SEMI SILENT

I visited gate 3 of the Constanța shipyard on a Friday afternoon, taking on as „stalker” the local poet Yigru Zeltil, hence the abundance of steps on the recording. I did not catch a lot of interesting sounds with my DR-05 Tascam equipped with wind protection, except for a freight train that most likely carried cocaine, several types of trucks loading and unloading, plus a special crane sorting and otherwise handling scrap metal. When I approached the crane in order to better record the metal sound on metal, Kraftwerk style, there came some sort of guard who explained to me, in English, that „this is private property”, „please delete”... even though I tried to tell him I do not do industrial espionage. Following, come the other gates, even if access is difficult and you are asked for ID at the entrance. I see this trip soundtrack as a form of escape into industrial sounds, which you hear a lot of in my musical project, Nava Spațială. Over and out.

Cars pass at high speed through a village and overlap with lives lived alongside the roads of Romania. Like waves, the noise of engines invades the sound space and transports us from one house to another. At each passage, a previously imperceptible sound is revealed.

This sound experience prompts a listening proposition: One sound can hide another; but could a sound contain, in itself, another sound? Can completely different objects and actions generate identical sounds?

The search for twin sounds and the discovery of spontaneous "morphings" in the recordings made during my road trips are the threads of this sound creation.

Sound piece created during the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT to Conacul Otetelișanu, Vâlcea County, Romania in July 2018.

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Sara Lana, sound artist from Brazil, had her academic career traced in mathematics, coding and engineering schools. Since 2007 she develops projects permeated by sound, art and technology. Her work is oriented to the research and development of gadgets for technological empowerment, experimenting with different approaches to digital interfaces and analog devices. She lives in Sao Paulo and participated, as a resident artist, in several programs, among them Tsonami sound art festival residency. „Matilha”, one of her recent works, is a multi-channel radio using walkies-talkies to transmit, in real time, sounds captured by street dogs. Her binaural piece „Mutt Dogs” created together with Félix Blume and produced by Arte Radio was nominated to Phonurgia Nova Award in 2018.

www.touca.ninja

Recording, editing and mixing by Sara Lana for SEMI SILENT

Early morning walk with Maria in Benești village, Vâlcea county. An exercise in finding the right morning ambience. A reflection on the recording process. The dogs are our friends.

Sound piece created during the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT to Conacul Otetelișanu, Vâlcea County, Romania in July 2018.

Photo: Mara Mărăcinescu, 2018

Mara Mărăcinescu dedicates herself to sound, working as film and television editor, and as an artist she documents the sounds of her hometown. She started field recording in 2009 and since then she has been collecting the sounds of Bucharest and those of her friends. She is interested in acoustic ecology and supports active listening.

Recording, editing and mixing by Mara Mărăcinescu for SEMI SILENT

The stories that were told, the stories that were made, the ghosts that we heard and those that we imagined.

Hundreds of poultry, ducks of all ages, from hatchlings right out of their egg to noisy males, several varieties of geese, some very large with red cheeks like a cock’s comb, turkeys, chickens and hens, delicate decorative cocks like knick-knacks, peacocks in full bloom, some varieties of pigeons with hideous heads and a discussion about ostriches. A binaural immersion that smells of bird droppings.

Photo: Nicu Ilfoveanu, „Supra vara 2015”, diapozitiv 35mm / 35mm slide, 2015

Sound piece created during the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT to Conacul Otetelișanu, Vâlcea County, Romania in July 2018.

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Anamaria Pravicencu studied drawing and sculpture, with an interest for sound installation. Since 2006 she’s in charge with the artistic direction of Jumătatea plină, promoting author comics, and sonic and musical experiment (Sâmbăta sonoră) through constant and distinct programs. She is the curator of the SEMI SILENT portfolio and she keeps producing sound work.

