Constellations

This episode of Constellations we speak with artist and writer jamilah malika abu-bakare about Aural Alterities, an online exhibition curated by abu-bakare. Aural Alterities is a collection of works by 8 sound artists, which suggest dimensions and possibilities for working in sound outside of formal or canonical of the medium. All of these artists are Black, Indigenous or POC Chilean. This episode is primarily an interview with abu-bakare, alongside excerpts from the exhibition. We strongly recommend you listen and take in these works in their online format here: auralalterities.com Aural Alterities works: - “sending a message to you” by Adee Roberson - “Speaking into Existence” by Aj McClennon - “Audible Rising” by Allah George - “L2BW2” by jamilah malika abu-bakare - “ALL OF ME” by Jessica Karuhanga - “FIGHT ME” by Kim Ninkuru - “only workers” by RUTMEAT - “Detenidxs Desparecidxs” by Soledad Fatima Muñoz Referenced reading: The Combahee River Collective Statement Art Papers, Interview: David Hammons Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Animals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs Further reading: Aural Alterities “On Listening” page: auralalterities.com/on-listening

"I heard once that swans don't like green..." *** This Mystery Box has been mixed by Miyuki Jokiranta. It's composed from sounds recorded by: Jon, Mike Williams, Nick Violi, Jess Shane, and Kalli Anderson. *** To hear these sounds in their entirety, visit the Mystery Box on our website: constellationssounds.org/mystery dash box *** Constellations is a community of listeners, investigating the world through sound. The mix engineer is MM. The graphics are designed by JS. *** Want to contribute to the next Mystery Box? Visit: constellationssounds.org/mystery dash box/contribute

Never fear, the

Welcome to the Mystery Box, we're glad you found us. This is our weird world of eccentric experimentation and sonic tomfoolery. The Mystery Box encourages a sense of play and fun outside of the rigidness of polished sounds and narrative structure. We're soliciting sounds from Constellations listeners like yourself. Then, every few weeks we'll be handing those sounds over to a designated mixer who will create a new Mystery Box for you to enjoy. But wait! The fun won't stop there

Trick & treat. You know where we've been

Lonely Artefacts is a podcast series about regional Australian museums by Sisters Akousmatica for Constellations. Lonely Artefact #2 takes you to the Waratah Museum in Waratah north west lutruwita-Tasmania. From Sisters Akousmatica: “I visited in 2010 and the museum experience stayed with me, as it was so obviously a labour of love and community service. In fact it was probably the original inspiration for this series.” Sisters Akousmatica pay respect to the Palawa people as the traditional and ongoing custodians of Lutruwita and to elders past, present and future, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. https://www.constellationsaudio.com/sounds

Energy usage and sound are two omnipresent components of our daily life. We're constantly trying to weigh our own wants and complications against individual sacrifices and the perceived "difference" our actions can make. And of course, as with much of existence, many things can be true at once. Featuring: "i don't think its my place" by Sophia Steinert-Evoy "Forest to Desert" by Sarah Boothroyd https://www.constellationsaudio.com/sounds

Language is inextricably linked to land. In this episode, we explore how the shifts in the landscape have impacted language across generations and cultures. Featuring: “Translation (a prayer)” by John Isaiah Edward Hill “During the drought the road is dry” by Bartosz Panek John Isaiah Edward Hill is writing a poem to the generations passed and the generations to come in the Oneida language that’s been threatened by settler colonial violence. In their piece “Translation (a prayer)”, we hear two voices: the English voice which is static and unmoving, and the Oneida voice, which moves in a counter-clockwise motion, representative of traditional Haudenosaunee dance practices.  ~ In Poland, drought has wrecked havoc on the landscape. 2019 was the hottest year on record in Poland, and it’s affecting their entire way of life from water, the soil, food and energy prices. These shifts have meant a shift in the language used to describe water, heat and dryness. In Bartosz Panek’s piece “During the drought the road is dry” he explores how old words are being given a new context alongside the changing climate. Transcript for “During the drought the road is dry” is below. [8:49 - 9:00] During the drought the road is dry.   [9:10 - 9:15] During the drought the road is dry.   [9:20 - 9:25] During the drought the road is dry.   [9:34 - 9:34] Can you see the drought?   [9:34 - 9:54] So you know... in a place like this it will be seen there... Take a look there, where's upper: dryness has just been appeared. So it’s visible. If the whole area, the grass here, is burned by the sky, it’s obvious there’s the drought.     [10:03 - 10:33] Nope! It's not so bad now. In my backyard I have a garden with some vegetables and it was visible You just need to dig your finger into the soil and you know if it’s dry or humid. So when the vegetation started in May and June, there was a kind of crisis. But not now.   [11:50 - 11:59] Damn deckchair. The drought exhorted great havoc. Raspberry season is almost over… [14:20 - 14:39] Sasha is treading down a dry road,
He can hardly walk, that’s a forebode.
The heat is pouring out of the sky,
During the drought the road is dry. [24:09 - 24:17] Dry across, dry out, dry over, dry totally…

