LIVE ON FRIDAY 4 SEPT 19:00
I attempt to analyze the role of the urban soundscape in sonic composition, looking at my own work, as well as with a view on contemporary music in general. Exploring the concept of noise in our culture, I approach the mechanisms that allow the sounds of everyday experience to participate in the development of a poetics rich in emotional dynamic, connected with fundamental elements of our musical tradition and directly dependent on the way we experience sound.
A large part of my source recordings takes place in the city. Urban soundscapes have become the new natural sound environment for many people. Over a century of exposition to sound by machines, crowds, plastic and metal, pure tones and recorded music embedded in the everyday background, tends to redefine the processes and archetypes that govern the way we evaluate sound as art, as well as our emotional responses to it. The meaning and cultural significance of noise radically change.
Having chosen recorded sound as the main material of my sonic art, I sometimes use unprocessed sound and drive the composition forward by cutting, juxtaposing and mixing, playing with connotations and the locally emerging myth. Alternatively, I might use the recording as a malleable material that I can change and wrap around to the extreme. ‘Real world’ sound has always had a certain power on the mind of the listener and so have the processes of its transformation, subtle or dramatic, gradual or sudden, playing with degrees of recognizability and laying out some kind of idiosyncratic dreamscape for listeners to let evolve and explore in their own mind.
Key words: Urban Soundscape, Noise, Electroacoustic Composition, Recording, Sonic Art
Acoustic Ecology Conference, “Econoise 2016”
The text at the link above is the original write-up in Greek. Since then I have made a couple of re-writes in English, concentrating on specific points. The proposed presentation will be in English, concentrated free talking supported by slides and audio examples, open to discussion. Some related texts can also be found here http://steliosgiannoulakis.wordpress.com/
