Month: May 2020

FROM EAR TO HAND – MAKING SOUND-WORLDS (Several locations, Faroe Islands, 2019)

| Eduardo Abrantes

From Ear to Hand is a workshop that explores children’s natural story-telling instincts, curiosity and the knowledge of their surrounding landscape to create sound narratives using everyday objects. They will be invited to do so using so-called foley techniques, where everyday materials are explored for their sonic properties: gloves can become flapping wings, finger-tapping a heavy rainfall, or a balloon a squeaky door hinge.

The focus of the workshop is to engage with the children’s knowledge and awareness of the sounds present in their everyday lives, while being open to imagined places and spaces.

The workshop took place in 4 different schools, one week per school, with children 5-10 years old. The final outcome of the different sound exploration exercises were different soundtracks created and performed by the children, for short clips from two of Japanese filmmaker Miyazaki’s animation classics. Examples below:

This project was made in the context of the Listaleypurin artistic residency and exchange program, and with generous support from local partners.

THE ANIMAL EMPIRE – YOU ARE NOT INVITED (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2019)

| Eduardo Abrantes

“Animal Empire” is an ongoing performance research project by Danish artists, dancers and choreographers Linh Le and Peter Vadim, in which they investigate the social and political context and consequences of the use of animal metaphors (mostly negative ones such as “pest”) in order to portray specific minority groups in contemporary societies.

Having being invited as moderator to the performance series taking place at Bådteatret, I also composed a podcast manifestation of the project, including an original soundscape and samples of the discussions taking place between the invited guests and the audience, after each performance.

Photo credit: Sebastian Neerup Mandel

STRUER TRACKS: REALITY-BASED MULTI-CHANNEL PERFORMANCE (Struer, Denmark, 2019)

| Eduardo Abrantes

Collective and co-created multi-channel performance, together with sound artists: Espen Sommer Eide, Yngvild Færøy, Siri Austeen, Alexander Rishaug, Halla Steinunn Stefánsdottir and Rune Søchting.

A final edit is in progress, below you can hear my individual participation in the piece.

From Struer Tracks Festival 2019: “The performance was the culmination of 5 days workshop at Sound Art Lab in Struer where the 7 artists based in Nordic countries worked experimentally with sound recordings in the landscapes around Struer. The material generated at site visits was be the basis of a collective improvised performance using 10 speakers and filling a full room, where listeners may move freely during the performance.

The focus of the workshop was the investigation of changes in the physical landscape due to development of new forms of energy. Using sound recordings in different ways and mixing documentary and anthropological approaches, the group explores the potentials of the sound recording to create new understandings of the real and to open up new connections between fiction and fact.

The workshop was realised in collaboration between BEK Bergen Center for Electronic Art and Struer Tracks Urban Sound Art Festival. It was supported by Nordic Culture Point and Dansh Arts Foundation.”