Soundlab #5: performing your field recordings

Workshop / performance

The  workshop is initated by Dianne Wellers Soundlab and QO

In this Soundlab we investigate and fine tune how to take recordings to a live audience. What makes a recordist a good performer? Where do personal and artistic ambition play? How do you communicate with an audience?

As a point of departure, the participants will need to find out and define for themselves what value and meaning live performance with field recording might have. Next to the obvious motivation of sharing sonorous qualities with an audience, personality and skills make the difference. One can be more a storyteller, an other a biologist. Some will process fiercely while others swear by secure selection and simple playlisting. Others even go to the boundaries of the recognizable look and deform the material to make a new fiction.

13 Feb :

Lecture by Peter Cusack on his work practices followed by a ‘tour de table’ of the participants. Works were shared amongst those present before the break. Some ideas were given on how to present those pieces in a performative way, collectively from the group.

After lunch we had a paired Field Recording exercise including either working with magnetic coiled mics in and around the QO2 house, or contact mics taking sounds of the Windmills on the Canal or the environment of the Metro station.

These recordings were listened to then in a joint plenary session. End Day 1.


14 Feb :

Lecture by Ruben Nachtergaele on his work practices followed by an introduction of 2 new participants on Day 2 and their work. A discussion and listening round occurred regarding their material and its possible avenues for performativity.

After lunch we broke into 3 groups of 5 or so. Group 1 developed the Electronic Field Recording that were made with the Magnetic Coil mics into into a performance. Group 2 used the Contact mics out in the Metro and combined recordings to make a short piece. Group 2 used Stethoscope mics to discover their environment with the rooms of Q02.

Short presentations of these performative materials were then presented in the Plenary group.