A Take on "Piece for Guitars" is an extension of the installation called Pieces for Instruments, which features three filmed sound performances entitled Piece for Drums, Piece for Microphones and Piece for Guitars. In each performance, a musical instrument is dragged through a different natural site. This approach aims to use the ground as an actual "musical score", in order to question how landscape shapes culture and, more specifically, sonic and musical imaginaries. Piece for Guitars took place in September 2018 at the Pinède provinciale de Lachute, in Quebec, and was executed with two guitars running side by side on the forest floor. This final work can be considered both as a reminiscence of this performance and as a separate work of composition solely made out of the guitar sounds recorded that day.

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mono radius is the first collection in a series of recordings which looked at the retrieval and manipulation of radio frequency guard bands and half duplex crosstalk interference. Pulled from late night radio scanning and various local analogue signals, all recorded artifacts were then processed manually through a VCR, via the audio/control head.

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“At the end of 2020, at the height of one phase of Covid hysteria, I was commissioned by Antonieta Sibaja, then acting director of MADC, the Costa Rican national museum of art and design to create a series of sound design pieces for an upcoming exhibition. Entitled Horizonte Espinoso and curated by Gabriela Saenz Shelby and Sofia Vindas Solano, the show addressed work of uncertainty and vulnerability, as well as resistance and demonstrations of forceful ways of survival in the face of crisis – an apt topic considering the overarching narrative of the past two years. Accompanying these themes was a necessity for reflection on the role of Costa Rican contemporary art on a multilateral stage, bringing into light the role of art in crisis on both a national and international stage – especially as that particular stage is reinvented as an online platform, open to anyone with access to a web browser.

In the name of inclusivity and a desire to reach a diverse and differently-abled audience, select pieces in the exhibition were asked to be translated into sound pieces to allow low vision individuals to interpret and experience the exhibit in an online format. Tasked with interpreting two pieces, duration 2-20 minutes, I chose the works Vigilia En Pie de Muerte by Rafael Otton Solis and Serie Negra by Alverto Hernandez. For Vigilia, I used processed field recordings from Playa Montezuma, Puntarenas, Costa Rica and homebuilt analog electronic instruments. For Serie Negra, I also used processed field recordings, this time of the mechanical ambience of cross-county Amtrak trains as well as just-intoned digital synthesizers and homebuilt analog instruments. The exhibition itself took place from January 22 until April 30, 2021.” – Travis Johns

Documentation of the exhibition itself can be found HERE

Travis Johns is a composer and sound artist residing in Ithaca, NY and currently serving as the director of Cornell University's Electroacoustic Music Center.

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The release material was recorded in the winter of '21 with a preceding discussion about timbral reduction of material and other ways of artistic self-limitation. For example, exploiting in the work not only the timbral functions of the material, but also the rhythmic functions. The transition from irrational rhythmics and its complete absence to complex rhythms, to polyrhythmics. Work with personal quotations, an increased attention to the interaction of structures, etc.

Alexey and Felix used their usual toolkit in this work: sampling, digital electronics, board-specific hardware synthesis and no-input-mixing.

The idea of discordia concors emphasized belief in a hidden order and unity behind the world’s apparent chaos. Composers of Ars Nova motets placed particular emphasis on subtle patterning that unified and reconditely organized the heterogeneous surface of their work.

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Distant Water Exotic Landscape is a generative audio and visual installation that explores the micro and macro perceptions of environmental cycle system through the transformational and transmittable materiality of water. It invites audience to (re-)consider the interdependencies among human, water and technology, as well as the liminal boundaries between natural and artificial environments.

The installation creates an imaginary landscape on coloured paper, where the black ink is constantly washed out by vaporised molecules of the water collected from various sources such as a local river, rain, spring, and imported bottled water. A pair of headphones is given to each viewer one at a time as live recodings reveal the energetic activities behind the formation of landscapes. Two types of microphones are installed behind the paper: a hydrophone inside the water bottle — to magnify the movements of liquid water and its vaporised steam, and a pair of electromagnetic sensors — to capture the electric flow consumed by the water vaporiser.

The duration of forming a piece of “landscape” and its energy consumption is precisely controlled: each piece is made of one distinct source of water ‘transforming’ on one piece of paper, within 7 hours of completed vaporisation. In this sense, new landscapes are created on a daily basis until the end of the exhibition.

