Derek Holzer

Wednesday & Thursday, April 21 & 22 6:30 - 9:30pm

$100 (one price)

Field recording, or phonography, is the art of recording sounds as they are found “in situ”, rather than those created in a studio or concert hall. There are as many ways of approaching field recording as there are field recordists, with interests ranging from recordings of natural or urban environments to improvised situations or soundwalks to the resonance of solid objects or the Earth's atmosphere.

The first session of this workshop provides a theoretical introduction to the various microphone techniques and recording strategies used for field recording, as well as special tools which allow phenomenon such as physical motion, electromagnetic waves and light can also be converted into sound. This will be followed by a night-time recording excursion into the city.

The second session consists of a critical listening session of the sounds gathered the night before. Key concepts to be explored include musical and cinematic metaphors of sound, composing the cityscape and communicating senses of place and space through sound.

Participants may wish to upload their finished recordings to the Soundtransit.nl website, where they can be used to plan sonic journeys between hundreds of locations around the world.

While the instructor can provide one shared recorder and microphone, participants should bring their own recording equipment when possible. Derek Holzer can provide a simple pair of binaural microphones for sale at a cost of approx $35. They terminate in a right-angle stereo minijack plug, and use the plugin power from the stereo microphone input of the recorder. Please indicate before the workshop date if you would like to buy a pair, and please check that your recorder provides this plugin power (most with minijack stereo mic inputs do) before requesting them.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Derek Holzer [USA 1972] is a sound artist with a background in radio, webstreaming and environmental recording. His work focuses on the often unpredictable details to be found in field recordings and self-built analog electronic sound synthesizers, as well as strategies for collaborations and free and open source software such as Pure Data.

Holzer has released field-recording related tracks under the Nexsound, Mandorla, Sirr, and/OAR and Gruenrekorder labels, has co-initiated several internet projects for field recording and collaborative soundscapes including Soundtransit.nl and was co-curator of the Tuned City event in the summer of 2008 in Berlin, Germany, which proposed a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic. He is currently a fellow at the KHM (Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln) in Cologne.

Derek Holzer will perform and give a workshop on opto-electronic synthesis at the Bent Festival, 23-25 April 2010 at The Tank NYC.

http://macumbista.net http://soundtransit.nl http://tunedcity.de