Sounding Out!

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/8rhpg-vxz35

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Languages of Exile

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With words stepping backwards from the wave of news coverage, attempting to retrace a moment or point in time, to go back where things began, to the innocuous genesis of a single deliberate decision, the resentment or, in some camps, the war crime, within the continuous ebb and flow.  The stepping back breaks up the habit of our clear factual articulation – a clear factual articulation that, in its fact, becomes ignorable as it satisfies the need for fact and its pincer click of tiny precision.  This articulation now carries other words, carries them forward from the reversal of the day’s date stamped so firmly and authoritatively on the facts, as if justification itself.

Stepping backwards and moving forwards with the words of Syrian poets, women whose poems are oddly and noticeably not dated in the books recovered in translation from the British Library, despite the original words being imminently intelligible within the contemporary language of the particular place from where they were written – whether that be Syria, France, Lebanon or elsewhere. The necessary compression of meaning within each sentence of this poetry is in turn counterpointed against the fact of legal journalistic accuracy and its subsequent dispersal, its general thinning out, particularly in the face of reported death.

Poets:

Mona Fayad

Hala Mohamed

Maram al-Masri

Saniyya Saleh

Aisha Arnaout

Ghada Al-Samman

Salwa Al-Neimi

Artists

David Mollin

Salomé Voegelin

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All images supplied by the artists

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David Mollin’s work is concerned with ideas of contingency within the professionalized contemporary art world, and in particular with the effect of power consolidation and commodification and those elements of the work that disappear as a result of such a process. This has led to an increasing interest in the use of writing as a process of materialization of an artwork that fails to materialize. Mollin has co-founded with Matthew Arnatt the project 100 Reviews (Alberta Press and Greengrassi Gallery) and, with John Reardon, he co-edited ch-ch-ch-changes: Artists talk about teaching (Ridinghouse, 2009). Mollin works collaboratively on text-based sound work with Salomé Voegelin. 

Salomé Voegelin is an artist and writer engaged in listening and hearing as a socio-political practice. She is the author of Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound, Bloomsbury, NY, 2014 and Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art, Continuum, NY, 2010. While her solo work focuses on the small and slight, unseen performances and moments that almost fail to happen, her collaborative work, with David Mollin, has a more conceptual basis, establishing through words and sounds conversations and reconfigurations of relationships and realities. http://www.salomevoegelin.net

Follow their collaboration at: https://twitter.com/mollinvoegelin

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REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
detritus 1 & 2 and V.F(i)n_1&2 : The Sounds and Images of Postnational Violence in Mexico – Luz Maria Sánchez

Sounding Out! Podcast #41: Sound Art as Public Art–Salomé Voegelin

World Listening Day 2015: Mendi + Keith Obadike’s “Blues Speaker [for James Baldwin]” (2015) #WLD2015

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Sounding Out! is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://soundstudiesblog.com/

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Finding the Lost Sounds of Kaibah

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In the early 1960s Native American women had few opportunities and rights as citizens. During this politically charged era, a young Navajo woman, Kay Bennett, or “Kaibah”, defied those restrictions by recording and releasing her own albums. Almost fifty years later, we present this conversation with Rachael Nez, a Navajo scholar and filmmaker, whose research explores “Songs from the Navajo Nation” through Kaibah’s records. Kaibah self-published her own albums until she was signed by Canyon records, wrote and published her own books, and traveled the world performing Navajo music everywhere from the Middle East to Europe. Rachael looks at how Kaibah’s music acts as a site for the circulation of Indigenous knowledge, oral history, and resistance.

In this podcast Marcella Ernest speaks with Rachael about the scarcity of materials relating to Kaibah’s history. Although there is no archive of her work, and no coherent trace of her story in one site, she explains how we can piece together a story of Kaibah based on her albums and songs. This dialogue considers the ways in which Indigenous erasure can be recuperated through sound. The project of finding the lost sounds of Kaibah is a fascinating story of how sound can be used to reconstitute indigeneous identity. What social and cultural norms conspire to obfuscate a Navajo woman of such prestige and talent? Finding the lost sounds of Kaibah is a conversation about (re)searching to find a lost sound.

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Marcella Ernest is a Native American (Ojibwe) interdisciplinary video artist and scholar. Her work combines electronic media with sound design with film and photography in a variety of formats; using multi-media installations incorporating large-scale projections and experimental film aesthetics. Currently living in California, Marcella is completing an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Drawing upon a Critical Indigenous Studies framework to explore how “Indianness” and Indigenity are represented in studies of American and Indigenous visual and popular culture, her primary research is an engagement with contemporary Native art to understand how members of colonized groups use a re-mix of experimental video and sound design as a means for cultural and political expressions of resistance.

www.marcellakwe.com

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Featured image is used with permission by the author.

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REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

Sounding Out! Podcast #24: The Raitt Street Chronicles: A Survivor’s History – Sharon Sekhon and Manuel “Manny” Escamilla

Sounding Out! Podcast #20: The Sound of Rio’s Favelas: Echoes of Social Inequality in an Olympic City— Andrea Medrado

The “Tribal Drum” of Radio: Gathering Together the Archive of American Indian Radio–Josh Garrett Davis

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Sounding Out! is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://soundstudiesblog.com/

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/y5s62-20904

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Ruptures in the Soundscape of Disneyland

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In this podcast, Cynthia Wang shares examples taken from a soundwalk she performed at Disneyland. Disneyland has been an idealized space for the middle-class white American experience, and the aural signals and music used throughout the park encourage visitors to become cultural tourists and to share in this mindset. Here Cynthia considers the moments of rupture that disturb Disney’s controlled soundscape. Join us as we listen for a pathway out of the hyper-consumerist labyrinth of Disney. And, if you would like to learn more about this soundwalk, visit it’s website here.

