Plant Music article in The Wire Magazine

Last July 2023, I wrote a one-page article for The Wire Magazine (July 2023, #473) featuring a collection of records and sound works that focus on the sonic properties of plants, biofeedback work, sonification of plant chemicals, plant-based field recordings, and plant music folklore. The article includes a short review of records/audioworks from Dr. George Milstein, Jeroen Diepenmaat, Ludwig Berger, Yuji Dogane & Mamoru Fujieda, Christine Ödlund, David Vélez, and Zach Poff. This guide to plant life on disc is a companion to the article about Michael Allen Z Prime‘s new set of 3 CDs called Biolectrical Music compiling his audio and video work across bioelectrical compositions, bioelectrical field recordings, and bioelectrical installations.

More info here: https://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/473

“Working with what you have” Radio piece for Radiophrenia, 2023

Working With What You Have was created for the radio festival Radiophrenia (2023, Glasgow, Scotland) and is composed of field recordings collected during one year of work (April 2022-May 2023) in Manhattan, NY. This piece follows the making of a Tonkotsu ramen soup in a compact kitchen in Midtown. This type of ramen is known for its long periods of cooking that can extend for over 12 hours. The sounds of the different stages of preparing the ramen broth are interwoven with the fast-paced rhythms of commuting to the city, the sounds of the subway, traffic, sirens, walkways, and workers.

A sonic feature of Midtown, Manhattan, brought forward in this piece is the sound of artificial waterfalls abundant in small pocket gardens between corporate buildings, offices, and international consulates. The anesthetic quality of the sounds of the artificial waterfall in an otherwise stressful environment is a revealing piece of the fabric of this neighborhood. Its calmness and sense of rest constitute a feature of the capitalist structure of the city and the sense of empire-building, business as usual, serenity, and high productivity at work.

The latter sounds of this piece are from a Union rally in Manhattan, aiming to unionize a well-known grocery store chain. Voices from different labor unions and work sectors, including construction workers, delivery and service workers, baristas, and other professionals, come together for fairer work conditions in the city.

* The ramen broth is made of pork and chicken bones and served with chashu, toasted minced garlic, scallions, egg, and bean sprouts.
** The Union drive fell short by one vote.

Radiophrenia:

website

soundcloud

Discontinued Commutes – The Wire Magazine

This music chart was published in Issue #447 of The Wire Magazine, and it was inspired by works dealing with sounds sourced from commutes to work, public transportation, sonic interpretations of landscapes adjacent to roads or train tracks, and oral testimonies around transportation infrastructures.

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Yara Mekawei & Mina Nasr – Shoubra Line (Atrellewa)

Claudia Molitor – Sonorama (Electra)

Ain Bailey – Five Car Train To Fremont (Resterecords)

Michelle Moeller – Spoke (Bandcamp)

Philip Perkins – Drive Time (Fun Music)

TAMTAM – A100 (Crónica)

Jean-Luc Guionnet, Dan Warburton, Eric La Casa – Metro Pré Saint-Gervais (Swarming) 

Odland + Auinger – Rome: Traffic Mantra 1992 (Secrets of the Sun)

Janek Schaefer – Radio 104 FM (12k)

Luís Costa – Da serra para a fábrica: O meu mapa do bairro (Binaural Radio Rural/SoundCloud)

Christian Zanési – Grand Bruit  (Recollection GRM)

Felicity Ford – Around the A4074 (BBC Radio Oxford)

Tamio Shiraishi – 2009・05・23 67Avenue (PSF)

Viv Corringham – The River Fleet Walk (Extracts) (The Diagram) 

Marc Behrens – A Narrow Angle: Taipei Metro Easycard 500 NT$ (Entr’acte)

Yara Mekawei & Mina Nasr, Shubra Line

image: Yara Mekawei & Mina Nasr, Shoubra Line

Second Hand Third Eye – A radio collage commissioned by People Like Us (Vicki Bennett)|WFMU

