Installations in 2010

Recline in an alternate sounding universe in a 50's style hair salon chair transformed into a radio art listening lounge with works curated by Darren Copeland. This year’s Radio Art Salon includes eight works out of the 28 created over the past 7 years that were part of the Deep Wireless/CBC Outfront commissioning residencies.

A site-specific installation by Mieke Anderson that invites audiences into the artist's grandmother's nursing home, while taking us back to the places she and her caregivers first called home when they immigrated to Canada.

The DEW Project explores the past militarization of the Canadian homeland in the Arctic during the Cold War, as well as looking at the future of this same landscape amidst international debates of Arctic sovereignty. An installation, DEW is a radio transmitter embedded in a solar powered glowing geodesic dome.

Take Me Home was created as a Radio Documentary by Michael Lissek for Südwestrundfunk SWR Baden-Baden, Feb 2009 and has been adapted as an installation for the Deep Wireless festival 2010. Take me Home deals with the hope of finding a way to express yourself, to be able to say something which goes beyond your own words. The singing is not actually music but rather a kind of interview footage, original recordings which tell about the bodies and biographies of those who deliver the songs and their stories.

Visitors that encounter the "Synthecycletron," a favourite amongst Toronto cyclists, generate power by pedaling on stationary bicycles which in turn activate synthesizers and generate sounds connected to their movements.

The definition of 'what home is', is intensely personal and unique to each of us. I grew up in Toronto, and the house I grew up in, in the beaches, is still very much like it was in the 1980's. I lived there from birth to when I moved out at age 20, and since then I have always visited my parents and sister in the house on a regular basis. Naturally, the house, its sounds, and the memories have had a profound mark on my identity. My mother died on June 10, 2009, and since then, visiting the house has become a different, and emotionally difficult experience. Her being gone has really made me question whether the house is still “home” to me. In one way, the answer is yes, because, my father and sister still live there, but on the other hand, I am left with a sense of alienation.

One thing is certain and that is that those familiar sounds from the home have become increasingly poignant. Sounds such as someone descending the old wooden stairs, the creak of the wooden bathroom door, someone knocking on the front door, sounds from the kitchen, voices coming from upstairs, and then outdoors, the waves in Ashbridges Bay; have all become extremely significant since she died in June.

In this piece I will explore the sounds of the home, my memories and home and examine the psychological and emotional meaning of “being home.” This work has been generously funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.

NAISA SOUND PORTRAITS by Stefan Rose (a series of photos documenting the first year of NAISA events at the Artscape Wychwood Barns).

Auditory perception can be combined with an haptic experience. By combining auditory and tactile percepts in these two pieces, the audience will experience inter-sensory sonic experiences. In Morita's pieces "Klanghelm/sonic helmet" and "touch and listen," he wishes to initiate audio-tactile experiences in different parts of the body. The "sonic helmet" concentrates on the audio/tactile percepts surrounding the head, while "touch and listen" invites the audience to exploit the audio/tactile perceptions in the feet, legs, mid-section and lower torso.

"She saw me" consists of two brand new galvanized metal garbage cans performing as speakers/resonators in the restrooms. An audio loop plays from speakers inside the cans, with the lids secured shut. The loop contained therein is an audio clip of an archaic vocoder inhaling and exhaling, and saying "she saw me"... This sample was played and recorded, re-played and recorded over and over 16 times inside the metal garbage can until the resonant frequencies of the can and the audio clip synthesize into one vibrating sound mass. There are 2 cans, a left and a right, one in the women's restroom and the other in the men's. The result is an unassuming garbage can that buzzes and vibrates as the sound gradually saturates the can, and the room. "She saw me" uses a similar technique to the seminal piece by Alvin Lucier called "I am sitting in a room."

Obsolescence — a sound installation, is a response to the ever-evolving manner in which music reaches us. Over the last century the function of the home piano has shifted from being a main source of home entertainment to becoming an ornamental antique piece, displaced by electronic keyboards and home speaker systems. Now the loudspeaker functions as the central audio interface in home entertainment but will it—in time— be superseded by the next piece of technology? In Obsolescence the roles of an antique upright piano and loudspeakers are exchanged. The loudspeaker is positioned as an antique ornament through which the voices of pianists are heard, and the piano evolves from an ornamental piece of furniture to a transducer by which other sounds are made —not by it, but on it and through it.

Seed Rotations is an interactive audio installation created when one or more individuals drop seeds and beans into amplified cooking bowls. The public creates an original soundscape of percussive sounds varying in pitch and tonality in tandem with an ongoing soundscape of guitar chords and kitchen noise. Using cooking vessels, the public creates a bevy of intriguing and unexpected sounds which arise from the act of seeds striking the inside of a pot.

Go on a Halloween sound treasure hunt at the Artscape Wychwood Barns and then learn about the secrets behind how sounds are made in the movies.

*you could be here by now* is an interactive installation using sounds collected as part of NAISA's web-based soundmap project. Listeners are invited to use a rotary phone interface to select sounds recorded from across the Wychwood area. As the public dials sounds from around the neigbourhood, they are able to explore their relationship to these sounds, as well as compare and contrast the components of their surrounding soundscape. Created with the technical assistance of David Ogborn, and with many thanks to recordists Alex Cannon, Hector Centeno and Khalik Provo.