedeath 1972[2011 kranky]

After 5 years, the end of an era has come. On the last day of 2010, the Soundtransit.nl site will officially close. The Waag Society in Amsterdam, who physically hosts our server, has more than quadrupled the rent in the past year. Relocating to a cheap commercial host is simply not possible based on the unique technical needs of the site, so we are forced to shut the project down. The archived field recordings will hopefully be relocated through the kind support of Soundcloud.com, however the ability to make and send transits will be lost.

I would personally like to thank each and every one of the contributors and users for their support, interest and enthusiasm over the last years, and I wish them all the best of luck with their future projects.

DATES

FRI 16 April: Buffalo NY–SoundLab, 110 Pearl Street: TONEWHEELS performance + Affecting Animate Nerve Organs (16 artist multi-media installation) [8pm]

(UPDATE!!!!) SUN18 April: Syracuse NY–Spark Contemporary Art Space: TONEWHEELS performance + Heavy Hymns [8pm]

TUE 20 April: NYC, NY–Electronic Music Foundation, 307 7th avenue ste 1402: “A Brief History of Optical Synthesis” lecture [7pm]

WED 21 April-THU 22 April: NYC, NY–Harvestworks: Soundtransit-The Art of Field Recording workshop [6:30pm each night] SOLD OUT!!!

FRI 23 April: NYC, NY–Bent Festival, Dumbo, 81 Front Street: TONEWHEELS workshop [12pm] performance [8pm]

TUES 27 April: NYC, NY–Electronic Music Foundation, 307 7th avenue ste 1402: Tuned City lecture [7pm]

THU 29 April: Providence, RI–Rhode Island School of Design: TONEWHEELS workshop

FRI 30 April: Providence, RI-AS220: TONEWHEELS performance + Black Pus (1/2 Lightning Bolt), Humanbeast and Shawn Greenlee [9pm]

(UPDATE!!! NEW LOCATION!!!) SAT 1 May: Cambridge, MA: Existence Establishment @ MIT Building N52, 265 Massachusetts Ave: TONEWHEELS performance + Karlheinz, Shawn Greenlee, Animal Steel, Brandon Terzakis, Benjamin Nelson, Bombings [8pm]

FLIERS

DETAILS

TONEWHEELS PERFORMANCE

TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions. Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry to produce sound and light pulsations and textures. This all-analog set is performed entirely live without the use of computers, using only overhead projectors as light source, performance interface and audience display. In this way, TONEWHEELS aims to open up the “black box” of electronic music and video by exposing the working processes of the performance for the audience to see.

TONEWHEELS WORKSHOP

TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions such as the ANS Synthesizer (Murzin USSR 1937-57), the Variophone (Sholpo USSR 1930) and the Oramics system (Oram UK 1957). In this workshop, participants will learn to construct their own optoelectronic synthesizer using two different circuits: a simple light-to-sound converter and a variable motor speed controller, as well as how to design and print their own tonewheel patterns using the FLOSS software Inkscape.

“A BRIEF HISTORY OF OPTICAL SYNTHESIS”

The technology of synthesizing sound from light is a curious combination of research from the realms of mathematics, physics, electronics and communications theory which found realization in the industries of motion picture films, electronic music, surveillance technology and finally digital communications.

This lecture will touch on various points in the development of optical sound synthesis in these various contexts, referencing the work of Joseph Fourier, Hermann von Helmholtz, Rudolph Koenig, Arseny Avraamov, Thomas Wilfred, Evgeny Scholpo, Nikolai Voinov, Oskar Fischinger, Boris Yankovsky, Edwin Emil Welte, Evgeny Murzin, Norman McLaren, Lev Theremin, Daphne Oram, Jacques Dudon and Iannis Xenakis, among others.

This lecture is given in the context of the opto-electronic performance TONEWHEELS, by Derek Holzer at the Bent Festival the following Friday.

Soundtransit-The Art of Field Recording

Wednesday & Thursday, April 21 & 22 6:30 – 9:30pm $100
Field recording, or phonography, is the art of recording sounds as they are found “in situ”, rather than those created in a studio or concert hall. There are as many ways of approaching field recording as there are field recordists, with interests ranging from recordings of natural or urban environments to improvised situations or soundwalks to the resonance of solid objects or the Earth’s atmosphere.

The first session of this workshop provides a theoretical introduction to the various microphone techniques and recording strategies used for field recording, as well as special tools which allow phenomenon such as physical motion, electromagnetic waves and light can also be converted into sound. This will be followed by a night-time recording excursion into the city.