A 31:28 soundtrack titled Distant Water Exotic Landscape - Post Installation Studies is comprised of recordings originating from 2 different exhibition spaces and various formational phases of different landscapes. These digitally recreated soundscapes transform the physical event into reimagined energetic phenomena that are led by unnatural laws in the digital environments. They are presented through constantly shifting listening angles and time frames. Meticulous streams of environmental information are articulated by active listening, constantly forming newly-emerging fragmented realities.

This recording has been modified and split in half to accommodate the cassette format.

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Circadian Rhythm's Vol. 2 is the second compilation of a series of compositions inspired by Shuta Hiraki's chronic non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder.

Non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder is a type of circadian rhythm disorder that causes a deviation from the normal 24-hour cycle due to its characteristic 25-hour cycle circadi- an rhythm. This causes patients to have trouble living on a 24-hour cycle and chronically experience symptoms similar to jet lag. This disorder is common in people who are totally blind, but it can also occur in people who are not.

"op.16" recorded this time arranges the ascending scale of 24 and 25 steps (it runs up the frequency as if the bell of the clock increases the number of times), and some notes from there six pieces are created by extracting. If you play all the pieces on top of each other, the original ascending scale will appear, but you can also observe the cycle shift by listening to each piece. All of the pieces apply 25 cycles to the left channel and 24 cycles to the right channel.

The two discs that make this plaque are connected with a binding barrel allowing them spin independently; the purpose of this is an attempt to help more fully illustrate the artist's disorder.

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Listening to the latent part which is the master of the evident part

“La natura delle cose ama celarsi (The nature of things loves to hide) is a research path in perpetual becoming started in 2019, through which I investigate the concept of content dispersion as a direct consequence of contemporary media collapse, facing the dynamics of massification and the accumulation of processes of creation and fruition, placed in relation with the inevitable impermanence that unites everything. The poetic imagery and material peculiarities of Pietra Serena - a gray-blue sandstone used extensively in Renaissance Florence - form the backdrop to a multi-media transient fresco, where planning and the randomness of events cohexist, in which process and work overlap until they merge. ”

- Stefano De Ponti

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Opportunism was recorded off and on approximately between 2019-2021.

The album consists primarily of sounds captured while working in a lab. Bryan is a behavioral neuroscience graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he studies the neurobiology of fear, anxiety and decision-making.

The name of the album is intended to reflect the means in which it was recorded; opportunistically while working or during brief periods of respite in between work.

Bryan confiscated a variety of cassette players (all of them broken in one way or another) from the Psychology department storage and began recording sounds while working.

“Conceptually, I view this album as artistic expression of the struggles to obtain work/life balance in graduate school, as well as the intrinsic coupling of science and art—research in general takes a lot of creativity and is not simply rote procedural stuff from what I’ve come to realize over the years. Ultimately, however, it was simply a way for me to blend my two passions in a way that I could afford and to create sounds I like to hear.” - Bryan Schuessler

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Just like gold, data is a resource that can be mined. Once it is collated, calculated, and analyzed it can be of great value. Without actually noticing it, we create, share and consume an impressive amount of information, data and numbers. Increasingly, the analysis of this ressource helps us explain and understand our reality, our societies and our world.

Without context and analysis, data is worthless. Paradoxically, it is by shifting the context of information that Claude Périard’s Imaginaire sur réel succeeds in creating value.

The title refers to the imaginary and real numbers that make up complex numbers. Although such a title references innumerable mathematical notions, Claude Périard here makes a particular nod to the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm.

We observe two main elements in Imaginaire sur réel: the concept of fundamental frequencies as a general idea and the use of numerical data to generate sound signals.

Each of the studies in this collection use a distinct source from which the numbers are harvested: text (quote), buildings, stock market values, temperature and mountains. The data is then translated into sound by various techniques.

To help the listener better understand the creative process, a file containing various documents (graphics and videos) is included with the download.

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Bur sting brea k’r is the début EP by Montreal's Cloud Circuit.

Cloud Circuit is Deanna Radford (poetry) and Jeremy Young (electronics.) The Cloud Circuit Ensemble includes Philippe Vandal (saxophone) and Alexandre St-Onge (bass & laptop.)

