Published
Intended as a late night listen that evokes the edge of consciousness, with Carlos getting as close as possible to a trance state during the actual recording and mixing, each of the eleven tracks transition into one another rather than being standalone discrete pieces, forming two side-long suites that proceed like stages of a dream.
Published
Note: This score invites you to have a gentle transition, listening between your dream, sleeping time, and your waking reality.
Notas: Este ejercicio te invita a tener una transición de escucha serena y fluida, entre tu tiempo de sueños y tu realidad despierta.
➝ Download pdf
➝ Listen
Published
Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001 is the concept-driven, new electronic album from Dr. Valery Vermeulen featuring music produced using data from one of the most enigmatic, exotic objects in space – black holes. With this album Vermeulen augments electronic music, art and science in previously unexplored ways.
Black holes were first theoretically discovered and proposed in 1916 by German physicist and astronomer Karl Schwarzchild. Their possible existence resulted from an exact solution Schwarzchild had found of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity published a year earlier. Being a long-contested concept, the existence of the first black hole, Cygnus X, was confirmed in 1971. Four decades later, in February 2016, science made another huge leap as the first merger of two black holes was observed by the LIGO – VIRGO telescope. This discovery announced a new exciting era in observational astronomy based on gravitational wave detection.
Using the latest technology, Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001 connects these fascinating scientific evolutions to the realm of electronic music. Having worked on previous astrophysics related musical projects, Vermeulen had the first idea for the album in 2016. It was not until 2018 that these conceptual ideas became a reality when Concertgebouw Brugge (BE) commissioned a new musical piece and live show for their Cosmos Festival. This work ultimately resulted in the album Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001.
The seven-track album is produced using data streams generated by various simulation models of astrophysical black holes and observational data of regions in space with extreme gravitational fields.
Data used for the realization of Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001 includes gravitational wave data, data generated by black branes (i.e. higher dimensional generalizations of black holes), neutron star data, data from white dwarfs and trajectory data of elementary particles near black holes.
As a mathematician and artist, Vermeulen effectively designed and programmed new innovative data sonification, i.e. the means to translate data into sound and music, systems and techniques. These were used to transform black hole data and their associated mathematical models into engaging, moving and multidimensional sound experiences.
Published
hello sleepers
i prefer to do this project slowly
there is no certain point to announce that it’s done
as we don’t know which point we fall into sleep
at this stage i upload all recordings to sleepingsorg.bandcamp.com
pls send me your sleep recordings: subjam at gmail dot com
with a large image, location (google coordinate or street name) and recording time
you can also write other information such as recording equipment, or whatever you’d like to share
for people who has no idea how to record:
1, use a recording app (“recorder” by loop sessions, on ios, for instance) by setting a high sample rate (48000 hz), high bit rate (24 bit) and choose wav format and stereo channels
2, use a recorder (for starter: tascam dr 44wl) for better quality
you will possess time while listening.
➝ Info
Published
lull, a sleep temple is an overnight musical work where artists Mendi + Keith Obadike create a sonic environment for rest. The 8 hour livestream is accompanied by a «dream kit» created by the artists.
This eight hour piece premiered in July of 2020 as a stream for the University of Chicago’s Gray Sound Sessions.
«We wanted a sleep piece for ourselves, so we decided to make it with the hope that other people would want to experience something like this, too. Our title, lull, a sleep temple, points both to a need for a pause, and to “sleep temples,” which are places to rest or dream. Historically, sleep temples were sites in ancient Egypt where people went and entered a sleep-like state for healing and dreaming. In our cultures (Igbo and African-American) dreams are still understood as extremely important. Sleeping and dreaming are understood as a way to connect to something larger than our conscious minds.»
➝ Info
Published
Sleep is an eight-and-a-half hour concept album based around the neuroscience of sleep by German-British composer Max Richter. Sleep was conceived by Richter and his partner, the visual artist Yulia Mahr. It is targeted to fit a full night’s rest. Richter talked with American neuroscientist David Eagleman while working on the album’s piece to learn about how the brain functions during sleep.
Sleep was performed in its entirety from midnight to 8:00 AM at the Wellcome Collection in 2015 as the climax of the BBC Radio 3 «Science and Music» weekend. Audience members watched from beds instead of chairs. The performance set records for the longest broadcast and longest live broadcast of a single piece of music. The album was also performed at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2017, and outdoors in Grand Park, Los Angeles in 2018. The Los Angeles performances had 560 beds and were timed so the final movement, «Dream 0 (till break of day)» would occur at dawn.