The second session consists of a critical listening session of the sounds gathered the night before. Key concepts to be explored include musical and cinematic metaphors of sound, composing the cityscape and communicating senses of place and space through sound.

Participants may wish to upload their finished recordings to the Soundtransit.nl website, where they can be used to plan sonic journeys between hundreds of locations around the world.

While the instructor can provide one shared recorder and microphone, participants should bring their own recording equipment when possible. Derek Holzer can provide a simple pair of binaural microphones for sale at a cost of approx $35. They terminate in a right-angle stereo minijack plug, and use the plugin power from the stereo microphone input of the recorder. Please indicate before the workshop date if you would like to buy a pair, and please check that your recorder provides this plugin power (most with minijack stereo mic inputs do) before requesting them.

“Tuned City – Between sound and space speculation”

“Tuned City – Between sound and space speculation” was an exhibition and conference project taking place from July 01.-05. 2008 in Berlin which proposed a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic. It’s next edition is scheduled to take place during the Cultural Capital summer of 2011 in Tallinn, Estonia.

In this lecture, we will see and hear some of the projects from the Tuned City event by Mark Bain, Raviv Ganchrow, Will Schrimshaw, John Grzinich, James Beckett, Akio Suzuki, Barry Blesser, Randy H.Y. Yau + Scott Arford, Thomas Ankersmit + Antoine Chessex, Bernhard Leitner, CRESSON, Farmers Manual, AGF, Chris Watson + BJ Nilsen, Jacob Kirkegaard, Martin Howse, Ralf Schreiber + Martin Kuentz and Staalplaat Sound System will be discussed, among others, as well as related projects covering the themes of Temporary Architecture for Sound, Buildings as Instruments and Composing the Cityscape. A limited number of catalogs and program guides will also be available.

Thanks!

Huge thanks go to Alexis Bhagat of ((audience)) and Shawn Greenlee of RISD for their monumental efforts to get this thing off the ground! Thanks also to Brendan Byrne of Bent, Joel Chadabe of EMF, Hans Tammen of Harvestworks, Egan Budd of Existence Establishment, Natalia Mount of Red House, Michael Baumann of Soundlab and Sean Donaher of CEPA for actually booking me, and to Gill Arno, Raphael Lyon and Tristan Perich for putting up crash space in NYC.

Now Playing

Carl Gustav Jung–Dreams[book 1910-1952]
Pierre Klossowski–Roberte Ce Soir & The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes[book 1953]

I moved the following tracks over to my Soundcloud account this morning. These four are ones that I’m particularly interested in, as they (mostly) combine electronics and field recordings. Gongs and bells as well, although I never realized I was so obsessed with them before! I’ll try to get some takes from the new DIY synth up soon. Until then, enjoy…

Derek Holzer-Untitled [boiler room] by macumbista

Multichannel recording of furnace in Karosta, Latvia (January 2003), processed shortwave radio in Mooste, Estonia (September 2004). Released as part of Untitled Songs: 49 Years from Gesang der Jünglinge 2005-1956 2xCD compilation by Sirr.ecords in 2005.

Derek holzer-metallophone drift by macumbista

Burmese gongs, ice field recording, mixer feedback. Recorded 30 July 2005, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Released as part of the Connected Dots.Connected Ideas compilation CD on the Frozen Elephants Music label, 2007.

Macumbista-hollow space capacitance discharge by macumbista

Japanese temple bell belonging to Jeroen Beets recorded 19 December 2006 @ STEIM, Amsterdam. Analog synthesizer recorded 2006-7, Berlin. Mixed 11-14 November 2007 @ RSS82, Berlin. Released as part of the {Autumn Soundscapes} collection on the Madorla netlabel, 2008.

Derek holzer-matrix events(skinned teeth) by macumbista

Self-made 8×8 matrix mixer, Cwejman/Analogue Systems/Doepfer oscillators, digital delay, joystick control voltage, mixer feedback. Recorded with a case of mild food poisoning (thus the “skinned teeth” feeling) January 25th, 2009. Unreleased.

Now Playing

bj nilsen–the invisible city[2010 touch](thx benny!!!!)
elias canetti–auto da fe[1935 book]

Sveta Troitsa (or the Church of the Holy Trinity) was built in Bansko, Bulgaria, between 1810 and 1850. During this time, the Blagoevgrad Province remained under Turkish rule, and the founders of the church could only build it through a combination of diplomacy and heavy fees payed to the Turks. The four bells heard in these recordings were cast in 1855 by the Veleganovi brothers, who inscribed the name of the Turkish sultan on them so that they would not be thrown from the tower.