This project is inspired by the failures of communication technologies as they are tied to human experiences of communication. All efforts are put in place to transport the listener into the grey areas of connection; a space where de-synchronized signals, dropped data packets, repetition and/or deterioration of information is observed.

Young develops a magnetic soundscape in which Radford's voice transmits from. Produced using sine wave oscillators and physical interventions on amplified surfaces with saxophone (Vandal) and bass (St-Onge), Bur sting brea k’r evokes the sense that one can hear when the sounds, recognizable and unrecognizable, fall away into particles.

Using the soundscape as infrastructure and atmosphere, Radford delivers her poetry guided by the process of deep listening and semi-improvisation. As in live Cloud Circuit performances, her words are spoken in response to sound by Young, Vandal and St-Onge. At the same time, she deconstructs word order so we might question typically intended meanings and better feel the presence of the machines and software which surround us. This demonstrates the ironies that; first, we observe a text deliberately deconstructed by a human to represent the shortcomings of a technology set up to meet an essential and very human need; communication. Second, words sometimes shift from the technical to the emotional as a result of repetition and this process of scattering.

Here lies the strength of Cloud Circuit; the ability to create in the listener the desire to re-synchronize disorganized blocks of information and at the same time, accept the tragic end reserved to them.

In some ways, Bur sting brea k’r is an invitation to appreciate the failure of our connected world and the void left by it's loss of meaning.

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30:15" is the latest sound work from S. Mercure. The title refers to the length of the 9-track album.

It was elaborated with material from Mercure's personal sound archive: unfinished projects and past/recent experimentations. After spending a great amount of time listening through hundred of samples out of their initial context, a limited number of 20 samples were selected and classified in 6 categories: FORWARD, BACKGROUND, RHYTHM, TEXTURE, AS-IS and SOURCE.

30:15" materialized with the basic idea of creating a written structure for each track before diving into any sort of editing and audio processing.

Samples, order, the time at which to use them, as well as their eventual manipulation were all informations declared in advance. This "planning" inevitably created some unpleasant results that had to remain in the final mix in order to stay true to the initial structure.

Relying on a methodical concept is recurrent in Mercure's work. Using constraints to dictate the source material and method of work have been observed in past projects.

The final work feels unpolished and raw. The mix, the transitions and the textures are deliberately harsh and unsophisticated. 30:15" gives the listener the feeling of having access to an archive of raw data. In that spirit, a 1-minute excerpt of each untouched sample is made available by the artist when downloading the album.

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Time | Tone composition part I & II are live recordings of two performances by the formation Eventless Plot. This title is referencing the underlying concept of the composition.

In practice, the two parts present four notes/tones that alternate and react throughout the duration of the piece. Musicians will react to these fundamental tones creating random combinations and harmonies. The sequence of the notes/tones is interrupted by short dynamic instrumental phrases at the following minutes: 1st ,3rd ,5th ,7th and 9th.

If time plays an essential role in these 2 compositions, it is mainly because it follows a graphic and text score. This score serves as a general guideline helping the musicians to achieve a certain level of understanding while leaving to each one of them the freedom to contribute to the final sound as they see fit.

Even though Eventless Plot is officially described as a trio, their collaboration with other musicians brings complexity to an already rich sonic landscape. In merging a wide spread of instruments and techniques, from classical to modern, they are able to provoke in the listener a certain state of uncertainty and malleability. That being said, one of the greatest achievements of these two compositions is its absence of saturation and impression of equilibrium.

Time | Tone composition part I & II supported the work of contemporary dancers for a special performance at the Center of contemporary art of Thessaloniki.

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Music for Standard Oscillator Ensemble is a composition by Nicolas Bernier and Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard. It consists of a 24:06 minute track performed on 10 old school oscillators. For many years, Bernier has assembled a collection of oscillators that have been inspiring and guiding an important part of his work. This time, he joins forces with Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard who is working with multiplication of sound, to elaborate a piece with the help of this collection for a special performance presented in Montreal during the Suoni Del Popolo festival.

The structure of the piece is guided by a written score that both performers have to follow. Length of sections and interventions are suggested and certain values in Hertz need to be reached. However, room for improvisation can be found within these guidelines and the final result relies on the arguable randomness of human gesture and timing. This score is included in the digital download.

