Making Waves

Sound from the natural world and the urban environment are not background sounds for film and other experiences but rather they are sounds rich in associations and meaning. They are deserving of foreground attention. Filmmakers Mike Hoolboom and Heather Frise along with sound artist Alëna Korolëva join Host Darren Copeland to discuss the importance of environmental sound in their thinking and work. Hoolboom and Frise's film "Listening (with Hildegard Westerkamp)" and Korolëva's soundscape piece "Accidental Wilderness" will be presented in an upcoming online World Listening Day event on July 15 at 7 pm that is hosted by NAISA. Selections from those pieces are shared in this episode.

On today’s episode of Making Waves you will hear soundscape recordings made in the Eastern part of Parry Sound District of Ontario or what is locally known as the Almaguin Highlands. NAISA invited local residents in the area to place a bird feeder on their home property. Inside that bird feeder was an audio recorder that captured the overnight soundscapes of spring. Over the course of this hour we will sample highlights from the recordings that were made between April 18th and May 27th of 2023. You will hear many of the key voices of the local soundscape in our region - peepers, woodpeckers, Canada geese, and other more surprising sounds. Visit the aporee sound map to experience more recordings from Almaguin Highlands Community Soundscapes.

For today's edition of Making Waves we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Reveil - the 24 hour dawn chorus broadcast that took place Saturday May 6, 2023 - by mixing sounds from the broadcast with a discussion between host Darren Copeland and Reveil founders Dawn Scarfe, Maria Papadomanolaki and Grant Smith.

Today's episode of Making Waves focuses on two artists from the Deep Wireless 17 Radio Art Album. Darren Copeland talks to Nicole Goodwin in New York who under the name GOODW.Y.N. and with the help of her collaborator Michael Carr (aka Face Mason), wrote and recorded Inner Spaces: Live From Quarantine. In their words, "Inner Spaces is born of a parallel world to ours. It is the voice of revolution in a society gone mad, the voice of hope for the hopeless." In the second half of the show Copeland talks to Prachi Khandekar in Montréal whose piece "The Tracker" is part of an online media piece called “Circuits of Sand and Water.” The binaural audio production, as Khandekar explains in her notes, "is a story about a woman battling isolation in the pandemic. She starts watching her neighbours from her window. Soon, she is compelled to get closer and hacks into their devices... It explores what it feels like to balance an animal urge for connection with the mechanical logic of progress."

This monthly program is produced by New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA). The program features selections from the NAISA archives and is produced by Darren Copeland, NAISA Artistic Director. NAISA is a South River-based Canadian organization that presents performances and installations spanning the entire spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art. The objectives of NAISA are to foster awareness and understanding locally, as well as nationally and internationally, in the cultural vitality of experimental sound art in its myriad forms of expression.

On today’s episode of Making Waves we will share broadcasts from the Northern Virtual Broadcast Service led by Geronimo Inutiq as part of his project "I am Calling Home". Inutiq will be visiting NAISA in the coming week for the Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art. That gave Darren Copeland the opportunity to talk with Geronimo about the topic of home and the special resonance it has for him. Geronimo Inutiq is an urban Inuit and a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary artist from Iqaluit on Baffin Island.

The 17th edition of the Deep Wireless Radio Art Album will be released in February and we will listen to "Fuori è dentro" by Giuseppe E. Rapisarda to begin this episode. After that we will play a documentary produced by Michelle Wilson about her installation Forced Migration which will be on exhibit at the newly renovated NAISA North Media Arts Centre in South River from February 6 to March 27, 2023.

In today’s show Hector Centeno discusses his piece Space_03 which was commissioned by NAISA. Space_03 is derived directly from an attentive and phenomenological exploration of a specific geographical/physical location using spatial audio and photogrammetry.

Vancouver-based artists Julie Andreyev and Simon Lysander Overstall are featured in this episode of Making Waves. They have been collaborating on a variety of ecologically focused new media and sound works, since 2004. They co-lead research-creation projects, recently Wild Empathy—immersive art exploring old-growth trees and ancient forests—and currently Branching Songs, sound art that listens to trees for the forest. Their installations The Sound of Tree Rings and Tree Earth Sky will be featured in an upcoming exhibit presented by New Adventures in Sound Art.

This month on Making Waves we continue listening to more in the Soundportraits series by Jørgen Teller from Denmark. Soundportraits are impromptu pieces made through one-on-one chance encounters. Jorgen Teller was stationed inside a tent at a different location each day. He would record sounds made by the visitors and then create spontaneous electronic compositions from the sounds he recorded creating a musical portrait of his encounter. Included are portraits made at Mikisew Park, The Crystal Cave and NAISA in August 2022.

Today’s show is about sound portraits. A sound portrait is like a caricature made from a brief encounter in a public place - only that instead of creating a visual likeness of a person, a musical and sonic one is made. Jørgen Telller from Copenhagen was in residence recently at NAISA and over three days he produced about two dozen "Soundportraits" of persons living in or touring the South River area. Making Waves will share a selection of these portraits and they will be introduced by Jørgen Teller and Host Darren Copeland.