Recording, editing and mixing by Anamaria Pravicencu for SEMI SILENT

In the small village of Benești, a few hours' drive West of Bucharest, locals use horse-drawn carts to go to the fields. They return with freshly cut hay or sand from the riverbed. Coachmen talk to their horses in order to indicate which directions to follow and the appropriate speed. “Dii” to move forward, “Hai” to go faster, “O” to stop. I've invited myself with the microphones on board for a ride. Communication runs through sounds and gestures, which in my lack of understanding Romanian language turn horse talk into universal language. Each in their own manner, man and animal, seem to understand each other. Voice speaks beyond words, inviting us to listen to timbre, rhythms and melodies that intertwine as they are spoken.

With the voices of Titel, Daniel, Ionel, as well as Anamaria, Laurențiu, Mara, Maria, Octav, Simina and Zsolt.

Sound piece created during the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT to Conacul Otetelișanu, Vâlcea County, Romania in July 2018.

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Félix Blume is a sound artist and sound engineer. He currently works and lives between Mexico and France. His personal work is based on field-recordings using sound as a basic material, in sound pieces, videos, actions and installations. He works with communities in the public space. In his pieces, he blurs the line between sounds and music by changing noise in sounds that eventually sheds a new light on the perception of the surrounding sounds. The particularity of his work is that the audio and visual aspects are closely intertwined. His sound pieces were broadcast in galleries and radios from all over the world: Arte Radio (FR), Kunst Radio (AT), Deutschland Radio Kultur (DE), Radio Nacional de Espana (ES), Phaune Radio (FR), ABC Radio (AU), Radio Panik (BE), Radio Grenouille (FR) among others, as well as in different spaces such as Centre Pompidou and Musée d’Orsay. His work „Los Gritos de Mexico” was granted the „Pierre Schaeffer” award in the French festival Phonurgia (Paris) and an honorific mention in the Bienal de Radio in Mexico City.

www.felixblume.com

Recording, editing and mixing by Félix Blume for SEMI SILENT

Sound piece created by tweaking recordings containing the Romanian countryside’ sounds around the Conacul Otetelișanu, a skylark, some other birds, a pheasant, dogs, geese, sounds of my steps, the wind in the trees by the lake, the bell next to the church and me whistling a song written by Istvan Sky. There’s a glitch in/for every idyll.

Sound piece created during the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT to Conacul Otetelișanu, Vâlcea Department, Romania.

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Zsolt Sütő is a poet, photographer, sound artist, DJ and meditation instructor. Born in Transylvania, he studied for a few years psychology and humane ecology in Budapest then immersed himself in the study and practice of meditation, yoga and sound healing methods. Passionate about the world of sounds and acoustic ecology, sound art and especially the art of beneficial/healing sounds, he’s creating at the border of silence and noise, meditation and sounds, mindfulness and soundfulness, visible and invisible, material and immaterial/spiritual.

Recording, editing and mixing by Zsolt Sütő for SEMI SILENT

Drip drop it starts. Drip drep continues...

7am. Driving Mara to the bus stop in Bălcești. She starts a binaural recording. I continue and develop the exercise. The piece follows our movements and reactions to the surroundings, the story of a dream I had, the immediate encounters.

Sound piece created during the SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT to Conacul Otetelișanu, Vâlcea Department, Romania in July 2018.

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Maria Balabaș is a journalist and musician. She is the host of the Dimineața crossover show (Morning Crossover) from Radio România Cultural and has created projects devoted to new forms of radio creation (Generația sonoră/Sound Generation). In 2014 she was nominated for Prix Europa (Berlin) for the documentary Maria Tănase – Urban Soundtrack for a Diva. She initiated musical groups such as Avant’n’Gard and Soare Staniol, inspired by improvisational techniques, electronic music, acoustic music. Creates installations generated by the artistic interest in the form of field-specific auditory memory.

Recording, editing and mixing by Maria Balabaș for SEMI SILENT

An art acustica experiment with two characters dialoguing on themes like revolution, consumerism, making the world a better place, progressive politics, subversive strategies, the future of mankind.