People Like Us/Vicki Bennett is currently Hallwalls Artist in Residence at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY. This residency is a multi-tier project consisting of an onsite new film called Fourth Wall and a six-channel audio collage called First Person featuring readings from her co-authored book The Fundamental Questions. In parallel to the onsite exhibition, Vicki Bennett created an online archive of new micro-commissions from collaborators across the field of visual, audio, and textual art. These works respond to the themes of first person / the fourth and can be heard and seen on this WFMU page:

https://wfmu.org/playlists/ip

Featured Artists: Dina Kelberman, Buttress O’Kneel, Mark Hurst, Scott Williams, Irene Moon, Jasmin Blasco, Matmos, id m theft able, Sheila B, Ergo Phizmiz, Yon Visell, Porest, David Shea, Gregor Weichbrodt, Carlo Patrão, Tim Maloney, Gwilly Edmondez, Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly), People Like Us, Peter Jaeger, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Adriene Lilly, Micah Moses, Andrew Sharpley, Andie Brown, John Kilduff (Let’s Paint TV) & Hearty White.

Stills from “Fourth Wall” (2020) by People Like Us

For this project, I contributed with a 40-minute radio collage called Second Hand Third Eye that mixes themes related to self-image, consciousness, perception, existentialism, media theory, and extra-dimensions. The creative process for this piece started with a quick survey of academic literature anchored on selfhood and a compilation of terms orbiting the construct of self.*** This list of keywords was the starting point for creating a dedicated archive of over one thousand voice samples from radio and tv shows from the 1950s to the present day. Often contradictory, non-sensical, or meta-referential, these samples come together in a collective search for meaning, both local and cosmic. More info: wfmu.org/playlists/shows/95230

         

Field recordings: Tidal Marsh, Hudson River

Hudson River fishermen heading out at dawn, Peter Lourie, 1998

Last February 2020, I visited the Constitution Marsh Audubon Center and Sanctuary Trail in the Hudson River to make some field recordings of the environment surrounding the brackish tidal marsh. The Constitution Marsh is one of five large estuarine environments connected to the Hudson River and provides natural habit to several species of birds, fish, plants, and many vertebrate and invertebrate species. This wetland area is located on the east side of the Hudson, near Cold Spring, and is surrounded by the Hudson Highlands.

Tidal Marsh, Hudson River, 10’20”, Feb 2020, download

The soundscape above was recorded on a small hill overlooking the tidal marsh. It was a very windy day, so I sheltered the microphone between the rocky steps of the trail. The resulting recording captures the sounds of branches and dry leaves rustling in the wind, bird calls, and the sound of the Amtrak train on the distance with its characteristic horn. The marsh provides foraging, nesting, and resting habitat to more than 200 species of birds. However, this New York State Bird Conservation Area is still subject to a large conglomeration of human-made noises like the train and low flying airplanes.

Hiking trail at Constitution Marsh Audubon Center and Sanctuary Photo Jessica Andreone.jpg

Inside a hollow tree, 2’14”. Feb 2020, download

The more pervasive sound in the area is the constant sound of airplanes. I tried to record the sound of a passing aircraft through the vibrating trunk of a tree by placing a microphone inside of a hollow tree. The airplane’s sound reverberating on the wooden walls resulted in an eerie drone sound.

Reeds, Water and Wind, 2’08”. Feb 2020, download

Phragmites australis, the common reed, is a non-native marsh plant spreading in many of the Hudson River wetlands. This plant forms fast-growing stands of stems, transforming the diversity of the habitat into a monoculture by crowding out native vegetation. Reeds introduce changes to the local microtopography, increase fire potential, decrease salinity, and outcompete plants. These changes have a ripple effect that ends up degrading the diversity of wetlands and coastal marshes and endangering wildlife. The Constitution Marsh Audubon Center dedicates its conservation efforts to the control and management of reeds in the area by using black geotextile material to flatten and cover patches of the vegetation. This method raises the temperature of the soil, killing the root system of the plant, allowing for the future growth of native vegetation.

Small brook flowing into the tidal marsh, Hudon River, 2’08”. Feb 2020, download

Carlo Patrão
*photos by the Constitution Marsh Audubon Center

Hudson River map

Waterfall as Metronome – The Wire Magazine

The February edition of The Wire magazine (issue 432) features the chart Waterfall as Metronome, composed of works inspired by the sight and sound of waterfalls including field recordings, on-site improvisation, sound installations, white noise, ethnographic work, and new-age interpretations of water, flow and the effects of negative ions. While putting together this list, I imagined a speculative history of music where compositions were not driven by metronome’s mechanical account of time, but by the continuous atemporal flow of a waterfall.

