Category: Sound Archive

Sound Exhibition:

4 February 2022 Friday 3-7pm

5 & 6 February 2022 Saturday & Sunday 2-6pm

Free Entry

We are delighted to announce that the work of John F. Barber has been selected as one of the two pieces to exhibit at Project DIVFUSE micro media art gallery through the Open Call DIVFUSE Sound Archive, which puts a focus on work based on field recordings.

Transects is a sound art project collecting field recordings while walking through acoustic environments. Combined, these samples provide sound-based collages representing their place of origin. The desired end result is to promote immersive narratives of the overlay and interplay between sounds heard in an acoustic environment.

Transect: Jardin du Luxembourg

August 2013, Paris, France, John Barber

Begun in 1612 by Marie dé Medici, Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Garden), Paris, France, features fountains, terraces, gardens, tree-lined pathways, tennis and basketball courts, a theatre, brasseries, bands, and boles. All can be heard in this transect.

Transect: Copenhagen

August 2014, Copenhagen, Denmark, John Barber

This transect experiences walking through Copenhagen. Playing with a set of automatic doors and a corrugated cardboard wall covering, with a broken alarm in the background. Wheeled suitcases on cobblestone streets. A street crossing alarm. Automobile and horse carriage traffic. Metro announcements. Pedestrian ambiance around the Vor Frue Plads fountain, street sounds, a marching band and squad of soldiers passing on their way to a guard changing ceremony at the Odd Fellows Palace, the tinkling of a bicycle bell.

Sound Exhibition:

25 February 2022 Friday 3-7pm

26 & 27 February 2022 Saturday & Sunday 2-6pm

Artist Li Song will be on site Friday 5-7pm & Saturday 4-6pm. He will be joined in by Shuoxin Tan and Jia Liu online for an artist talk on Saturday 4-5pm. Please email divfuse@gmail.com to reserve a place for the artists’ talk. 10 seats only.

Free Entry

We are delighted to announce that the work of the ensemble [ _ _ _ ] has been selected as one of the two pieces to exhibit at Project DIVFUSE micro media art gallery through the Open Call DIVFUSE Sound Archive, which puts a focus on work based on field recordings.

Three members of [ _  _  _ ] have recorded in the field of traffic and acoustic signals in their own cities (London, Cologne and Karlsruhe) using binaural microphones. The concrete traces of urban networks are intertwined with the abstract electronic sound through the network music ensemble’s collaborative algorithm, which they developed in the programming language SuperCollider from 2020 to 2021 during the lockdown. 

By live coding within their interactive system, exchanging information and sharing the signal flow, they’ve created this 30-minute sonic trip, on a route that does not exist.

The project was supported by Musikfonds (Neustart Kultur, Germany).

[ _ _ _ ]

“Three placeholders sitting in a room between empty spaces.” This is how the ensemble [ _ _ _ ] describes itself. It was founded in 2020 by the artists Li Song, Shuoxin Tan and Jia Liu, (to compose music for the network. Li Song is a musician and software developer based in London. He composes music for computers and acoustic instruments. Shuoxin Tan was born in Beijing and works as a composer and sound artist in Cologne. She researches algorithmic acoustics, sound ontology and Lacanian topology. Jia Liu is a composer and computer music performer. She lives in Karlsruhe and is currently working on algorithmic music and composition for autonomous systems.

Sound Exhibition:

10 June 2022 Friday 5-8pm [Opening hours updated]

11 & 12 June Saturday & Sunday 2:30-6:30pm

Running time : 18 minutes 32 seconds. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings.

Descriptive Realities (2017) was made in collaboration with Call and Response Gallery and the deaf blind charity Sense. This sound work is inspired by the everyday sounds of domesticity and uses audio description to shed light on our diverse listening experience. Drawing on her own perception of sound, the piece plays with the mysterious, evocative and sometimes confusing world produced by our eyes and ears. Audio Describer Louise Fryer has created the description of sound based on what she hears and without being given prior context, creating another layer of narrative alongside the audio work. The listener can enjoy multiple layers of narrative by exploring the description of sound, while creating their own audio journey using imagination and listening.

Sound Exhibition:

13 May 2022 Friday 4-7pm

14 & 15 May Saturday & Sunday 2:30pm-6:30pm

Running Time : 16 minutes. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings

‘ghosts, machines etc…’ is a short suite and visual score for field recordings, reverb and distortion. The piece is based around three field recording prompts outlined in the score:

1. a low hum

2. a conversation

3. irregular, uneven rhythms

The player(s) interpret these prompts, make field recordings and play the piece, performing with the effects; reverb and distortion, in accordance to the score.

The piece encourages player(s) to reclaim public and institutional spaces by sitting still, observing and recording. It looks to field recording as an act of resilience and the performance as meditations on the players’ experience recording. It’s an invitation to loiter, hang about and be curious in public space.

The score itself is based around an adaptation of standard western musical notation. It uses a simple key to create instructions that add texture, colour and rhythm to the field recordings.

Sound Exhibition:

20 May 2022 Friday 4-7pm

21 & 22 May Saturday & Sunday 2:30pm-6:30pm

Running Time: 9 minutes. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings.

Clay Cameras was created from audio recordings made on a single day in 2005 – sounds from assorted items I found in my apartment, or on the nearby Thames foreshore. A low tide trip to the riverbed resulted in a hoard of tobacco clay pipe stems that had been discarded in the river centuries earlier. The slender tubes make a beautiful tinkling sound when struck or rubbed together. I also recorded and processed sounds from a clockwork cine film camera, some gurgling noises from the back of my fridge and a long since forgotten item as it swung to-and-fro on a door handle.

I had been making sonic contributions every month to Tetsuo Kogawa’s “Radio Kinesonus” project in Tokyo since 2003 (over the telephone!); Jacques Foschia was a Kinesonus co-contributor, and it was he who invited me to provide a ‘pastille’ to the “SilenceRadio” online audio project in 2005. “Clay Cameras” was my gift to him. I made a second composition called “TKU London” from other recordings from that same day;  I played “TKU London” to Kogawa-san’s students at Tokyo Keizai University in an early internet audio streaming event during the same year.

– Keith de Mendonca

Sound Exhibition:

27 May 2022 Friday 4-7pm

28 & 29 May Saturday & Sunday 2:30-6:30pm

Running Time : 30 minutes. Free Entry

This piece of work is one of the 5 pieces that are selected from DIVFUSE Sound Archive No. 2 – an Open Call for work that are based on field recordings.

The main components of my practice are sculpture, sound, video and installation. In my work I’m interested in exploring the possibilities of the subconscious movement of everyday material and often results in an amalgamation of audio videos and sound pieces.  

I am particularly interested in these sounds because they are evocative and when heard in a different space it can take on an uncanny quality.  

I transform the everyday objects and materials that’s presented around me in aesthetic environment, defining the space, sound and experience. While editing I refined the original version into something that is undefinable. Thinking about texture and warmth from the sound and material. The found objects and materials don’t reveal their source and so then are not literal or illustrative of the source or action.  

I created From One to Another (2021) during the second lockdown. I became more engaged with my surroundings again. Exploring found objects and domestic materials that lived alongside me over the years. Observing and interacting with each object, I built new relationships and created new audio piece.  

-Johanna Nulty