Ft. “American Ghosts” by Erica Huang and “Bob Hope No Hope” by Jenn Stanley. The act of recording has impacted how we perceive and understand time. Recording’s byproduct, whether by sound, video, photo etc, is an artifact of the past, a moment of space and time captured and archived. For this episode of Constellations, we asked two artists, Erica Huang and Jenn Stanley to reflect on how they consider time, its relationship with recorded artifacts and the significance of the archive. We asked them: How might our conception of what an ‘artifact’ is be sonically unraveled?  

Voicing was produced and composed by Mara Schwerdtfeger The piece is an interweaving abstract conversation exploring the concept of voice through a series of four sound elements. The deconstructable nature of the piece allows for multiple forms of expression to be heard both as individual voices and together as an active cohesion of sound. We encourage you to visit our website to play with these different voices – voice, viola, environments and sound objects – in your own time. We’ve got each of the separate voices listed there, so you can hear they interact, relate, and reflect back on each other within your own sonic environment. Play with them how you like. constellationsaudio.com/sounds

This episode of constellations we’re mapping ourselves, from the outside in. Relax your need to understand everything and listen to yourself, your body, loosen the need to analyze. Featuring: “Necropolis 2: Cruise Control” by Kamikaze Jones “A Sound Poem” by Axel Kacoutié and “Necropolis 3: Planet of the Gapes” by Kamikaze Jones. Axel writes: “We are wrong to look for uniformity and objectivity. We have all mapped associations to what our subjective experience is like. My experience of the colour red is different from yours. Our brains light up the same way when hearing water but our relationship to its sounds will never be the same. Because of this, I wanted to illustrate how I've mapped mine using abstract terms like solitude, sunbathing, patricide etc. All as an attempt to say, "you don't have to understand, I just want to connect and have you see (listen) how I relate to the world." — “Necropolis 2: Cruise Control” —> This piece is composed from Grindr chats, sex toy Yelp reviews, and hold music from gay phone-sex hotlines. It imagines a queer hauntological underworld mediated by the technologies of yesteryear. “Necropolis 3: Planet of the Gapes” —> This piece is a more meditative, cosmic manifestation of the Queer Necropolis, and is comprised entirely of acoustic instruments played with a vibrating butt plug. Kamikaze writes: “My original intention was to create an immersive sonic environment that was representative of the darker, more infernal channels of the collective queer subconscious. My work as a performance artist and extended technique vocalist over the past year has been focused on explorations of queer madness, and supernatural manifestations of queer erotic identity. My objective was to create a mythological sonic territory that addressed the sublimated ghosts and demons of our shared history. I quickly realized the boundaries of my own subjectivity in the compositional process and, embracing the queer art of failure, realized that the project would undergo a kind of conceptual mitosis, splitting into two separate but distinct companion pieces, each radical interpretations of what a “Queer Necropolis” could sound like. (for more, head to our website) constellationsaudio.com/sounds

What do eyes sound like? Does a spider’s abdomen sound furry or crunchy? How much sameness do I share with a cardinal? A mouse? Or the mold in the corners of my bathroom?... I should clean my bathroom? In BASIC INGREDIENTS we’re into objects - both seemingly inanimate and living - to reconsider our relationship to the spaces that surround us. Featuring: "Dust Meditation” by Clare Dolan "Fork, Knife, Lid" by Kim Hiorthøy “The Land Owns Us” by Nishant Singh

Do you ever feel like you’re not quite getting it? We live in a time of missed connections expressed through misunderstandings, dropped calls and glitches. In this episode of Constellations, sit with us in an attempt to express the inexpressible. Oh, and a duck sound or two. "Echoing Quack" by Natalie Kestecher and Mike Williams "poor connection" by Yardain Amron

I want to talk about how the accumulation of things — books or bottles or whatever - is overwhelming on different scales. Overwhelming to the environment, overwhelming to the individual home, or overwhelming to the body. I wanted to make something that was claustrophobic but also could be exhumed and heard in parts like picking through the ruins of an old factory building.