Waterfall as Metronome 15

Sarah Hennies – Gather (Category of manifestation)

Daniel Menche – Raw Fall (The Tapeworm)

Hafdis Bjarnadottir – North (Gruenrekorder)

Bill Fontana – Vertical Water (Whitney Museum)  

Peter Ablinger – Weiss / Weisslich 7b (Peter Ablinger)

Olivia Wyatt – The Pierced Heart and The Machete (Sublime Frequencies) 

Carlos Niño – Delightfulllll / Waterfall (feat. Iasos) (Leaving Records)

Francisco López – Tawhirimatea (No label)  

John Butcher- Close by, a waterfall (Confront)  

Annea Lockwood – Englewood Brook Falls, Palisades (Lovely)

Herman de Vries – Thema 1: bach (Artists Press Bern)

Micheal Pisaro – Still Life with Cicadas, Waterfall and Radu (Gravity Wave)

Ulahi and Eyo:bo – Sing At A Waterfall (Folkways) 

Paul Lloyd Warner – Kipahulu Falls (MPI)

Steven Feld – Flow like a Waterfall: The Metaphors of Kaluli Musical Theory (Yearbook for Traditional Music)

Voices of the Rainforest: A day in the life of Bosavi (2019), directed and produced by Steven Feld
Peter Ablinger at the Waterfalls of Krimml, Austria, recording Weiss/Weisslich 33, 1999

On the Poetics of Balloon Music: Sounding Air, Body, and Latex

I feel like a balloon going up into the atmosphere, looking, gathering information, and relaying it back. Rachel Rosenthal, 1985

Last April 2019, Sounding Out! published my two-part article, “On the poetics of balloon music,” exploring sound, listening, and the atmosphere through the object of the balloon. The first part focuses on late 18th-century balloon travels and the descriptions of silence in the upper air that constituted a staple of Victorian balloon memoirs and literature of the time. Ascending above the noise of the industrialized city, the first balloonists were constructing a sonic identity rooted in the privilege of buoyancy and constructs of the sublime, harmony, and silence that excluded other ways of sounding.

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The sight of boundless space and the quietude of the higher regions of the atmosphere inspired colonial narratives of territorial expansion. Sounds produced outside this imperialist worldview were perceived as invasion, contamination, and noise. By establishing an early connection between the exploration of the atmosphere and a listening ear based on elitism, race, and class, the article goes on to analyze some contemporary sound-art practices that use balloons to explore the atmosphere and that take on the challenge of creating a more inclusive relationship with the medium of air.

On the Poetics of Balloon Music: Sounding Air, Body, and Latex (Part One)

Against Levity: Experimental Music and the Latex Balloon

Part 2 of this article features an interview with composer and sound artist Judy Dunaway, who has been developing sculptural sonic performances with balloons for over 25 years. Dunaway’s work with the balloon as a sound producer has been the exclusive focus of several records (e.g., Balloon Music,  Mother of Balloon Music), scores, sound sculptures, solo performances, ensembles, and installations. In this interview, Judy Dunaway talks about how her balloon compositions are in active dialogue with questions relating to feminism, body/mind, ecology, civil rights, memory, and the overall creation of musical expression and lexicon that lives outside a classical heritage.

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As Dunaway points out, the balloon as a musical instrument bypasses dominant hierarchies of music production, leveling the access to experimentation and sonic textures that are restricted by expensive electronic technology. Besides democratizing sound, the latex balloon functions as a resonant chamber, offering an embodied and inclusive mode of listening through the vibration of its membranes. This object duality of sounding and sensing opens up room for what the scholar Steph Ceraso calls a multi-modal listening that plays with the body, affect, behavior, design, space, and aesthetics.

