ASYNCH is a live performance that combines foley and sampling, field recording and audio morphing. Based on the ideas of sonic fiction, it is an acousmatic experience of a film that has not been done – and if it were, it would be asynchronous. It’s a confusion where one sound might sound like another, a sound as-if, a magnified detail and everything that shakes (crumbles into dust).
ASYNCH is also the return of a promise, a function that retrieves a value and resolves it. It’s a hold back.
The performance is a release of Pinheiro’s first attempt to make an EP. It consists of 6 individual pieces organised (and failing) as the format of a (foley) song. It invites critical listening and ear cleaning.
Coming soon at PAF 2024.
Acousmatic Echoes of Ruchový archiv, 1968 – 1989.
A composition curated by Jonáš Kucharský, NFA Prague. Commissioned by ARSENAL ASSEMBLY #3, Berlin. Soon available online.
Program note:
Sara Pinheiro’s composition, curated by Jonáš Kucharský of Prague’s Národní filmový archive, explores Barrandov Studios’ long considered lost Foley archive. Established in the late 1950s, the archive had a major influence on the sonic landscape of Czech cinema into the 1990s. Pinheiro’s piece presents digitized sounds from tapes recently found in the archive, offering a glimpse into this vast sonic treasure. Using the sounds acousmatically, Pinheiro investigates how we perceive mediated sounds when taken out of their original context and explores sound’s translation between cultures. The work raises questions about the boundaries between sound and music, particularly in the realm of Foley and sound effects. It is also a contribution to debates around the preservation of transient actions and reflects on the epistemology of sound in the age of recorded media. By presenting the heterogeneous contents of the Foley archive, the composition attempts to answer the question: What does Czech cinema sound like? This work-in-progress offers a unique perspective on Czech film history, sound preservation, and the nature of mediated sound in audiovisual art.
Full composition available here.
Picture by Florent Laplace, Národní filmový archive, thanks to Jonáš Kucharský.
For more information, please visit this episode UFMC podcast episode.
2024 – 10′ – USA/NY
Rent Boy drama short film written and directed by Trey Chapman.
Driven by ambitions of being a concert pianist, a young sex worker violates a client’s privacy, triggering unexpected consequences.
The film stars Devin Druid (13 Reasons Why, Louder Than Bombs).
2024 – 13′ – AT
Directed by Simona Obholzer.
A soccer pitch emerges based on a process standardized down to the last detail. Layers of sand and soil are piled up and leveled, pieces of turf are rolled out and cut to size. Nothing is left to chance. Only when nature has been cast into shape can the game begin.
2024 – 7′ – CZ
This composition is made walking through the park with a binaural set. It focuses on the perspective of the many dogs that visit this park daily. By default, it also includes their humans and a few other elements.
It was commissioned by EBU for World’s Environmental Day.
Many thanks to Ladislav Železný.
2023 – 20′ – CZ/PT
SLAM, “sounds like a movie”, is a fixed-media acousmatic composition for 5.1 Dolby Theatres made of film sounds. It plays with a sense of cultural memory by referencing well-known films in a stream of sonic associations in a format that is the standard approach of multichannel sound in cinema. In that sense, the composition questions a few assumptions that established themselves during the years of film sound history, namely the patterns that define that history.
SLAM puts forward an idea of collective memory in film culture in a semi-historical approach of film sound as a story-telling tool. The composition hops from film to film in a chain of personal associations, either driven by the sound itself or by the film per se.
Occasionally, it makes use of the common strategies of 5.1 spatialisation to emphasise the fictional qualities of the scenes in use – sometimes by maximising their atmospheres, other times by highlighting a certain aspect of the sonic data in an attempt to emphasise the content in the original sources. Along this process, the sounds unfold different layers of understanding: from evoking the materiality of the period in which they were created (analogue textures, old school compressions, digital characters) to the process that a reduced listening experience pertains to. It occupies the space between what “sounds like” something that is collectively recognized, individual memories and, as always, a sonic liberation of narrative constraints. SLAM is an étude au cinema as much as an ode to film sound while being, literally, cinema for the ears.
The original 5.1 version has been adapted into a 30 channel installation to be exhibited at GHMP, Prague.
For an extended program note (in Portuguese), please visit here.
Screenings:
2023 – 26′ – CZ
“The composition Hidden Voices reflects a view of society as a whole, not divided into various more or less disadvantaged groups of people, and at the same time imprints the joy of joint creation and the creative process.