X Axis: The rationale of a body in pain -- Think about each layer existing at the same time and bleeding together. Each layer is like a different perspective to a single thing that is too massive to perceive all at once. -- Accumulation Over Time was written, produced, and edited by Adriene Lilly and features the voice of Tiana Tucker with additional help from Tiana Tucker, Olivia Bradley-Skill and Michelle Macklem. Readings from The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry and Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World by Timothy Morton.

Y Axis: The hoarding habits of two manhattan heirs -- imagine these pieces as parts of a whole. -- Accumulation Over Time was written, produced, and edited by Adriene Lilly and features the voice of Tiana Tucker with additional help from Tiana Tucker, Olivia Bradley-Skill and Michelle Macklem. Readings from The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry and Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World by Timothy Morton.

5

“There's something to me something about hoarding or accumulating or the need to own things and purchase things and have things in your life. I understand it on a lot of levels and obviously I have stuff and I have more plants than a person should have. But there's something about that impulse. It's the opposite of the impulse I have, which is to shed everything and have nothing. So I say that because, that's like where the tension is for me, right? Because I want to understand … what is this accumulation? Like, why is why is this? How is this? What is this?” [Adriene Lilly] -- Accumulation Over Time was written, produced, and edited by Adriene Lilly and features the voice of Tiana Tucker with additional help from Tiana Tucker, Olivia Bradley-Skill and Michelle Macklem. Readings from The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry and Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World by Timothy Morton. 

Hello, Constellations is returning to your feeds with a delicious new season of audio oddities, soul-filled sounds and feed fucking. We can’t wait for you to hear what we’ve been up to. We’re throwing a (n online) party to celebrate our launch, THIS Friday, May 22 at 8:00pm EST / Saturday, May 23 at 10:00am AEST. It’s an intimate listening party and in-conversation with the artists behind our first physical release FEEL THE SKY. Tickets and more info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/836823783469230 And we’re back on your feeds NEXT WEEK, Friday May 29th, so keep an ear out for us then. Constellations~ FEED YOUR EARS

Constellations returns on October 25 to Dec 2 with Resonant Bodies – an online exhibition and short season about the interactions between bodies and their environments. It features original works by: Aliya Pabani Chandra Melting Tallow Cheldon Paterson Kaija Siirala Jon Tjhia Phoebe Wang We asked these artists to create works in response to this provocation by Walter Ong: "Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what [they view], at a distance, sound pours into the hearer."

“Whisper Study started out as an exercise in exploring basic tape techniques in the studio, using the whispered voice as sound material. It’s based on the sentence "When there is no sound, hearing is most alert", a quote from the Indian mystic Kirphal Singh in Naam or Word. The content of that sentence appealed to me. I thought a lot about it and then decided I was going to whisper that sentence. I ended up with this very quiet recording of my whispered voice. In doing this, I was challenging myself, because whispered sounds in an analog studio create the issue of hiss and added noise.”

“What I create through sound design is a false representation of nature, but a constant reminder that it exists, because you're like ‘oh shit this room, no one's going to believe this room if there is no air and room tone.’ So you have to put all this stuff in to sell the room. You're always walking a fine line. While making this piece, I thought a lot about where my urge to recreate this moment at Point Pelee really came from. What evolutionary need does it serve?”

“I explored holding and responding. I explored the possibilities of sound as a facilitator and communicator of memories, embodied and expressed. I explored themes of death, displacement, collective memory, and personal stories. These themes were informed by memories that were shared to an online portal – those stories of place and belonging were gathered by L&NDLESS and were used to create an immersive performance-based installation.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection of escape and bearing witness. And I keep coming back to that saying, “wherever you go, there you are.” This piece began because I wanted to document my trip to Iceland with one of my close friends. We booked it on whim after a breakup. We spent 10 days driving the country during a wintery March in 2018. It was an escape and a chance to exist outside the routines of home..“

“This piece is about the tension between experience and the impulse to record it. The two, I believe, are incompatible. What happens when the experience you want to record is another person? How does this interrupt the relationship, or improve it?”

In a medium where the unfurling of an idea is often synthesised and made neatly linear, James T. Green’s piece offers a welcome unending. In perfect tense, “I’ve always felt this need for control”, is a musical refrain with a psychoanalytic spike. The ‘cut ins’ of conversation between James and another person who, from his explainer we learn is his partner, are positioned above a muffled or partially muted version of the motif.