“From my earliest work with balloons as musical instruments, I instinctively knew that I must limit myself to the balloon and my body.  This required that the balloon function not only as a musical appendage by which I may transmit sound, but also one that transmitted vibrations back to me through its sensitive body. (…)” Judy Dunaway, The Balloon Music Manifesto

https://soundstudiesblog.com/2019/04/22/play-against-levity-experimental-music-and-the-latex-balloon-part-two/

 

Balloon Music compilation
Balloon Music compilation

Sounding Out! articles:

On the poetics of balloon music: Sounding Air, Body and Latex (Part 1)

On the poetics of balloon music: Sound Artist Judy Dunaway (Part 2)

*Brief review of these articles on the polish magazine Glissando: http://glissando.pl/aktualnosci/prasowka-29-04/

Carlo Patrão

Interference~balloon

Balloon Piece Carlo Patrão
Interference~balloon, 2019

Interference~balloon is an audio piece made for Earlid’s annual Liminal Sounds under the theme of Retreat, Disappearance. The work unfolds in three acts and is recorded in one take, exploring the balloon/breath as a low-tech noise-canceling tool. The sounds are recorded through a contact microphone placed inside a balloon. First, one can hear the balloon being inflated and the tunning of different radio stations. The song Take My Breath Away (1986) from the band Berlin is being broadcast on one of the stations, spurring the release of my breath from the mouth of the balloon. The song is interrupted by commercials and station ads, and the sound of the air release is used to cancel the airwaves and the pull from the atmosphere of commercial interest and capital.

~

“Liminal Sounds and its motif of retreat and disappearance: what arrives is the proximity of ghosted towns and birds, imagined dissipation of entities lurking in and out of real life, the canceling signals crossed and masked, anticipation of vaporized languages, words stuck inside mouths.” Joan Schuman

Still from "Take my breath away" music video
Still from Take My Breath Away music video by the band Berlin, 1986

Carlo Patrão

Radio piece for BBT Sun Radio, RUC

COLLAGE BBT 1.1

This piece was produced for BBT Sun Radio and aired on Rádio Universidade de Coimbra (RUC) on July 6th, 2018. BBT Sun Radio is a radiophonic space dedicated to freeform radio and a celebration of our beloved friends and radio colleagues José Braga, Bruno Simões and João Terêncio. This hour is a travel-log of old and new interviews, radio cut-ups, collages and excursions on themes like deep time, sound, ecology, lucid dreaming, etc. Thanks to André Quaresma and Tiago André for the invitation and for curating this show.

Collage 2
Ruc

Music for Plants at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Colorado

Music for Plants, Compilation.jpg

On June 28, I’ll be talking about Music for Plants at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Colorado. This talk is part of an event series called 3 Things, Any 3 Things that mixes performance, lecture, and music. The tagline for the event reads: We bring you three experiences. We smash them together. We make no connections. Let’s see what happens. 

Alongside music for plants there will be a Hip hop harpist (Erin Newton) and a whiskey tasting (Ryan Negley). I’m pleased to do this lecture in the hometown of Dorothy Retallack, author of the book Sound of Music and Plants (1973), that famously spread the rumors that plants don’t have an ear for Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix’s acid rock.

MCA, Denver Colorado, June 28:
Music for Plants + Whiskey + Hip Hop Harpist with Carlo Patrão, Ryan Negley, and Erin Newton

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One with the space: A Trombone Conversation

Kalun Leung is a trombone player based in New York City. This interview was recorded during a visit to Freshkills Park in Staten Island organized by the sound artist John Roach, the designer Andrew Shea and their students from the New School. The group is developing a series of installations for the park that translate ecological data into sensory experiences. Freshkills Park, once the world’s largest landfill, is now being transformed into a public park three times the size of Central Park.

Kalun Leung
Sound the Mound

Deep Wireless 13, New Adventures in Sound Art

DeepWirelessLarge

Zepelim’s radio piece Misophonia is included in the new Deep Wireless 13 radio art compilation curated by New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA). This work explores the condition of Misophonia and the varying degrees of sonic annoyances that arise from bodily functions while also reflecting upon the ways in which this health issue has been covered by the media. Deep Wireless 13 features several radio pieces on the spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art. The album was produced for the 17th edition of Deep Wireless Festival of Radio & Transmission Art taking place between January 17 and April 16, 2018. Pieces were selected from an international call for submissions on the theme Sonic Reflections.

