November 4, 11 &18
6 pm - midnight
AION
and
Songs of Place
live performance
by Steve Heimbecker
November 18, 8:30 pm
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This work aims to unfold
four abandoned spaces inside the Zone of Exclusion in Chernobyl, Ukraine.
It deals with a sonic and visual experience of time, absence, and change -
in an area haunted by an invisible and inaudible danger, amidst the slowly
decaying remains of human civilization.
S I L E N C E , u n f o l d i n g i n s p a c e
The sound of each room was evoked by an elaborate method: in each room, Kirkegaard
made a recording 10 minutes and then played the recording back into the room,
recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers
got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones.
From a technical point of view, Kirkegaard's "sonic time layering" refers
back to Alvin Lucier's work "I am sitting in a room" [1970]. He recorded his
voice in a space and repeatedly played this recording back into that same
space. In Kirkegaard's work, however, no voice is being projected into the
rooms: during the recordings, he left the four spaces to wait for whatever
might evolve from the silence. For the visual representation, two of the four
rooms employ a recording technique parallel to the sonic layering. A video
camera was placed on one particular spot in the space and it recorded non-stop
from there. This recording was then projected and recorded with another camera
tine and time again. In this process, some of the rooms turned darker, others
turned brighter Š they reveal themselves on the screen, they dissolve into
white light or they disappear into darkness. For the two other rooms video
feedback was used to under- and overexpose the image.
C H E R N O B Y L , 2 0 y e a r s The rooms he found and recorded were abandoned
abruptly, urgently, and for good: Their inhabitants were evacuated by Soviet
military and had to leave all their belongings behind. On April 26th, 1986,
the explosion of reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had effaced
all possibilities of human survival in the vicinity. Twenty decades after
the event, Kirkegaard explores the phenomenon of radiation with the medium
of sound. By recording, mirroring and layering the silence of four radiating
spaces he aims to unlock a fragment of the time existing inside the zone.
AION is part of Kirkegaard's Chernobyl project which also includes the work
entitled 4 ROOMS. This work is CD and is released by the Brittish label TOUCH
in April 2006.
Credits:
This work was created by
Jacob Kirkegaard.
All sound and video was recorded in Chernobyl in October 2005.
My warmest thanks to: Sarah Kirkegaard, Rimma Kiselitsa (In memoriam),
Kotra, "Verein der Freunde der Kunsthochschule fuer Medien Koeln",
Anthony Moore, Siegfried Zielinski and Martin Rumori The Academy of Media
Arts in Cologne.
See AION CATALOGUE here: http://secretsounds.dk/nada/data/chornobyl/aion_catalogue.pdf [CATALOGUE TEXTS BY SARAH KIRKEGAARD & STINE HEBERT. Published by Gallery Rachel Haferkamp in Germany]
http://fonik.dk
& http://secretsounds.dk
And myspace: http://myspace.com/jacobkirkegaard
More info on the CHERNOBYL PROJECT: http://secretsounds.dk/nada
TOUCH: http://www.touchmusic.org.uk/archives/reviews_jacobkirkegaard/
Contact Jacob Kirkegaard: solvind@myinternet.dk
The project is sponsored by the Danish Arts Council's Committee for Visual Arts.
.
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SONGS OF PLACE is a
series of experimental audio art portraits which use surround sound audio
and split screen video techniques to represent selected places. The first
series, released in 2005 as Box Set double DVD and book by Oboro and Qube
Assemblage, Montreal, is of 4 Canadian places: Halifax, N.S., Montrˇal, QC,
Vancouver BC, and Springwater, Sk. Each composition in the series captures
a portrait of a selected city or countryside, using eight to ten 4 channel
surround sound location recordings called Acoustic Mapping Process (AMP).
These recordings are layered and edited together with another system of HeimbeckerÕs
called Dynamic Voltage Mapping (DVM).
For the visual component, one take continuous video is shot which corresponds
to individual AMP audio recordings and locations, which are then collaged
together in one screen, and are presented as a visual representation that
poetically documents the geographic iconography.
"I am interested in creating a sonic and visual portrait of a particular
place at a particular time. It is my contention that to fully hear a place
one needs to hear the space of that place. By using my Acoustic Mapping Process,
and editing techniques such as my Dynamics Voltage Mapping, I am able to create
intense spatial compositions unlike surround sound compositions commonly experienced
today.", says Heimbecker.
In 2004 Heimbecker was commissioned by ORF Kunstradio, to create Songs of
Place Vienna, Austria. This first European portrait was completed and presented
in Vienna in September 2005, and will be presented in concert at Diapason,
along with a selection from the Canadian series.
"The movement of
the wind across fields of tall grass has always fascinated Canadian sound
artist Steve Heimbecker. It creates wavelike patterns that resemble each other,
but are never quite the same - an illusion of repetition, as he likes to call
it. Illusions abound in the four video and surround-sound pieces brought together
on this double DVD. In these elaborate portraits of rural and urban environments,
mundane places and sounds bathe in a magical, timeless aura, taking on new
meanings and a new lease of life."
- Rahma Kkazam - The Wire, Adventures in Modern Music, #270, "On Screen",
August, 2006
"Songs of Place, a series of sound portraits of urban and rural places (Halifax, Montreal, Springwater, Vancouver) initiated by the tireless Steve Heimbecker in the year 2000, is the latest stop on our journey to the heart of art and the renewal of formal repertories. This elaborate, multi-perspective work evolved in accordance with the artistÕs travels, often occasioned by invitations or artist residencies in Canada. Using multiple recordings produced over a brief period of time, these works seek to capture the sound space that is specific to a place, so as to reveal the place in-itself. It is a journey to the heart of a place's physical resonance, an interior journey that transcends the world of the senses." - Philippe Gimet - Octopus Onligne (FR), September, 2006.
"The Songs of Place series is as difficult to categorize as Heimbecker himself. These are works of visual and auditory art that fully engage the senses and sensibilities of the audience. Here Heimbecker operates at the juncture of electro-acoustic composition, soundscape and acoustic ecology, video montage, and sonic sculpture. Over his lengthy career as a sound artist specializing in quad- and octaphonic surround systems, Heimbecker has developed unique framing and editing techniques that enable these intense portraits." - A. Friz - excerpt from the publication Songs of Place, 2005
Steve Heimbecker
April 2006 Canadian artist and composer Steve Heimbecker was born in Saskatchewan,
studied fine art at the Alberta College of Art, and now lives and works
in Montrˇal, through his studio Qube Assemblage. Heimbecker is recognized
for his audio art, new media installation, and sculpture, and his multi
channel sound compositions. He has exhibited and performed across Canada
and Europe. In 2005, he won an Honorary Mention in Interactive Media at
Prix Ars Electronica (Austria), for his project POD (Wind Array Cascade
Machine). Also in 2005, Heimbecker released "Songs of Place",
a 2 DVD surround sound box set and book work, co-published with OBORO,
Montréal.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/qubeassm/index.html
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