The official performance along with the rehearsals have been recorded but only the second rehearsal was selected for this release. The other versions are part of Archive Officielle's physical archive.

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On January 19, 2019, Archive Officielle presented a private showcase including performances from Charles Barabé, Karl Fousek, S.Mercure and Philippe Vandal. This is the official recording of these 4 original performances that took place at Apollo Studios in Montreal.

CONTENT OF PHYSICAL ARCHIVE

1. Raw recording (mic recording)
2. Raw recording (board recording)
3. Pictures of event
4. Event presentation document - artists bio
5. Digital ticket for the event

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Wald or "Forest" when translated from German is a project from longtime collaborators Pedro Chambel and Bruno Duplant. The two artists developed a 41-minute track based on a variety of samples taken from their personal collection of found material and field recordings.

Evoking nature and wilderness, these samples have been carefully assembled to create a soundscape from which Wald takes form. We witness a meticulous work of sound manipulation, in which the source is carefully modified, so that the final result gives the impression of being familiar and alien at the same time.

Inspired by the work of Henry David Thoreau and the environmentalism movement, Wald uses duality to emphasize the questions it wishes to ask: is nature still a space for wildness or has it been tamed? Is nature as we know it today simply a practical opposition to civilisation and urban areas? Can the true essence of nature remain unviolated only if humans are absent? Does nature still exist?

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HYS is a collaboration between sound artist Giovanni Lami and visual artist Clio Casadei. During the summer of 2018, Lami created a 6 minute and 20 seconds sound piece recorded on-site in a park in Faenza ITALY, Clio Casadei’s place of residence. Casadei was later approached to create a visual transcription of this audio. Both versions, audio and visual, now hold the same title: HYS.

Familiar with his work and technique, Clio Casadei identified four important aspects that can describe Lami’s work and methods: stratification, fluidity, vulnerability and permeability.

Casadei approaches these aspects in a metaphysical manner where they are understood from a human experience point of view. It is her understanding of these 4 elements that will guide her through the creation of 50 vectorial drawings. Taken from her personal archive and own graphical language, these shapes, textures or logos are here transformed from one state to another, materializing the connection between different state of minds. The progression of the visual transformation is circular, not fixed, uninterrupted and adresses time/duration as a subjective notion capable of modifying the appearances.

A download code for AO-012 is included.

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HYS is a collaboration between sound artist Giovanni Lami and visual artist Clio Casadei. During the summer of 2018, Lami created a 6 minute and 20 seconds sound piece recorded on-site in a park in Faenza ITALY. Casadei was later approached to create a visual transcription of this audio. Both versions, audio and visual, now hold the same title: HYS.

Giovanni Lami’s work revolves around field recordings using reel-to-reel recorders. During a recording session, the ambient sound is captured but also altered by the use of different objects, microphones, and manual interventions. The mechanical sound of the recording device itself is sometimes captured and fed back into the magnetic tape. This well developed approach has been used in his latest series Hysteresis I to IV, released on various international labels.

This very limited edition contains a 5" reel-to-reel tape dubbed personaly by Giovanni Lami. It also includes a copy of the visual transcript. For more information refer to the AO_013 section.

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La Révision is a sound work composed by Charles Barabé.
In 2003, the composer recorded a series of sound explorations with the help of an electric guitar equipped with a single string (.046) and modified frets. The context at the time did not allow him to play at high volume, therefore 12 relatively quiet tracks were recorded on a Roland VS-840. Each one of the tracks were finalized in less than 24 hours and then archived on optical discs to be put aside.

Nearly 14 years later, Barabé found these recordings. He will use them as a sound source to test different configurations of modular effects. This exercise leads him to reappropriate his own samples and to make, as its title indicates, a revision.

By modifying and adding new elements to the original audio source, Barabé creates a work that defends the value of the archive and conservation. La Révision is a methodical work, but also a circumstantial meeting between the past and the present.

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Gibraltar is a collaborative project between Joe McKay and Matthias Urban. Jejunum was produced by collecting sound samples from the two artists’ archives. It includes, among other things, a series of recordings from McKay’s body (stomach, intestines) and WebSDR samples collected over time. These samples were then sent to the other half of the duo to be integrated into the production of the final pieces.

