OPKALD OG SVAR (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2017)

October 23, 2017April 11, 2022 | Eduardo Abrantes

Ofte, både i min egen lydkunst og i andre kunstneres, mærker jeg lyde som håndgribelige bevægelser i rummet. En af de mest bemærkelsesværdige, mystiske og alligevel almindelige af disse, skal jeg nævne opkald og svar.
Når du siger ”hej” til nogen, du kender, og de svarer tilbage. Når to skibe blæser deres tågehorn, mens de sejler nær. Når alarmen på en mikrobølgeovn bringer dig tilbage til køkkenet, og dine skyndte trin stepper på gulvbrættet. I musikalsk kontrapunkt. Overalt i naturen under parringssæson.
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Often, both in my own sound work and other artists’, i experience sound as tangible movement in space. One of the most common yet mystifying categories of this movement is “call and response”.
When you say “hello” to someone, and they answer back. When two ships blow their foghorns while passing close. When a microwave alarm brings you back to the kitchen, your steps resounding on the wood floor. In musical counterpoint. Everywhere in nature under breeding season.

Appropriately to its title, Opkald og svar (“Call and response”) was inspired by an invitation to participate in an Æstetisk Salon session, themed “Interaktion – Reaktion”, an artistic research sharing/presentation/dialogue platform created and curated by Camille Roth and Linh Le. Opkald og svar was presented as both a two channel stereo field sound composition and a co-created collective performance, taking place at private apartment situated in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, on October 2017. In its performative phase, the public was invited to divide in two groups, the first venturing out and exploring the acoustic space of the private home by find a call-sound to respond to. The second group would, after a few minutes, also venture out and try to individually position itself in relation to the mid-points of call and response defined by the individual members of the first group, adding their own intermediate sound to the ongoing play. The result was a playful collaborative exercise in sound exploration, active listening, and performative engagement.

(Photo credit: Eduardo Abrantes, Copenhagen 2017)

SOUND PORTRAIT SESSIONS (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2016)

August 30, 2016August 30, 2016 | Eduardo Abrantes

Sound fascinates me in many ways. It is both tangible and immaterial – like human relationships.

It is vibration – our shaking body among other shaking bodies – it can animate the inanimate, it can be felt in the gut, in the hand flat against a wall, or barely perceived by the ear as a distant signal in the limits of space – above, below, behind and all around. It is complex as process yet immediate in our response – again, just like human relationships.

As a sound artist, one of the main driving forces in my work is the radical physicality and subtle tangibility of the sonic encounter with the other, as well as the multiplicity of the situations in which it might occur.

My practice is built around site-specificity, situation and curiosity. Therefore, it deals with the concrete circumstances where a meeting takes place; with the choreography of intentions as a collaborative aspect; with the intimacy, the awareness of the other, the awareness of the “we”, and the grasping of the unique encounter.

The Sound Portrait Sessions are seven compositions gathered from the sonic material recorded and exchanged during seven individual encounters, which took place at Projektrum Vera during June 2016. In each of these encounters – with Kamilla A., Cecilie O., Ingrid V., Johanne A., Louisa Y., Peter V., and Lucía M. – we talked, listened, hummed, breathed, walked, moved, in short, engaged with each other sonically. A list of some of our shared sound actions can be found here. The sounds collected via mono, stereo, and binaural microphones became the raw material used to create seven individual soundscapes, between 6 to 10 minutes each.

The initial idea was spun from wondering about the specific kind of encounter which is the portrait situation. One of the broadest categories of artistic production, the portrait has, over the centuries, been thoroughly re-invented, from painting through to sculpture, from photography to video-art, from performance to post-dance and beyond.

In our mind’s eye we might see the painter sitting half-hidden behind his or her easel. The model stands in front, on the other side of the canvas, in the spotlight – sitting or standing as still as can be, nude or propped with an ellaborate costume. The subject-object relationship in this ideal…

However, how could/should the setting be if a sound portrait was to be attempted. Which methods? Which situation? Which kind of encounter would this be?

photo by Eduardo Abrantes

photo by Maj Horn

photo by Eduardo Abrantes

photo by Maj Horn

photo by Eduardo Abrantes

SUPERNATURAL SOLICITING (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2016)

August 2, 2016 | Eduardo Abrantes

Supernatural Soliciting – 7# in “Some Days Series” – a series of short situated sound experiments. Copenhagen, June 2016.

