"Sound  is  promiscuous.  It  exists  as  a  network  that  teaches  us  how  to  belong,  to  find  place,  as  well  as  how  not  to  belong,  to  drift.  To  be  out  of  place,  and  still  to  search  for  new  connection,  for  proximity."      

-­‐-­‐Brandon  LaBelle,  Acoustic  Territories  

What is the Listening Terminal project?

As  Project  Bakawan-­‐-­‐the  Arts  Festival-­‐-­‐takes  inspiration  from  sustaining  and  sustainability  of  the  mangroves,  which  is  a  crucial  component  of  the  ecological  balance  in  the  Philippines.

In  the  city,  traffic,  patch  greens,  the  people,  the  buildings  among  other  natural  and  built  structures  has  their  own  role  in  this  eco-­‐system.  These  elements  are  there  for  a  reason  and  a  function.    However,  if  one  is  asked  to  describe  a  city,  we  can  expect  to  hear  a  description  of  buildings,  of  human  congestion,  of  lights  and  all  sorts  of  blinkers.    Very  few  would  actually  describe  the  sound  of  traffic,  chatter  of  people,  tiny  bells  of  opening  and  closing  elevators,  announcements  on  train  stations,  among  others.  This  is  simply  because  we  were  more  trained  to  see,  rather  than  listen.    We  often  ignore  the  fact  that  a  city  is  as  aurally  busy  as  it  is  visually.    We  have  yet  to  find  a  city  that  is  mute.    

Listening Terminals Project is the sound and movement component of Project Bakawan. This project directs the audience to pay attention to auditory characteristics of urban spaces and to recognize how it affects construction, reconstruction and deconstruction of social dynamics.  

For  this  project,  sounds  from  Metro  Manila  were  recorded  as  an  attempt  to  isolate  them  and  to  re-­‐present  them  as  punctuations  to  the  soundscape  of  the  University  of  the  Philippines  Diliman  Campus.    

       Since  Project  Bakawan  is  an  art  project  (and  not  exclusively  an  archival  project),  sound  artists,  music  composers,  dancers  and  movement  artists  were  invited  to  use  the  recorded  sounds  to  compose  their  pieces,  with  an  instruction  to  allow  portion  of  the  raw  sound  file  to  be  present  in  the  work.    Music/sound  compositions  were  then  played  on  D-­‐I-­‐Y  dome-­‐speakers.    

           How  this  whole  exercise  is  related  to  sustainability  is  not  a  direct  statement.    Rather  than  stating  directly  that:  “this  is  your  environment  and  that  you  are  responsible  for  it”;  the  project  terminates  the  statement  at  “this  is  your  environment….”      

     The  curatorial  of  the  Sound/Movement  component  of  Project  Bakawan  is  focused  on  providing  sensorial  stimuli,  which  has  more  potential  for  continued  discussion  among  the  interested  audience  (whether  on  the  topic  of  urban  ecology,  sound  art,  music,  dance,  movement,  etc),  rather  than  a  prescriptive  statement.  Therefore  has  more  potential  for  a  sustainable  discourse.  

SOUND-MAPPING-MOVEMENT-NOTATION

Concept and Direction Roselle Pineda

Sound waves are generally not visible to the naked eye but they disrupt the air around them, creating shapes and occupying spaces as they travel through air. Cymatics is the study of visible sound through vibration. Sound becomes visible when it hits other loosely organized visible matter like liquid, fire, particles, or even electricity. Since the 1980s, visual artists have been experimenting on visualizing sound. In recent years, sound experimentations by Nigel Stanford have revealed how sound takes on visible shapes when matter is exposed to sound vibrations. Needless to say, these are some of the technical inspirations for this particular sound mapping-movement-notation exercise.

For this performance experiment, I am interested in two things: first, in exploring the possibility of sound mapping through movement by triggering sound terminals whose capacity the performers (as movers) know nothing of. The “uncertainty” brought to fore by the yet unexplored instruments (sound terminals) combined with the “uncertainty” brought to fore by numerous unexpected variables in the environment and in the mover become important in understanding the process of presence-ing (i.e. making present), or mapping, through constant investigation, scientific query, exploration, resourcefulness, and commitment. At the same time, the movers are pushed to employ inventive and flexible improvisational stances in dealing with the environment and, later on, with the communities (audiences). Second, I am also interested in looking at how audiences from various backgrounds interpret, visualize, map, and notate movement, and how they merge their own narratives in the movements that they watch and try to map. This process becomes very important in trying to capture how people understand and think in relation to movement triggers and how they create a language (notation) to interpret those movements.

Rather than think that artistic literacy is something that artists/critics/scholars need to provide or something that needs to be unlearned, this process brings focus to the merging of languages, of audiences and of artistic mediation or intervention, as a language of both performance production and performance analysis — an artistic “sublation.”

Although this performance experimentation, is not (yet) as concentrated on creating icons, symbols and meaning-makings, and is more concentrated on merging narratives/languages, it is definitely a part of larger theoretical and strategic project in understanding and sharpening sensitivities and strategies in working with communities and environments, within the sphere of cultural work and art community organizing.

In the performance experiment, the movers chosen to trigger the terminals are not experienced dancers, as dancers tend to conceptualize movement first in space before learning space, contrary to the more exploratory nature of the present project. Minimal instruction was also given to the movers, whose directives include, to explore the nature by which the sound terminals are triggered, to try to map the boundaries that the triggered sound occupy in space, and move at a speed that allows the audience to catch their movements for easier mapping. Given the conditions and loose structure of the performance, the results/mapping that the audience will create should also be interestingly diverse. The results will eventually be processed by the artist collective (Pangkat Gatilyo) in relation to their own findings and experimentations in trying to interpret the sound in movement.

In the meantime, let us suspend assumptions and get ready for sublation.

** Pangkat Gatilyo is composed of Marx, Dibayn, Joshwa, Jen, Loujaye, Bobby, Brian and Roselle

** This performance experimentation is in collaboration with Listening Terminals sound art installation curated by Dayang Yraola for Project Bakawan

         Project  Bakawan  is  a  collaborative  art  festival  and  community-­‐building  initiative  that  aims  to  increase  awareness  of  current  environmental  issues  and  strives  to  foster  a  sustainable  future.    Project  Bakawan,  seeks  to  cultivate  a  consciousness  of  sustainability  and  sharing,  crystalize  it  in  expression,  and  harness  it  for  action.