Interference

Adern X – Behind the (h)ear

There are roughly two situations in which someone can hear another: in a silent place and in a noisy one. In the first case, it’s fairly easy to hear what is said, while in the other listening is a matter of will and care. Usually the difficulty of comprehension is due to masking as two sound sources whose spectrum lies in the same frequency interval interferes with each other. There’s a longing to communicate with the other.

In this track short wave and AM radios are the only sound source, as they are traditionally used to communicate rather than to diffuse music, and filters are used to mask noise and let emerge voices to those willing to hear.

Edward Ruchalski –Radio Traces

The source material consists of sounds from a short wave radio and a scanner accompanied by aquatic insects. I wanted to create a sound world full of different languages coexisting yet cancelling each other out. In performance, each sound file is erased from the Ableton session view after being played as if it were retreating or giving up its urge to communicate and the piece slowly disappears into silence.

Olivia Bradley-Skill – breath_retreat_disappearance

Disappearance made me think of what’s left over. I cut the samples shorter and shorter, and it felt haunted after. The sounds come in sharp and end abruptly. A humming rattles. All the while, as I sat at my computer putting this together, shadows moved around my apartment. My peripheral vision kept imagining a tiny mouse running across my living room floor. I hope the ghost mice enjoy.

Carlo Patrão – Untitled, with balloon

Air does not show itself. As such, it escapes appearing as (a) being. It allows itself to be forgotten, wrote the philosopher Luce Irigaray. The withdrawn qualities of air led Western philosophers to confuse it with absence or void. It’s easier to theorize against form or visible substance. Air being all around us never takes place in the mode of an “entry into presence,” stated Irigaray.

I was inspired by the balloon as a mode of giving form to air and breath. A contact microphone was placed inside a toy balloon positioned in front of a radio set. The intent was to use the balloon as a sensing device and hear the radio through the envelope of breath. This piece was recorded in one take (edited for time) and has three different moments. First, the sound of blowing up the toy balloon; second, dialing the radio and third releasing air/breath in a sonorous way. Coincidentally, the first song on the dial was Take my Breath Away, which prompted me to start releasing my own breath. Then, the song was cut by commercials. Finally, I used the balloon and remaining air/breath as a low tech device for noise canceling and to withdraw myself from the pull of the atmosphere of capital.

Sounding Out! has published the artist’s research on balloon music. Explore more of Carlo Patrão‘s radio art.

< < < Return to Home