A gathering of sonic digressions through the flat landscape of the remote island of Læsø, in the northeast coast of Jutland peninsula, Denmark. Supernatural Soliciting borrows its title from a line in Macbeth, where friction between omens and expectations leads to crisis. It exudes longing, instants of playfulness and a sense of mystery manifest in improvised synchronicity.

(photo credit: Eduardo Abrantes)

HOLLY ROLLERS (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2016)

August 2, 2016 | Eduardo Abrantes

Holly Rollers – 6# in “Some Days Series” – a series of short situated sound experiments. Copenhagen, April 2016.

A series of every day actions and sound impressions gathered from the place called neighbourhood. Holly Rollers brings almost-melodies into contact with a deep-layered awareness of the surrounding rhythms, and the strange closeness of anonymity between those inhabiting them. It explores eavesdropping as a creative strategy.

(photo credit: Eduardo Abrantes)

UNPAIRED GLOVES (Stockholm, Sweden, 2016)

August 2, 2016 | Eduardo Abrantes

Unpaired Gloves – 5# in “Some Days Series” – a series of short situated sound experiments. Stockholm, March 2016. (headphones required for full binaural experience)

Gloves unpaired at the edge of the woods. Left behind by someone. Picked up by someone else and propped on low tree branches, waiting in plain sight. Like second skins, from metamorphosed distracted wanderers. Also, a song from a memory of a song heard – Portishead’s “It’s A Fire” – layering vocal rituals with the deep binaural situation of body becoming surface and friction.

(photo credit: Eduardo Abrantes)

OUTSIDE IN – INSPLAB III (Næstved, Denmark, 2016)

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016 | Eduardo Abrantes

OUTSIDE IN – INSPLAB III (Næstved, Denmark, 2016)

Participation in Cantabile2’s Inspirationslaboratorium III – a collective exploration of creativity in the hybrid context of theatre, performance and live art. Outside In is a soundscape composed by the play between voice and the acoustic site-specificity of the landscape. It features vocal improvisation by Christine Borch (DK), poetic fragments gathered from Mary Elizabeth Frye’s 1932 piece “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep”, and the binaural wanderings through the Grønnegade Teater surrounding area, with its life rhythms of farm animals and rich textures of the land. It was performed together with live sound improvisation, in both group explorations and intimate sensorial refocusing for a small audience.

photo by Eduardo Abrantes, Grønnegade Teater, Næstved, April 2016

SOME BODY IN THE LANDSCAPE (AND THERE WERE OTHER BODIES) (Mooste/Tallinn, Estonia – Stockholm, Sweden, 2015)

August 2, 2016 | Eduardo Abrantes

SOME BODY IN THE LANDSCAPE (AND THERE WERE OTHER BODIES) (Mooste/Tallinn, Estonia – Stockholm, Sweden, 2015)

Sound piece composed of voice and manipulated field recordings captured in Mooste and Tallinn, Estonia, during March 2015, and edited in Stockholm and Lisbon during May 2015. Some Body in the Landscape builds upon the impressions of the wandering mind and ear, and deals with pathos and improvisation both in dialogue and in the context of performative intervention in the immersive presence in the surrounding landscape. Commissioned by the interdisciplinary online platform ESC:ALA, (escalanarede.com), the full curated piece is accessible here

photo by Eduardo Abrantes, Mooste 2015

TWO IN TRANSIT (Stockholm, Sweden 2013)

August 2, 2016 | Eduardo Abrantes

TWO IN TRANSIT (Stockholm, Sweden 2013)

Two In Transit is an artistic experiment on the interplay between two voices and the surrounding acoustic environment, while in motion. Two vocal performers (Ylva Fred and Sara Franceschi) engage with each other as they make their way through the shifting urban landscape of Stockholm, riding their bikes, struggling with harmony, their own physicality and the balance between distraction and concentration in relation to the ever-present sound world of the public space. Two In Transit deals with the possibility of heightened awareness through sonic participation and the challenge of instability, both bodily and acoustic. Two In Transit was recorded, while performed in motion, using binaural microphones and an external stereo source. It was produced in the context of the LUR Levande Urban Radio project, a series of sound art pieces dealing with improvisation in the urban environment, within the IN SITU research group, coordinated by artist Monica Sand (SE) and architect Ricardo Atienza (ES/SE), and based at the Arkitektur- och designcentrum in Stockholm, Sweden.