Introduction

Field Studies 2011 is a four-day summer-school led by four acclaimed sound artists, architects and composers. It explores the possibilities of engaging with places through listening, and working with recorded sound as a creative and practical tool in the context of architecture, the city and art practice.

Field Studies is organised by Musarc, a sound and architecture research platform at the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design (ASD), London Metropolitan University, and led by Joseph Kohlmaier.

Further reading and downloads

Review of Field Studies 2010, The Wire, December 2010 Download →

Joseph Kohlmaier, Sonus loci. The mediumship of sound in architecture, (Sound@Media, Korea: 2011) Download →

Context and programme

In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of galleries that exhibit sound-based art; books that engage with the phenomenon of sound and the listener; radio programmes and blogs; symposia, teaching programmes and festivals around the question of sound. Although this is not a new phenomenon, ‘sound’ still very much occupies a place outside the mainstream. It brings a certain promise: an alternative, new way of looking at culture, and new opportunities to engage with the environment specifically in the context of architecture and the city.

At the same time, and probably as a consequence, the world of sound-culture harbours certain myths and misconceptions, which the workshop aims to examine through a series of talks, discussions and evening lectures. Already the way we use the word ‘sound’ in this context needs to be scrutinised, as Tim Ingold has done convincingly in a seminal short essay with the title ‘Against soundscape’. The same scrutiny should be brought also to other, more generally accepted conceptions about listening and sensory experience.

One of these might be the assumption that the senses operate separately from each other, and dominate over one another, and that this dominion is a product of our own culture. An engagement with sound is often seen as a remedy against the predominance of sight. In reality, however, our senses are probably not only always at work at the same time, but cross over and connect with each other through a form of synaesthesia.

Field Studies is a practical workship as well as a place to explore questions like these – more specifically in the context of architecture and the built environment, where the great opportunity of working with ‘sound’ simply arises from the fact that apart from seeing, hearing is the only other sense we have the means to represent.

Sound recording technology has been around for almost as long as photography, and is catching up fast in terms of quality. The premise of Field Studies is simple: that by engaging with listening and its representation, the means by which we connect to places will become more varied, and creative processes in design may come to encompass an aspect of experience that is currently not present in architectural representation.

Field Studies aims to explore the ways in which this might happen. What can listening do in the context of architecture and the city? How can field recording – be it through listening, sketching what we hear, or recording sounds – inform design processes? Which aspect of the built environment can sound make tangible that sight can’t penetrate?

Field Studies is run in the form of masterclasses, each led by tutors who approach these questions from a rich variety of different perspectives. A series of cross-masterclass talks by the tutors and visiting speakers, and a series of practical workshops complements a programme of sonic-capture field trips and creative work following a set brief. Click here for more information.

Raviv Ganchrow

Raviv Ganchrow’s (1972) work focuses on interrelations between sound and space which he explores through sound installations, the development of sound-forming technologies such as wave field synthesis, as well as writing and curating. Raviv co-edited Immersed: Sound and architecture for OASE with Pnina Avidar and Julia Kursell (issue 78, 2009) and more recently co-curated the Sonority of Place conference with Carsten Stabenow at Tuned City, Tallinn, 2011.

Raviv's work addresses the ambiguous nature of sound which is at once material-spatial and temporal-ephemeral, and shows an increasing preoccupation with the contexts of listening and how they are manifest in 'situated instances of hearing'.

Recent installations directly engage the every-day acoustic environment, plumbing notions of ‘place’ that are constructed by way of frequency interdependencies between sound, location and listener. For example in his work Crescents (2010), an accumulation of time-delayed acoustic reflections establish a series of arced resonances between listeners, the structure of a hydroplane hanger and sonic remnants from that site. In 2010 he began a multi-format project titled Listening Subjects concerning the coexistence of multiple, at times contradictory, 'acoustic epistemologies' shaping contemporary configurations of listening.

Raviv completed his architectural studies at the Cooper Union, New York and received a second degree from the Institute of Sonology at The Royal Conservatory, The Hague. He has been teaching architectural design in the graduate program at TU Delft (studio Border Conditions), and is currently a faculty member at the Institute of Sonology where he teaches two courses: Sound and Space and Aural Tectonics.

Photo: John Grzinich

Esther Venrooy

Esther Venrooy (b. 1974, Rosmalen, The Netherlands) is a composer and sound artist working in the field of electronic music.

After completing studies in classical saxophone, Esther Venrooy attended the European Dance Development Center (Arnhem) as a composer in residence, where she began employing electronic and digital techniques in pieces aimed at choreography and stage performance. Gradually her music evolved into an independent means of expression and she continued her work with electronica at the IPEM (Institute for Psycho-acoustics and Electronic Music) in Ghent, Belgium where she still resides. At this time she started utilizing film editing paradigms as a foundation for her personal composition methods. Her works range from purely electronic composed music to improvised combinations of electronica with traditional instrumentation such as piano, guqin, pipa and satsumabiwa. She has created site-specific works as well as multimedia performances and installations. Much of her music has been released on CD or vinyl at Entr'acte label (UK) and has received good critical acclaim.