“This piece sounds unheard and repressed voices in our society. Behind the laughter of children playing, we can hear the solemn chanting of a lost Roma woman walking the streets of Barcelona. Violet Witt’s sung poem “All I am is a woman" explores the incongruence of being read as a woman, when experiencing a far more complex relationship with gender. The last part of the piece is inspired by another poem by Witt in which they write of taking action rather than only thinking, n order to heal and co-create a more inclusive world.”

“I started making this piece in the summer of 2017. That year marked 15 years since the US invasion of Iraq. From the piece’s conception, my plan was to create a sonic eulogy commemorating this anniversary; to construct an audioverse where I could reflect on the hubris of the United States and its acolytes. Propelled by ruthless arrogance, bolstered by intelligence that was categorically false, their decision to act preemptively against the non-threat that was Saddam’s Regime, thrust the region into years of destabilization and bloodshed the shock waves of which continue to reverberate to this day.”

“I have been really inspired by Ad Reinhardt's 'Abstract Painting' from 1963 which depicts nine very subtle shades of black. At first glance, the viewer sees a flat black canvas. Over time, the viewer notices the subtle tone differences - one is more red, another blue, one slightly green. The viewer wonders: which is the true black? That concept has resonated with me when I contemplate the subtleties in silence.”

“This piece expresses the ongoing search for home and meaning in a time of ecological collapse and the disintegration of old ideas about our place in the world. It’s an expression of conversations I’m having with friends, and of things I’m reading. It's an attempt to make something spiritual and honest in sound! There are no facts or environmental insights in the piece. It's more about the internal flow of feelings and emotions that come from the desire to believe that we might be on the verge of something truly beautiful, despite (and perhaps also owing to) the health of the planet.”

“DESPOJO is a sound work which only uses sounds from an old vinyl record — clips and claps. I cut the big sound loop into fragments, creating small samples. Then I limited myself to using few processes — 1 equalizer, 1 reverb, and 1 delay. Anything else I wanted, I had to manually build inside the digital audio workstation.”

“In October, 2014, Atsumi Yoshikubo, a Japanese tourist, was seen walking down the highway outside of Yellowknife with a camera and a shoulder bag. It was the last time she was seen alive. The following summer, a friend of mine, Ryan Silke, discovered her belongings in the bush, not far from town. Rather than delving into how Atsumi died — her death was assumed to be intentional — I began thinking about how we engage in certain processes to slow down time."

“Vein of Sky is a collection of pieces made from environmental elements such as air temperature, humidity, light, and the movements of wind. These phenomena were recorded using micro-sensors and translated into sound. The project explores a sonic space or ecology not entirely representational yet not entirely fictional. I think the sonic space of the piece is kind of like a sculptural cast; it is imprinted and formed by real space but it has become something other. Space, air...is so full of material. I wanted to collect some of it.”

“Being a mother is a huge change for me. Fán is 9 months old at the moment and sometimes we put her in her high chair and put her up to the piano, and she really enjoys playing and sometimes singing along. I had a recording of Fán playing the piano and singing. I also rediscovered a field recording of a lawn mower in the Botanical Gardens in Dublin that I took a couple years ago which had this compelling drone-like sound.”

“The uterus is a spatial experience that all human beings share but do not remember. Within it, we experience the rhythm of our mother’s heart and that of her breathing alongside the rhythm of our own heart. This first rhythm, so close in those 9 months of gestation, will shape how we will perceive the outside world and how our own sense of rhythm in life will develop.”

“I wanted to make a non-linear narrative of a ride ending in a crash. I mean, this is the story, but the "events" are presented differently, going back and forth and connected through acoustic and gestural similarities - composition. I was influenced by literature and films based on this kind of structure. I decided to create a work using car sounds to protest the abuse of the automobile in Mexican cities, and as a criticism of its status as a cult object. “

“As the title suggests, my aim was to compose a lyrical tribute to the unique beauty of this coastal region by capturing and recomposing the sounds and languages of the Salish Sea. I also wanted to explore the complexity of the relationship between the indigenous and non-indigenous cultures that call the Salish Sea home.”

“It was my wish to fuse both my passions and professions, radio and composition into one composition. ‘iota mikro’ is Greek for small iota. Iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and ‘mikro’ just means small but could also refer to a microphone. And since my real paper birth certificate in Rwanda is actually missing, I created, with iota mikro, my own sonic birth certificate.”

