SoundFjord

30/06/2024

In our fourth network event, the Network presents its first field trip! 28 Aug-01 Sept, facilitated by Ayşe Köklü and Helen Frosi. And you are invited! (See below for application info.)

We will explore gusty Shetland, listening and swaying with the isle's infamous air flows, an abundant natural resource we will honour as the centre point and compass of our research.

We will blow with the wind, touch the intangible, and play with this trickster element, co-constituting and exchanging interests by way of creative sessions, walks, screenings, readings, conversations, meals and (alternative) documentations.

Applications: all are welcome to apply. I deadline is today however our application is light touch! We mainly want to know about your interests and what you do!

Field Trip: Windworks

13/06/2024

Applications are sort from CHASE Studentship holders* for our forthcoming field trip to Shetland. Led by Ayşe Köklü and Helen Frosi! We'll be all ears on the wind, working in and with trickster air currents as compass and calibration for our research!

*PhD researchers and indie scholars may apply for any remaining slots. Apply online via our website's Events section. Deadline 30th June!

Field Trip: Windworks

12/06/2024

Research Network has its next event on Fri 28 June. And we're delighted to have Annie Goh, Sandra Kazlauskaite and Marie Thompson presenting!
Join us from 11am-4:45pm for discussion lunch and networking. Further details are in link.
Swift sign-up is recommended as places are limited.

An afternoon of presentations & networking for those interested in the auraldiverse turn in Arts & Humanities research: theory and praxis.

11/06/2024

Last event in this iteration of !
Join George Ridgway and SoundFjord as we head into the night this Saturday (15 June) from 8:15pm-10:30pm for a presentation and counter-survey of research weaving (in) audible worlds, from bats to the Aurora Borealis. Including a woodland walk. Free, signup required as places limited:

A presentation and counter-survey of research weaving (in) audible worlds. From bats to the Aurora Borealis. Includes woodland night walk.

04/06/2024

has an extra event: Intimacies of Wave Relation with George Ridgway. 15 June 8:15pm-c.10pm! Join us for a presentation and counter-survey of research weaving (in) audible worlds, from bats to the Aurora Borealis. Includes woodland night walk. Email for tickets; info (only) via Eventbrite:

A presentation and counter-survey of research weaving (in) audible worlds. From bats to the Aurora Borealis. Includes woodland night walk.

14/05/2024

This 22 May, AuralPluralities will be hosting their next in-person network event. It's a chance to meet others interested in critiquing asumptions within the creative practices of hearing, listening and audio arts as well as a chance to meet other sound artists and guest speaker Rob Mackay, whose recent work has been following monarch butterfly migrations. He'll also be performing a selection of his work on the MAAST multi array sound theatre!
Sign up is free and open to all. For those unable to attend the university of Kent, we will be streaming live. Information/tickets:

Network time for Arts and Humanities students, researchers and scholars. Event includes a talk, discussion & sound diffusion by Rob MacKay.

13/04/2024

Composing Place, is the focus for our second network event, this time hosted by Aki Pasoulas at University of Kent. Our guest speaker is Rob MacKay, who'll also present a rather special multi-channel diffusion of his work!
Our network is free to attend; booking is staggered: CHASE researchers may book now; CHASE university staff/students: from 22 April; the public: from 6th May. Do bookmark our page now though!

Network time for Arts and Humanities students, researchers and scholars. Event includes a talk, discussion & sound diffusion by Rob MacKay.

18/03/2024

Ecological listening: from sound art to action, is the focus for our inaugural network event, this Friday at the University of Sussex, from noon. Presenters include: About Face/Ben Kelly, Jono Gilmurray, Ann Light and Bethan Prosser.

We have at least 5 free tickets available for the general public. (Sign up via the waiting list for conformation via email.)

A series of free talks and a workshop centred around Ecological Listening.

06/11/2023

The EnCOUnTERs mycelium has been taking in all the recent rain water, and formed a most beautiful fruiting body in the shape of a workshop on the complex soundworlds of aquatic plants!

