In the Field 2

A three day event exploring the themes, issues and practices of contemporary field recording

Dates: 4, 5, 6 July 2024.

Venue: In person at London College of Communication, Elephant and Castle, London, SE1 6SB and online

In the Field 2 was an international conference exploring new perspectives in field recording practice and research. Over eighty international presenters contributed a diverse range of insights across peer reviewed presentations, workshops, sound and video works. Topics included acoustic witnessing, technology and ethics, critical fieldcraft, multi-sensory listening, memory, archives and more, forging unique and timely interventions into the changing methods, aesthetics and debates that infuse the field. The conference followed on from the international 2013 symposium of the same name, organised by CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice), University of the Arts London in collaboration with the British Library. While the 2013 event mapped contemporary practices and their historical precedents, In the Field 2 investigated how the practice of field recording has changed in the intervening decade of escalating ecological, political, social and financial challenges.

Thank you to everyone who participated and attended.

Thursday 4 July 2024

(Includes parallel sessions)

CRiSAP Welcome and Introductory Panel

Placing the Field

Anton Spice, Gabriele de Seta, Nele Möller, Sally Ann McIntyre

Capturing and Releasing Lifeworlds

Emiddio Vasquez, Jonathan Prior & Sandra Jasper, Leena Lee & Guillermo Guevara, Rachel Shearer

Hearing Criticalities: Layers in Space and Time

Allie Martin, Chantal Eyong, Hector MacInnes, Ingeborg Entrop

Concrete and Abstract: Pressing Record and Activating Collections

Daryl Jamieson, Dayang Magdalena Nirvana Yraola, Gustavo Branco Germano and Fernando Iazzetta, Mark Rohtmaa-Jackson & Björt Sigfinnsdóttir

Memory Machines: Inclusion, Ethics, Authenticity

Lakehal Lila, Matt Lewis, Mitchell Akiyama, Nathan Wolek, Neil Spencer Bruce

Friday 5 July 2024

(Includes parallel sessions)

The Social Lives of Sounds

David Vélez, Kate Carr, Lisa Hall, Spencer MINQ Carter

Listening, Relistening, Reflecting, Resisting

Amias Hanley, Nombuso Mathibela & Sibonelo Gumede, Paulo Dantas, Pragya Sharma

Performing Archives, Hearing Histories, Tuning Technologies

Alexander Collinson, Gisa Weszkalnys, Maja Zećo, Rachel Grant & William Otchere-Darko, Jonas Spieker, Nicol Parkinson

Amplification, Attention, Reception

Anandit Sachdev, Jacek Smolicki, Jess Pinney, Julia Barton

Interference, Energy, Technology, Polyphony

Bariya: Pratyush Pushkar and Riya Raagini, Julian Weaver, Matt Parker, Soundcamp: Dawn Scarfe, Grant Smith, Mort Drew & Sasha Baraister

Bodies, Care and Ghosts

Banu Çiçek Tülü, Helen Anahita Wilson, Joanna Penso, Leon Clowes

Sensory Collaborations

Ecka Mordecai, GUI Ren and Ryo Ikeshiro, Samuel Hertz, Tania Rubio

Sonic Ethnographies

Anna Vermeulen, Eisuke Yanagisawa, Karl Salzmann, Tilly Mason

Friday 5 July Evening Event

18:45-19:30 | Listening after Nature, paperback celebration and drinks | Upper Gallery, LCC

Celebrating the paperback publication of Mark Peter Wright’s book: Listening after Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice (Bloomsbury). Wright read excerpts from the book, in conversation with Salomé Voegelin.

Saturday 6 July 2024

Audio Channels: Swarms, Streams, Samples, Dummy Heads

David Michael & Michael Clemow, Ecka Mordecai & Rory Salter, John Grzinich, Lia Mazzari

Localities and Elsewheres

alejandro t. acierto, Moushumi Bhowmik, Peter Cusack, Robert O. Beahrs, Safeya Alblooshi

Acoustic Witnessing

Alejandro Castillejo-Cuéllar, Alexander Vojvoda & Korab Krasniqi, Lara James & Leah Kardos, Luz Maria Sanchez Cardona

With four workshops happening throughout the day

(Please see below)

Workshop 1A Playing Back

Beth Robertson

Exploring the uncanny act of field recording and how as a practise it can be re-imagined as a tenuous reaching-out, a disturbance of lingering curiosity or a tactile materialising of the liminal space that queers the boundaries between self and other. The workshop will explore experimental recording techniques and use various types of recording equipment to investigate the current binaries and tensions prevalent in the field by finding 'wrong' ways to record unwanted sound.

Workshop 1B The Eurovision Field Recording Project

Chase Coley

A radical initiative revolutionising the realm of field recording. By challenging the perceived ‘seriousness’ associated with field recording and injecting other ‘non-serious’ elements into the practice, it broadens the discourse by asking such pivotal questions: Can 'field recording' embrace elements like 'pop' or 'slapstick' to contribute a more expansive dialogue? The Eurovision Field Recording Project serves as a personal manifesto for a practice and presents an alternative methodological backbone to revolutionise the field recording domain.

Workshop 2A The Things You Hear And The Stories You Write About Them

Travis Yu

How can we investigate physical spaces through listening? How do we, through listening, participate in our urban landscape and identify our relationship with the city? How can we propel writings to inform, support and consummate the act of field recording? This workshop engages in activities including a sound walk, sonic meditations, writing exercises and group discussions, appealing to individuals who wish to practice listening as a political and self-reflective act, and people who seek ways to implement listening as a mode of research and understanding in their day-to-day.

Workshop 2B Our shared georhythms: bodies, scores, mixtures (muddy workshop 2.0)

MUD Collective

Join MUD Collective for a ‘muddy workshop’, to co-create an explorative sonic entanglement between our feral selves and the earth via a wordless encounter with mud. The sonic dimension traverses (or annihilates) the field(s) between mud and us, inviting a closer encounter with our own bodies, with other bodies, and the body of the earth.

Video Works

Listen with Incense

Cheng Yang

5 Times A Day

Ruby Caurlette

Estuary / Artery

Liv Kisby

recortes

Kimberly Forero-Arnías

Karen

Jiaxi Xie

Tiputini: Sampling the jungle

Diego Benalcazar

Voices from the land that holds you; and the rocks, from which you fell

Mark Rohtmaa-Jackson and Björt Sigfinnsdóttir

Post-extinction huia soundings, Te Whanganui-a-Tara 1912-1924 (moments of history torn away from the movement of history, then returned; no longer quite life, not yet death)

Sally Ann McIntyre

Annea Lockwood

A Sound Map Of The Danube (Lovely Music)

Sukatoyo and Beverney Shane

Ephemeral Echoes: Timeless Recollections (Analog Amigo Records)

Nour Sokhon

Tumultuous Convolutions (Soundcloud)

Edward Max Nicholson and Ludwig Koch

“Curlew” (from Sure Of Surprises, Canary Records)

Leena Lee and Vania Fortuna

Niebla (Flaming Pines)

Bethan Kellough