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Cynthia Wang is currently a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, a USC Endowed Fellow, and a USC Diploma in Innovation grant recipient (for an LGBTQ stories mapping project called GlobaltraQs). Her work is framed in critical cultural perspectives. In the past she has done research on how Asian American musicians use digital media to build community and collaborate, and how crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo provide new avenues of creative production and distribution for independent artists. Her current research seeks to bring health care into this conversation of power, examining how health professionals manage and organize their time throughout the day, using practitioner-facing methods to identify where institutional systems and processes break down through a lens of time and temporality. In particular, she is interested in how communication technologies impact the organization of time and social relations within the health care system while enacting and/or reinforcing hegemonic power dynamics. In addition to research and academic stuffs, Cynthia is also a singer-songwriter, and just released her EP album (Find it on iTunes, Amazon, or wherever else you get your music).

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Featured image “Toontown Sound Makers” by Ryutaro Koma @Flickr CC BY-NC. 

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Park Sounds: A Kansas City Soundwalk for the Fall – Liana Silva

Sounding Out! Podcast #43: Retail Sounds and the Ambience of Commerce – James Hodges

Sound(Walking) Through Smithfield Square in Dublin – Linda O Keeffe

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Sounding Out! is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://soundstudiesblog.com/

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/jse2h-9×470

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Immersion and Synesthesia in Role-Playing Games

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In tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons players collaboratively and improvisationally create and explore imagined worlds primarily constructed through speech. In this episode Nicholas Mizer explores what it means to bring those imagined worlds into the shared space of play. Through interviews and recordings of games sessions with a dungeonmaster names Liz Larsen, he explores the importance of what Liz calls “color, song, and choice diction,” for kidnapping this reality with the imagined one. This podcast investigates the often sonic and synesthetic methods needed for conjuring these fantastic realities.

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Nicholas Mizer is an anthropology PhD candidate at Texas A&M University.Besides role-playing games his research interests include folklore, mythology, ritual, phenomenology, interpretive anthropology, performance studies, and geek culture.  His dissertation explores how players of tabletop role-playing games collaboratively experience imagined worlds. He is an editor for The Geek Anthropologist and produces Spot Check, a Youtube series about his research on gaming.

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Featured image “Map of Nabonidus IV” by Liz Larken. Used with permission by the author.

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REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

Experiments in Aural Resistance: Nordic Role-Playing, Community, and Sound – Aaron Trammell

Sounding Out! Podcast #5: Sound and Spirit on the Highway – David B. Greenberg

SO! Amplifies: Mega Ran and Sammus, The Rappers With Arm Cannons Tour – Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo

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Sounding Out! is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://soundstudiesblog.com/

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/0578b-h2a29

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Keep on Pushing! Mix

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Keep On Pushing!

The Style Council, “Walls Come Tumbling Down”—Aaron Trammell
Tricky, “Black Steel”—Brían Hanrahan
Alabama Shakes, “Dunes”—Liana Silva
INSTRUMENTAL #1: Physics, “Delayed Drone”—Stuart Fowkes
Boris Dlugosch, “Keep Pushin” (Original Club Mix)—Luis-Manuel Garcia
Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators, “Keep Reaching’ Up”—Will Stabile
The Slits, “Typical Girls”—Art Blake
INSTRUMENTAL #2: AGF, “Bgcolour”—Salomé Voegelin
Nina Simone, “Work Song”—Neil Verma
Frank Wilson, “Do I love you/indeed I do”—Josh Shepperd
INSTRUMENTAL #3: Odon, “Never”—Primus Luta
tUnE-yArDs,  “Look Around”—Alyxandra Vesey
Sammus, “Power Ups”—Jennifer Stoever
INSTRUMENTAL #4: Sabrepulse, “Cityscape Dreams.”—Kyle Stedman
The Impressions, “People Get Ready” —Regina Bradley
Arrested Development, “Everyday People”—Kristin Leigh Moriah

Sounding Out! is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://soundstudiesblog.com/

DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/8aesx-wfj71

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: Retail Soundscapes and the Ambience of Commerce

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What is the ambient sound of commerce? Equally reviled and revered, the programmed soundscapes of retail space combine wonderful serendipity with quotidian blandness. This podcast examines field recordings from luxury megastores, suburban fast food joints, and everything in between. As it turns out, the corporate ambience of chain-store retail isn’t so far away from the high-brow ambitions of ambient music. Ambience is whatever surrounds us, and it’s embroiled within the same kinds of aesthetic, political, and economic struggles that have been recognized in architecture for centuries.

While a long line of thinkers have identified the links between retail and modernity, surprisingly few have addressed the phenomena in auditory terms. Following up on Jonathan Sterne’s 1997 inquiry regarding environmental music in the Mall of America, this podcast examines new developments in ambient sound that have accompanied the rise of e-commerce and the decline of brick-and-mortar stores. Segmentation of markets, nostalgia for the past, and the early history of recording are all addressed, as we take a listening trip through consumer culture.

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James Hodges is a PhD student in media studies at Rutgers University. His research focuses on the relationship between promotional culture and media preservation. James is the cofounder of a media archaeology working group at Rutgers, and he runs a small cassette label for fun.

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Featured image by Nicholas Eckhart @Flickr CC BY.

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REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

Sounding Out! Podcast #6: Spaces of Listening / The Record Shop – Aaron Trammell

Sounding Out! Podcast #18: Listening to the Tuned City Brussels , Day 3: “Ephemeral Atmospheres”– Felicity Ford and Valeria Merlini

Sounding Out! Podcast #28: Off the 60: A Mix-Tape Dedication to Los Angeles – Jennifer Stoever

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Sounding Out! is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://soundstudiesblog.com/