“The Deep Wireless festival has been celebrating the art of the aural imagination since 2002 with annual performances, broadcasts, workshops and many special events. This year’s theme is Sonic Reflections. Reflections of South River that are broadcast out into the world and reflections of the world resonating in our memories and imagination.”— Darren Copeland, NAISA

Artistic Director: Darren Copeland
Executive Director: Nadene Thériault-Copeland
Image Illustration: Prashant Miranda

Deep Wireless 13 Radio Art Compilation:

Naisa

Harvard University: Ex-centric Music Studies Conference

Harvard University Ex-centric Music Studies Conference

Next February 2nd, I’ll be doing a presentation entitled “Botanical Rhythms: A field guide to plant music” at the conference Ex-centric Music Studies at Harvard University. This presentation is included in the panel “Relocating research: the core of practice” chaired by Vijay Iyer. The conference will explore subjects, methods, and modes of presentation that have been deemed ‘peripheral’ to music studies, and aims to offer participants an opportunity to present projects that might exceed the bounds of academic convention.

Friday, February 2 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM EST
Holden Chapel, Harvard Yard, Cambridge (MA)

 

Botanical Rhythms: A field guide to plant music

ABSTRACT – Plants are the most abundant life form visible to us. Despite their ubiquitous presence, most of the time, we still fail to notice them. The botanists Wandersee and Schussler call it plant blindness, an extremely prevalent condition characterized by the inability to see or notice the plants in one’s own environment. Molly Roth And JimOur bias towards animals, or zoochauvinism, has been shown to have negative implications on funding towards plant conservation. Authors argue that artistic practices that engage plants in a sensorial and meaningful way can potentially generate emotional responses and concern towards plant life. This presentation reviews musical and sound art practices that incorporate plants and discusses the ethics of plant life as a performative participant. Starting in the early 70s, Music to Grow Plants By became a small footnote in the history of recorded music. However, it showed how the veiled nature of plants became attached to personal narratives, tastes and social values. In parallel, avant-garde movements interested in amplifying the noises of everyday life started to appropriate the sounding materiality of plants through contact microphones. John Cage’s amplified cactus became an icon of indeterminacy music. Plant-based generative music attempts to take a step forward into the inner life of plants by translating their biological activity.

Mort Garson Cut Up.png

Creative chains linking plants, technology, music and touch can be found in site-specific installations and performances by artists like Mileece, Miya Masaoka, Michael Prime, Leslie Garcia and the collective Data Garden.

The recent blooming of plant bioacoustics studies and acoustic ecology have inspired artists to sonically explore plant matter combining artistic and scientific points of view. In the midst of a strong movement to revitalize the role of plants in the field of humanities, concerns related to plants ethics and performance with plants are being debated. The sonification and acoustic amplification of plant life evoke both a sense of connection and the realization of an ontological fracture. However, the act of listening to plant life can be an act of acknowledgment, a possibility for emotional identification and empathy, rendering plant life visible.

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Harvard Graduate Music Conference
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Megapolis Audio Festival, Philadelphia 2017

This year’s edition of Megapolis Audio Festival will be held on the weekend of September 16th and 17th as part of Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival. Megapolis is dedicated to sound art, featuring works and performances from musicians, filmmakers, educators, urban planners, scientists, and radio producers.

Carlo Patrao - Misophonia, Megapolis Audio Festival

Zepelim’s radio piece about Misophonia will be played at PhillyCam alongside other digital works. Radio will be one of the main focuses of the festival, with discussions about radio art with Joan Schuman from Earlid, the politics of storytelling with Karen Werner, live performances from Radio Wonderland, and radio in translation with Eleanor McDowall’s Radio Atlas.

Description:
Portuguese radio artist Carlo Patrao tackles the recently discovered and little-understood chronic condition known as Misophonia. The condition is characterized by highly negative emotional responses to auditory triggers like chewing, breathing, sniffling, coughing, or slurping. This radio collage explores and utilizes this range of intrusive bodily sounds and discourse around it, while transforming those very sounds into music and performance art.

megapolis

More info:
Megapolis Audio Festival
Schedule
Artists