Esther Venrooy has performed her music extensively for audiences in Europe, Asia and America. She collaborated with visual artists Hans Demeulenaere, architect Ema Bonifacic, choreographer Femke Gyselinck and withpipa player Min Xiao-Fen , guqin playerWu Na, bass player Kato Hideki and pianist Heleen Van Haegenborgh. Upcoming projects are with guitarist Mauro Pawlowski, drummer Lander Gyselinck and architect Olivier Goethals.

Apart from her artistic activities, Esther is a lecturer on 20th century music and experimental arts at the Ghent School of Fine Art, where she also runs the audio workshop. Esther also presides the board of (k-raa-k)3 organization. In 2009, Esther started a PhD research on ‘Audio topography – (re)constructing auditive spaces’. In this research she will explore the auditory experience of space and the interaction between the auditory senses and the built environment.

For more info visit:
http://www.esthervenrooy.net/

Photo: Lecture/Performance, Hisk, Gent, 2010

Liminal

Liminal is a partnership between architect Frances Crow and sound artist and composer David Prior. Liminal's work focuses on exploring the relationship between sound, listening and the environment. It encompasses site-specific interventions and sound walks, gallery installations, performances, research and consultancy as well as sound and music environments for exhibitions. In September 2008 Liminal received a grant from the Wellcome Trust for the research phase of their project Tranquillity is a State of Mind. In 2010 Liminal won the PRS Foundation's New Music Award for The Organ of Corti, a four metre high, visually transparent sonic crystal that takes sounds from the environment in which it is placed and recycles them, without adding any noise of its own.

Frances Crow is a qualified architect who has worked in practice since 1998. Following her training at Liverpool John Moore’s University and the Bartlett, University College London, she worked for a number of national and international architects, both in London and Berlin. Between 2002–2007 she worked as a part-time senior lecturer at Plymouth University in the School of Architecture and the i-dat research group. She started her own design practice in 2007, which concentrates on ecological solutions for small-scale projects. Her approach to the process of design is to work at a multi-sensory, micro scale and this preoccupation is continued through liminal by concentrating on the often-overlooked sense of hearing.

David Prior is a composer and sound artist with a particular interest in the relationship between sound and space. His work spans compositions for acoustic instruments, live electronics and fixed media as well as radio programmes, sound installations and sound walks. Since 2003 most of David’s work in the area of sound art and exhibition sound design has been carried out through liminal, while his musical output is released under his own name or through his two collaborative music projects, Derailer (with John Matthias) and Arcades (with Dugal McKinnon). Additionally, David continues to work as a producer and sound mixer for music and film projects and is a member of the film and music collective 4waylab.

David’s music has been performed around Europe and North America in contexts including ISCM World Music Days, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, International Computer Music Conference, Sonic Arts Network Expos and the State of the Nation Festival, to name but a few. His work has won a number of international competitions including Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, Cornelius Cardew Prize, E.A.R (Hungarian Radio), the George Butterworth prize and a PRS Foundation ATOM award.

After a first degree in Music and Religious Studies, David completed a PhD in music at the University of Birmingham in 2000 having completed residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, Les Ateliers UPIC, Paris and the Technisches Universität, Berlin where he was a guest of the DAAD.

David is associate professor in Music and Sound Art at University College Falmouth.

For more info:
http://www.liminal.org.uk/

Photo: The Organ of Corti in Cumbria

David Grandorge

David Grandorge is a photographer and academic living and working in London. As a photographer he undertakes commissioned work, collaborating with architects, artists and art institutions. He also makes work independently (grandorge.com). His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including the Venice (2008) and Prague (2005) biennales and has been published internationally in magazines, journals and books. He has written several published articles on architecture and photography. David is a also a senior lecturer in structure, construction and materials at the Faculty of Architecture and Spatial Design, London Metropolitan University and leads Diploma Unit 7 (unit7research.com). He has been a visiting lecturer, tutor and/or critic at the University of Bath, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, ETH Zurich, Cambridge University and Kingston University.

Tim Ingold

Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology and Head of the School of Social Science at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out ethnographic fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written extensively on comparative questions of environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, as well as on evolutionary theory in anthropology, biology and history, on the role of animals in human society, and on issues in human ecology. His more recent research deals with aspects of skill and environmental perception. He is currently writing and teaching on the comparative anthropology of the line, and on issues on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture.

Ian Rawes

Ian Rawes is a former Vaultkeeper of the British Library Sound Archive and now runs the Archive's Listening and Viewing Service. As a hobby in his spare time he runs the London Sound Survey website (www.soundsurvey.org.uk) in which he documents his home city through its sounds. The site includes modern-day field recordings, sound maps, and written historical references to past London sounds. Ian is currently preparing a new site section to include broadcast field recordings from the 1930s and 1940s. The London Sound Survey has been featured on Radio 4, BBC World Service and Resonance FM.