LOCUS SONUS AUDIO STREAMING PROJECT
Dear Friends,
Thanks for your attention along the past week during our symposium and last presentation of the Locus Sonus installation. We were very happy to discover a new stream: http://nujus.net:9001/istanbul.ogg But Koray did (or do) you stream from Turkey or from Finland? it will be great to listen to it again, do you tell us when you'll put it up again?
We'd got some serious problems with the network at Aix (depending on the local access) on the 15th and the 16th, so it has been difficult to work fully the installation with the streams and we'd to cancel the on-line presentations (Angus's and Björn's ones). During the symposium, Jason Geistweidt had visited us and presented the developments and research at SARC in Belfast, and we'd got the real and good surprise to know that he's actually playing and working with the reception of the streams which are launched in the framework of our project, as live sound materials for composing and for using with other systems. It's really a good way and perspective and this can help us to go on working on shooting sounds and to improve the located mikes (the mike (s) itself, the sound focus, and so on). We can think too about on- line tests and experiments during which we can together and successively work with each sound "streamer". Does this sound to you? To take some on-line rendez-vous, when you're ready, would be enough to begin this work. Maybe it would be good to start with proposing that each one of us presents on-line, to the others, his (or her) own stream. We can book one day or two next January for example or later (according to our and your schedules). For this on-line meeting (or "seminar"), we could use an audio-video system (videoconference), we can send you very soon a simple proposition which will permit us to realize this meeting.
The actual typology of sound "windows" and of open mikes gives us a good first approach of the sonic diversity we can reach, but also about the experiences of long listenings of continuous soundscapes, until the time when sometimes they seem to be mixed or melt with our own sound environment (or to become "our" own environment). Actually it seems that the window ledge appears as the main sublime view ;-), particularly for the urban streaming mikes. The relationship with phonography (as a sound practice) and with webmike (as webcam), or also with shooting sounds (as sound recordists), could be more explored to point out some distinctions which are present here in the framework of our project. To question the different qualities between sound environment, sonic ambiance, soundscape, field recording, sonic matter (ready-mixed?), sound feature, (soundcare?, soundware?), and so on. Several words, terms or expressions we can shake together, and surely you can find other ones (send them to us!), to more explore what happens here.
By using networks to develop and to constitute the system of this open-mikes' net, we're certainly crossing some articulations between capturing sound and listening to it (and the interactions between), and between the "tuning" of different spaces and times, as for example, what was pointed out some decades ago, as what we call "schizophonia" [1], or in another way "soundwalk" [2], and so on (it would be helpful to refer to historical projects and writings). The system we're beginning to develop opens of course different practices and tactics (contrivances?) around this geography (or cartography) of streaming locations: - to record the streams and to use it as cells of memory (because they become fixed, reproducible, and so on), as site's (or situations') images and soundprints - to feed other systems, as installations, processes, resonant spaces, and so on - to focus on sound sensors and captures (with parabolas, and we can imagine other tactics) - to develop systems of sound diffusions, to fold a (emitted) site on another site (of reception), and to build moves and sound spatialization - to invent listening forms and systems corresponding to the scales of the streams - to play with (exclusively or not) into performances, improvisations (comprovisations?), as a live material which can be treated, coloured, filtered, overwritted, and so on - to consider this net as a large radio (narrowcast, broadcast) and to tune (or to syntonize) between the emitted points as sound fictions or improbable narratives (what is an event? a sound sign?) - and so on, I think that you can see other tracks... we can go on to complete this first approach...
So I've tried my best to set some ideas (in english) down in writing, I hope that it's comprehensive even if my frenglish just slips out. So feel free to read between the lines and the words...
Best Jerome
ps: désolé pour les lecteurs français, pas le temps de traduire...
[1] http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Schizophonia.html ttp://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/Ecology/Lopez.html [2] Soundwalks are comprising periods of time when one listens with greater attention than usual to one’s sonic environment (i.e. soundscape). Soundwalkers may even let their ears determine the route of the walk. http://www2.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Soundwalk.html http://www.arteradio.com/son.html?22427 http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/Soundwalk/Soundwalking.htm http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/index.html
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