Join Action Pyramid (Tom Fisher) on Wed 15 Nov, 2-4pm, for a session bringing together mimicry and play as modes of investigation and interpretation of photosynthesis and phyto responses to the environment at large.

This session can be booked via the Cafe Oto website, but takes place at Goldsmiths. Places are limited.

The session is part of x series. This particular event is also made possible via Goldsmith's (SPR).

https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/an-ear-to-the-plants-workshop/

04/10/2023

We are winding down out activities - after a spring and summer of ecological vibrations - with the last of our Rhythm Studies walks (for the moment at least!) on 14 October 2023.

This AM twilight wander (sibling to our recent PM twilight walk) will be full of possibility, with the morning stretching out into the day, highlighted by the cool golden light of morning.

Join us in North London for a collective listening to the worlds round us: as some stretch into the business of the day, whilst others put paws over eyes as the sun awakes.

Tickets and information:
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/rhythm-studies-aurora/
Series: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/music-and-other-living-creatures-x-encounters/

26/09/2023

The x series performances are coming to a close this evening with a stunning set of performances from Aine O'Dwyer and Sarah Angliss. Sharing space with our avian friends.

We hope you can make it to share in the celebrations and to sing through the night with us!

26 Sept 7:30pm to late.
Tickets are available in advance and on the door:

"[B]irds appear to listen most closely not to the melodies that catch our ears but rather to fine acoustic details in the chips and twangs of their songs that lie beyond the range of human perception." - Adam Fishbein, Scientific American, How Birds Hear Birdsong (May 2022)

18/09/2023

Chirrrup trilll! Let's introduce you to the next performer at x (26 Sept at Café OTO). We're delighted to announce that Sarah Angliss will join us for our final evening event in the series!

Birds - and their imitation by humans - is the focus of Sarah’s set, drawing on her research into human-bird communication over time and the deep connections between birdsong and the sound recording age. Recorders, theremin and carillon bring wrens, blackbirds, crows and nightingales into the room. Centre stage is the Ealing Feeder, Sarah's robotic carillon which she’ll be using to transport us to an Estonian dawn chorus. The chorus was transcribed automatically by bioacoustician Dan Stowell for species counting and identification purposes. Sarah’s own algorithms adapt it and replay it as a haze of metallic bell music.

Sarah Angliss is a composer and sound designer, creating new music and soundworlds for film, theatre, opera, dance, installations and her own live performance. Sarah’s work seamlessly combines voices and instruments with finely wrought, bespoke electronic effects.

Information/Tickets:
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/beyond-melody/

14/09/2023

As is customary, we are introducing the performers at our next x event. First up is, Áine O'Dwyer, who'll be performing "Singing in the Dark," a brand new work paying homage to the Nightjar's nocturnal vocalisations. The piece will be performed in the dark and in surround sound!
Áine is an multi-disciplinary artist whose work is informed by both the conceptual concerns of sound-art and traditional compositional techniques, embracing the broader aesthetics of sound and its relationship to environment, time, audience and structure. She has created works for large-scale and intimate settings which allow for both planned and chance compositions to co-exist in live situ. Often she listens out for the sonic touchstones of time and place to instruct and accompany her live compositions. Poems for Daedalus (2018), was a series of site-specific performances which O’Dwyer developed in Athens. The piece was based on the exploration of a building, its intimacies and the surrounding neighbourhood. Her book 'Poems for play' pays homage to the specificity of time and place. Similarly, the notion of the “holding space as extension-of-instrument” can be seen in O'Dwyer's realisation Accompaniment for Captives (Open Ear Festival, 2019) at Horseshoe bay, Sherkin Island, Ireland. The performance was centred around the intentional choreography of two local fishing boats whose horn signals heralded an “environmental sonic tapestry of land, sea, man and animal."

Information/Tickets:
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/beyond-melody/

Image credit: Unknown, Áine O’Dwyer [video still].

