//Unheard_Landscapes - listening | resonating | inhabiting 10th FKL/ENP/AAU_CRESSON International Symposium on Soundscape BLOIS | October 27 -30

Unheard landscapes: this metaphor leaves space to imagination, to the un-thought, to the un-known, to past and future, as well as unexplored sound scenarios. It also reaches the field of auditory perception, the acoustic domain. Sound, through auditive qualities, acoustic phenomena, design practices, artistic creations, and listening experiences, offers an inspiring transversal entry onto landscapes and ambiances. Beyond the discussions on “soundscape”, approaching ordinary environments through sounds increases the awareness of our own capacities to feel, while we inhabit and move across different worlds. From an ecological perspective, resonance appears a key word, too. It puts sound and space together. It implies the idea of a plurality of bodies, things and living beings vibrating all together, sharing common contexts of time and space. The act of listening bypasses the passive meaning it usually receives. It contains in itself a completely unexpressed potential, connoted with «project», «pro-action» and «active decision» by individuals. What will be the sounds of the future and the soundscapes in which we will live, or would like to? How can listening practices evolve, how will we listen or how differently could we listen to the world around us, tomorrow? Inhabiting the world brings to us questions about how we want to manage our being in it. How do we want to inhabit the world sonically? How sound and listening do actually affect our way to inhabit it? Have we lost some of our abilities to resonate with the world? What remains to be heard? Where could the practices of listening and attuning take us to?

Daniel BLINKHORN | AU |

Soundwork

valiha

Abstract

valiha is named after a zither I encountered in the small seaside fishing village of Ifaty, in the Mozambique channel of Madagascar. The instrument is entirely cylindrical in design, reflecting the primary material from which it is constructed, bamboo. I found instrumentalising the zither in a conventional sense to be uniquely challenging, so I decided to attempt to unlock its richly evocative potentiality by transforming 5 simple, plucked, pizzicato gestures into a piece that extends well beyond the physical confines of the zither. In doing so the work evokes the natural elements and energies embedded within the origins of bamboo (water, grass, wind) and recycled telephone wires and discarded bicycle brake cables that are repurposed as strings. Timbres redolent of steel, bamboo and liquid jostle and collide amongst windswept textures, creating a biomimetic soundscape recounting the life force of the instrument itself.

Daniel BLINKHORN is an Australian composer and new media artist who works extensively with environmental sound. He has worked in a variety of creative, academic, research and teaching contexts, and is a lecturer in composition and music technology at the Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. He is an ardent location field recordist, where he has embarked upon a growing number of recording expeditions throughout Africa, Alaska, Amazon, Australia, Cuba, West Indies, Mexico, Madagascar, Middle East, Northern Europe, and the high Arctic/ North Pole region of Svalbard. His creative works have received a number of awards at important international composition competitions, and whilst entirely self-taught in environmental sound, electroacoustic music and sound art, Daniel has formally studied composition and the creative arts at a number of Australian universities. More information on the composer can be found at: www.danielblinkhorn.com

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