Published
“Insomnia is not defined as a simple negation of the natural phenomenon of sleep. The dream is always on the edge of awakening, it communicates with the vigil while trying to escape it. The dream listens to the vigil that threatens him and calls him with request.” – Emmanuel Lévinas in “God, Death, and Time”
“Sleeplessness (Or when we’re sleeping, we’re still listening)” refers to the recording machine which has not slept during the process of recording of all recordings used in this work. “Sleeplessness” only contains recordings made in intimacy, mainly during the dream process. Some recordings have been made only with my presence, other recordings with the company of another person and other ones with the company of two or more people with or without my presence. Some nights have been recorded during the whole sleeping process and other nights all sounds, except silence, have been recorded. All recordings have been ultra-processed in different phases and in different ways to preserve our identity. Only us we know who we are.
14 nights were recorded between 2008 and 2020 in different beds, rooms, houses, cities, countries and people. 14 tracks with almost 30 hours for an ethereal listening during sleeping-time. Designed for high quality speakers, not for headphones. Edited and mastered at “H Studio” and published as 14 copies of SD-Cards (2020). Not for sale!.
“All the sleepers fall into the same, identical, uniform dream. This dream consists precisely in not differentiating. That is why the night, with the darkness and, also, the silence suits him.” – Jean-Luc Nancy in “Tombe de sommeil”
➝ Info
Published
In recent years I have been exploring the use of gravity as a ›sound source‹, giving certain materials and meaningful objects an own sonic course by letting them fall down or by letting things fall down on them. Often this is combined with the use of video. I will present these examples and discuss reasons for such a kind of non-human expressiveness / non-expressiveness.
Published
The installation is inspired by early surrealist radio programme of Robert Desnos in 1937 produced La Clef des Songes [The Key of Dreams] the programme invited listeners to submit their dreams for interpretation and dramatisation, encouraging highly poetic responses from this interaction. Desnos wrote that an invented radio dream delivers the same secrets as a real one. For this event I’m recorded a series of 4 dramatic radiophonic dreams which the pot will micro broadcast in the V and A visitors can listen with FM devices on phones or the radio they have made. Ceramicist Maggie Williams created the pots to my specification so I could make them into transmitters for this set of dream vessels. FM transmitter curcuits were built onto the vessels during a Radio Arts workshop I ran at the Turner Contemporary see below. This new version of the work features dreams of Ellen Brooking, Alex Jueno, Ben Rowley with music from Xylitol.
I worked with ceramicist Maggie Williams, who created to my specification pots for a set of dream vessels for a new participatory work which was built during a Radio Arts workshop at the Turner Contemporary. The project was inspired by early surrealist radio, a book about a talking pot by Tibor Fisher The Collector Collector and Grayson Perry who is on showing while the workshop was happening. Tim Pickup and Jim Backhouse helped run the workshop where we instructed participants how to build transmitters onto the pots and then record their dreams so each pot could broadcast them on FM.
➝ Info
Published
This piece forms part of Ecolalias (Echolalias), a series of podcasts centred on the paths traced by the voice when it is placed in circulation to become the echo of a body it is inseparable from. This series is also made up of the podcasts Tu padre está hablando con la voz de mi padre (Your father is speaking with my father’s voice) by Jaume Ferrete Vázquez and Ahora (Now) by Amaia Urra.
«This voice that breaks; this voice that staggers, or talks back; this voice that dreams from within its own shelter; this voice, always already elsewhere; this voice that interrupts; this voice – the one that murmurs (are you there?); a drunken voice; this voice resounding through words of compassion, friendship; this voice to which one must respond; this voice that may also hurt, or inflict; and which is never so simple, or singular, and yet is only itself; this self, a plurality – a potential, flushed with longing and distraction; this voice on the way to language: will it arrive? This voice that one offers; that grows tired, ghosted by the possibility and the madness: this voice that touches the limits of the permissible and the ordered, that breaks in; this voice that recites, or mimics; which one may recall, as that primary tether; and that enables; this voice that seeks new relations – echoes. To this voice listening turns, and is turned».
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist working with sound culture, voice, and questions of agency. He develops and presents artistic projects and performances within a range of international contexts, often working collaboratively and in public. His work has been presented at South London Gallery (2016), Liquid Architecture, Melbourne (2015), NGBK, Berlin (2014), Whitney Museum, NY (2012), Image Music Text, London (2011), Sonic Acts, Amsterdam (2010), A/V Festival, Newcastle (2008, 2010), Instal 10, Glasgow (2010), Museums Quartier/ Tonspur, Vienna (2009), 7th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Allegro (2009). Also a prolific writer, his books include Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (2010), and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2015; 2006). He is the editor of Errant Bodies Press.
➝ Info