17/08/2023

Delighted to introduce Blanc Sceol (Hannah White & Stephen Shiell) - with special guest Ross Adams - set to perform at our next x event at Café OTO on 22 August...

Blanc Sceol's performance will draw from site-specific work with the Channelsea island and river in Stratford, a tributary of the River Lea. After the bend there’s a dead end, an ecotonal community alive with self-seeded inhabitants, effluent overflows, waste waters, mud, industrial detritus, people in search of rest, tidal flow. On the island birch, alder, bramble and buddleia make slow steady progress demolishing the former chemical works buildings, young holly and holm oak forecasting the evergreen future of the land. Light, wind and rain remember their way in.

With Blanc Sceol, Ross Adams will present new footage that he shot on and around Channelsea Island, mixed with visual elements of their live performance.

Blanc Sceol's practice has emerged and expanded through years of working together across performance, composition, participatory actions, deep listening facilitation, and somatic gatherings. They create performances reflecting attempts to expand themselves, through listening and sound, beyond their physical limits and to extend this personal/performance practice into the collective. Their compositions, interventions and performances express their experience of place, anchored in what is found in a landscape but re-imagined into new territories.

Ross Adams makes music videos and live visuals using a blend of analogue and digital equipment and processes to bring synesthetic and psychedelic elements to audio. He has worked with labels such as Hands In The Dark, State 51 and Rocket Recordings.

Tickets and further information:
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/nexus-interstice/

14/08/2023

Our next x event Café OTO is just around the corner, on 22 August, so introducing our performers, let's begin with Lee Patterson...

Through using sound recording to train his ears, Lee Patterson has developed a dual practice that includes live performance and fixed works. By exploiting chemical and mechanical synthesis, he has created a range of amplified devices and processes that produce or uncover complex sound in unexpected places.

In spring and summer 2022, Lee Patterson began to record the strange, structure borne sounds of insects and larvae within meadowlands, boglands, and brownfield sites.

After encountering a variety of calls from the mostly unseen creatures, he now considers the enmeshed and entangled material of the meadow - a habitat as rich as a rainforest - to perform as a kind of vegetal insect internet, where a tantalising variety of communicative yet enigmatic sounds may be heard.

Lee has been out recording in the field and will report back on the night!

Tickets and further information: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/nexus-interstice/

31/07/2023

Rhythm Studies: Sylvan Sounds, takes place next Sunday 06 August,1-4pm.

This session will explore a mature forested area, with a guided listening walk, culminating in time to create sounding - musical, if you wish - instruments. We'll use pre-sourced and found materials and work with prompts as well as our own ingenuity!

We are currently fully-booked, but may be able to accommodate additional places/contact you if places become available. (DM me or email.)

Tickets and further info:
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/rhythm-studies-sylvan-sounds/

This event is part of a collaboration between (SoundFjord) x (Oto Projects) and takes place at Café OTO and off-site between March - October 2023.

Image credit: Company of Enthusiasts, Used with permission.

31/07/2023

August is raining... workshops, walks, gigs!

Workshops and walks to follow, but first let's talk about evening performances: our 22 August event happens to feature both live work and multi-channel spatialisations from a trio of rather brilliant artists: Blanc Sceol (Hannah White . Stephen Shiell) . Lee Patterson . Tom White!

Over the coming weeks we'll be introducing their spectacular work to you all. Get stuck in!

Tickets and further info:
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/nexus-interstice

This event is part of a collaboration between (SoundFjord) x (Oto Projects) and takes place Café OTO and off-site between March - October 2023.

Image credit: Blanc Sceol, Used with permission.

27/07/2023

This Sunday, we're delighted to welcome slowworms and slowwalkers alike for a morning of sauntering and sensing, and listening beyond the hallowed ears! Join us from 10am-noon.

Tickets and further information: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/rhythm-studies-in-praise-of-lingering/ NB. An email with instuctions on where to go will be sent out on Saturday c. 6pm.

This walk is part of a collaboration between (SoundFjord) and (OTO Projects) taking place from March to October 2023.