Known for his exploratory approach to sound, Urban remains true to himself by using various techniques in the production of Jejunum. Some of these techniques are recurrent in his work: chemically treated tape, PD and MaxMSP programming, contact microphones and ASC reel-to-reel machines. The artist also explores new techniques that feature prominently in Jejunum: feedback & standing wave recordings and acoustic instruments using saxophone mouthpieces and found objects built specifically for this project.

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ISOLATION Studies 1 to 4 are outgrowths of the installation 500hz-245hz-500hzø-246hz from artist s.mercure (Persona Mercure).
Developed over the course of 2016 and 2017, the installation consists of a sound exchange between two speakers positioned face-to-face and uses a frequency of 500 hertz as a starting point.

These Studies are the result of experiments using only audio from the installation as a sound source. Sound waves have been modified in amplitude, frequency shifted, and, in some cases, multiplied with the help of certain effects and send channel routings. No additional sounds have been used and any kind of editing as been avoided.

The download of the audio comes with a 10 pages technical PDF explaining every modifications applied to the audio source.

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Partial(s) is a collaborative project between Erris Huigens, Gysbert Zijlstra (Graphic Surgery) and Archive Officielle. The project is a two-piece installation, designed by the two Amsterdam artists. The pieces were installed in the city of Montreal, CANADA (Archive Officielle) and Oude Pekela, NETHERLANDS (Huigens, Zijlstra). A map representing a conceptual reunification of the pieces is available.

Technical Description

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Hymn is the audio companion of the book Hymnal by visual artist Jonathan Dankenbring. It was developed by exporting each page as an image. Said images were then imported to a sound program as raw data. These image files are read as basic sound wave patterns and then filtered, expanded, contracted, and arranged into the audio work.

If you are not familiar with this format, please take the time to read this.

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Hymnal is the collection of iconographic languages used in Jonathan Dankenbring’s work. The symbols, texts and graphic studies included in the publication all play an important role in understanding his creative process and studio practice.

Through his minimalist icons, Dankenbring routinely references symbols that have contradictory meaning in our culture. As Dankenbring explains, "the «x» acts as a symbol for a lack of information but also a place holder for information. It marks the area as being void and simultaneously has the ability to delete or negate the object or imagery."

A key element in Jonathan Dankenbring’s work is the relation between historical (classic) and modern (technologic) notions. This parallel is most present in the graphic study, where screen formats and sizes of technological devices are arranged in golden ratio grid fashion. This symbolic way of organizing information reflects the importance of data and the power that these data hold when applied to the artistic approach.

The content of this book also serves as source material for Hymn, the audio companion of Hymnal. More information can be found in the AO_007 section of this website.

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Two Pieces for a Temporary Connection is the fifth solo release by artist Karl Fousek. Known for his highly technical and minimalist approach to sound, Fousek delivers a work that, although more charged than usual, remains true to his core approach. Discover the sum of three identical oscillators manipulated with precision resulting in what we could only describe as a complex musicality. TPFATC is derived from improvised live performance and rehearsal materials recorded in Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts.

Technical Description

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This book contains 1:6, a retrospective look at artist Juliette Blouin’s body of work. It consists of a series of flat surfaces that evoke the frames used by the artist for her numerous bi-dimensional studies. Every measurement has been reduced to a scale of 1:6. By isolating the frames from their content, Blouin showcases the key elements in her work: sizes, proportions, limits and space.

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Point Of... by Philippe Vandal is a piece of work inspired and conceived from a series of readings dealing with architecture theory, hearing (in the philosophical and scientific sense) and issues surrounding certain principles of perception and listening. These readings are used as starting points. They generate different sound explorations that attempt to illustrate the theories studied under an instinctive and formal approach.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Readings

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This book contains Compositions II, a series of images made by photographer Madison Dinelle. The artist explores compositional possibilities by cropping photographs from her own family albums. By extracting these portions of images, the initial context is blurred and new formal interactions lead the viewer into a world which is at once foreign and familiar.

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Replacement has been conceived with a small amount of effects and processing techniques. The sound sources are mainly manipulated by pitch based effects such as: pitch shifting, pitch tracking and frequency shifting. Sound movement and space manipulation are done with basic panning methods, reverbs and mono/stereo exploration. A maximum of three sound sources is used on each pieces. Any additionnal sounds or tones audible are the result of manipulations aforementioned.

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