Reading through R. Murray Schafer’s The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (1977, Destiny Books) the other night, I came across his discussion of church bells. He describes the church bell as a signal delineating the boundaries of a human habitation, as well as bringing its occupants together:

The most salient sound in the Christian community is the church bell. In a very real sense it defines the community, for the parish is an acoustic space, circumscribed by the range of the church bell. The church bell is a centripetal sound; it attracts and unifies the community in a social sense…

These bells were recorded on the rainy morning of 27 December, 2009–a setting which somehow reminds me of Yasushi Utsunomia’s incredible recordings of the concerts he organized in the Koukiji temple in Japan during a damp summer afternoon (Kougezan Koukiji – The Live [11th] Final Hyakusenmansyuuraku, 2002 Horen Records). And true to Schafer’s words, these bells reside directly in the middle of the acoustic space of the town–no efforts were made (or were even possible) to separate the sounds of the bells from the life both within the church and outside its walls. Why should life stop just because I want to record something?

In the first track, we hear two klepalo (solid idiophones) played by Ivan Todorov Hadjipopov (wood) and George Lazarov Pitsin (metal). Ivan Hadjipopov then plays a solo on the four church bells in the second track, followed by George Pitsin in the third. The overtones heard during these solos defy description, and only the sounds of the town and the church-goers sporadically remind you that what you are listening to actually occurred on Earth. The final track is a solo played by Boris Ivanov Hadjipopov, and then we return to the rain…

The entire session was recorded in a single, continuous take, using two DPA 4060 capsules (mounted in my trusty Latvian mink-fur ushanka) and a Sound Devices 722 recorder, standing in the courtyard below the bell tower. My gratitude goes to Boris “Bobi” Hadjipopov, who organized the occasion, and to Elena Kaludova for her translation (and so much more). Photo by lite.

The entire collection can be downloaded as high-quality MP3s at: http://macumbista.net/files/sveta_troitsa.zip

These recordings can be shared and reused under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

The Bells of Sveta Troitsa

01.i.hadjipopov+g.pitsin-klepalo by macumbista

02.i.hadjipopov-bells by macumbista

03.g.pitsin-bells by macumbista

04.b.hadjipopov-bells by macumbista

Just back from the beautiful (and internet-less) mountains of southern Bulgaria, loved every second of it. Found some small sound treasures there that I will post later on. In the meantime, I decided to pimp my Schoolofeverything.com page to see if it can generate some new interest in the workshops that I do.

For those who don’t know, the School of Everything is a website that got started a couple years ago in the UK as an alternative educational resource. The idea is simply to use the same kinds of social networking platform that others use to…um, well, uh, “tweet” and whatever it is they do with it, to hook up people who want to learn specific skills with those who can teach them.

In general, I find this self-education idea much closer to my own way of thinking than the traditional academic model. In fact, I’ve always maintained that the only thing that separates artists using technology now from David Tudor and the other electronic art pioneers of the 60s and 70s is the internet. Whereas Tudor, the Vasulkas, Buchla, Paik, Sandin and the rest had much more limited channels to find the information they needed, we have an almost limitless supply. Which is of course the other half of the problem–trying to get the signal out of the noise.

As a result of all this, the models of teaching and learning that I use have become quite tuned towards self-initiation and self-discovery. Having someone hand over all the answers to you doesn’t really stimulate the brain, and in fact could hardly be called learning at all. So most every lesson or workshop that I do is project-oriented, to encourage that process of teaching people to teach themselves.

You can check my teacher profile at:

http://schoolofeverything.com/teacher/derekholzer

And I have listed the following as one-on-one lessons:

Circuit Bending & DIY Electronics

Field Recording Techniques

Audio Recording & Post-Production with Ardour

Introduction to Pure Data

Sound Art Technologies

Photos by Kees (km-fotografie.nl)

Olympus E-510, Zuiko Digital 14-42mm f3.5~5.6
Site2F7 Festival, Almere, the Netherlands
21th August 2008

Amazing photos from this bonfire action by L.A. Urban Rangers for the festival opening night. The recording is also pretty wild, filled with roars and crackles, screaming/laughing children and local Dutch loudmouths. Pity, though, that I just had to sell that microphone set. Somebody find me a J.O.B. quick!!!!!