“In this piece, I was thinking about how things right in front of you can tell you stuff that for whatever reason you may be oblivious to.  You may be distracted by other things or… you can’t or you don’t pay attention. That’s what it’s all about, paying attention.”

“I made part of this piece two years ago, kind of as an experiment or a sketch. I recorded myself making sounds in the kitchen, so I made eggs - I turned on the stove, I cracked open the eggs, I fried em up. At the time I was also reading this piece by Zadie Smith, which had an audio component of her reading the piece, and I just needed sound materials and liked her voice and cadences, so I thought it would be interesting to cut her voice up and manipulate it and decontextualize it and see if I could relate it to the kitchen and the idea of cooking as a metaphor for something else, something beyond the piece.”

“I really just want to know what love is, and why it treats me so poorly sometimes. Even though this is far less detailed in its autobiographical elements than some other work I've done and put out into the world, it is by far my most vulnerable piece. I translated this short soliloquy from Faust in November of 2017, with the primary goal of perverting academia. But, while putting a lot of conscious effort into the play of translation, I ended up putting a lot of myself into it. A lot has changed since then, but I do struggle with the same old problems, and I wanted this piece to reflect accurately on many different stages of love.”

When we first heard this piece, it was at an earlier stage in its development, at a gathering with a group of Toronto audio aficionados. We both were moved by rawness of the tape. This sort of vulnerable conversation about masculinity was something we'd rarely, if ever, heard before. We love the piece's intimacy, not only in the words spoken but also in its style - the stereo recording, the feeling of being able to drift alongside its narrators as they walk the shoreline. Black Beach is Chris' first foray into audio, and we're so glad to be able to share it here on Constellations.

Kaija's immersive piece is chock-full of sensual field recordings, including to our delight "some recordings of me playing piano downstairs in my old house through a hydrophone in the bathtub". Listening to this piece feels like we're following the fisherman's current into a suspension between light and shadow, propelled by bold transitions and a sensitivity to the musicality of voice. 

Even if you don't understand Spanish, this piece is an evocative, multi-lingual sci-fi adventure. Masterfully produced, its assemblage of voices, samples, sound design, complex musical beds and sound effects wind it up into a delicious ear candy collage that leaves listeners reeling and dreaming.  We haven't heard any sound-art fiction like this before. 

This complex manifesto of a piece is powerful both in its content and delivery. Noam's written testimony is powerful, but set against the rhythmic collage of percussion, sampling, and field recordings, its descriptions are rendered more raw and graphic. Meira's work is politically relevant as ever, and we're inspired by the bold and heartfelt stand she makes in all her work.

That this piece was born from a beautiful love story is evident in the intricate and intimate texture of the sounds. The pulsating soundscape traverses mood and plays with space in its reverberations. Who knew that symphonic wildness of bird sounds set against a gentle music box would be such a striking juxtaposition. 

We love the closeness, vulnerability, and musicality of this piece. TK has taken morning drowsiness, that floating time between conscious and unconscious, and massaged it into a tender swirl of thoughts, hums, and dreams. 

This piece feels like rifling through a scrapbook inside someone's head. Its structure is as flowing and choppy as the ocean that Phoebe so often alludes to. We love Phoebe's play with music, and the raw meticulousness of the tape she's collected. This is a piece that resists traditional personal narrative storytelling arcs; it reveals itself slowly through additional listens. 

This piece does a magic thing of infusing a recording with the nowness of live music; it is as much a happening as the musical performances that were its building blocks, with the failure of the recording technology as performer and conductor. In a percussive wave of otherworldly sighs and stutters, the richly textured sound leaves us guessing, with memorable sonic moments passing before can fully process them, so that when they stay longer than expected we are moved and curious - but the tape rolls on.

This piece sits somewhere between music and installation. As a 'narrator', Anna's 'air' is endowed with aliveness, and palpably shifts in mood and voice throughout the piece, at times sounding almost human.  Clinging to its gliding tail, listeners catch glimpses of urban spaces. Sometimes evoking chamber music, and other times, wind, static, and other manipulated field recordings, in this piece Anna tenderly blurs the line between music and noise. 

We're excited by the tactile nature of this project -imagining the recorders Jeff sent out waiting on 50 strangers' bedside tables, and their sleep-drunk fumbles with the record button. As an ensemble, the dream tapes are a peek into an alternate subconscious reality. The speakers are recording as they cross the boundary between sleep and waking. Their words slip past the mind's sense censor and thus possess a kind of intimacy that is interesting beyond the psychedelic content of the dreams.