Creator Ursula Sereghy (feat. Sara Pinheiro and Marie Čtveráčková) bring perspectives and questions in the sense of sharing approaches, thoughts, and opinions on authorship, on creation, but also on society and its hierarchy.” Ladislav Železný
2023 – 90′ – CZ
Written and directed by Tomáš Svoboda.
The term kinetopsia refers to a disorder which makes us think that stationary objects are in motion. The title thus presents a metaphor for our situation: the Revolution took place more than three decades ago, and while an uncertain present brings ever new problems, public discussion still often chases after the “spectre of communism” – a universal, abstracted evil, always blameworthy and constantly threatening to return. Its shadow makes it easier to miss the real challenges of today, as well as critical aspects of the political transformation that has wrought our economic and cultural conditions.
2023 – 15′ – SA
dir. Elan Gamaker
June, 1986. Township princess Patience must step in as domestic worker at her mother’s employers’ house. But all is not as it seems in the mansion, where so many of her predecessors have given their lives to the house.
In relation to my practice as a field recordist, there are a few results:
REGARDLESS is a research project focusing on pioneers of electronic music and sound art.
“Acousmatic Foley” is a practice-based research on sound dramaturgy that bridges Musique Concrète and Foley Art. It proposes a perspective on creating, performing and listening to sound which emerges from both traditions.
On the one hand, the main principle of acousmatic music is to disengage sound from its visual source. On the other hand, foley is the covering of an action with sounds that are visually justifiable, although they may not naturally belong there. Nevertheless, what links an acousmatic composer to a foley artist is that the latter makes use of objects for their layout, for a sonic construction that matches visually what we expect to hear, rather than the concrete visual matter. The argument is that every foley artist is an acousmatic composer.
To this end, the project is based on the concepts of sound-motif, sound-prop and sound-actors, in order to propose a dramaturgic practice specific to sound terms.
2023 – 55′ – CZ/SK
Cas Nadeji is a TV Series produced for Slovak Television. Foley recording by FOLEY STAGE, Prague. Foley Edit by me.
It tells the history of Slovakia from 1914 to 1951 in the story of three generations of the family of Géza Viola, the son of an innkeeper who wants to live his life differently from his father.
2023 – 20′ – CZ
a film by Tomáš Rampula.
The experimental film Time Metallurgist works with found footage materials (photographs, excerpts from newspapers, letters) from the life of Eadweard Muybridge, attempting to reconstruct what happened in the second half of the 19th century in California. It describes the influence of these events on our present. It uses artificial intelligence to process all this material.
2023 – 30′ – UK
a film by Michelle Williams Gamaker.
premiered at South London Gallery
More info here.
2022 – 48′ – CZ/IS
A documentary film by Ivo Bystřičan.
Part of the project “Future Landscapes“, sound archive here.
2022 – AT
a video by Katharina Swoboda.
2022 - 33' - AT
A film-essay by Olena Newkryta.
a feature directed by Heimir Bjarnason. Sound Design and Mixing by me.
2021 – 18′ – UK
writer/director: Michelle Williams Gamaker.
2021 – 18′ – NL/UK
a project by Dan Walwin for David Dale Gallery
Like clock is a work made up of multiple borrowed and familiar aspects, assembled on its own terms. The essential premise would seem to be about staging a gathering-together in a place that appears to have its own rules.
Supported by Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Creative Scotland.
Selected for and supported by Glasgow International 2021 Across the City.
2021 – 8′ – AT
a video by Katharina Swoboda.
2021 – 9′ – AT
a project by Katharina Swoboda.
“In 1976, the last woman to compete in a Formula 1 race steps down: In the “Austrian Grand Prix”, Italian racer Leila Lombardi was the last to hit the finish line, but at least she reached it. Her fastest lap time was 1:42,25 – this is also the length of the planned video installation. Composed of tracking shots as well as static shots of the Red Bull Ring and a performer representing Lella Lombardi, the so far last female Formula 1 driver is honored in the ambience of the “Spielberg-Ring”.” (by k. s.)
2020 – 10′ – UK
a project by Michelle Williams Gamaker.
producers: Lara Goodband (RAMM, Exeter) and Teresa Grimes (Tintype, London).
The Silver Wave is a 10-minute film based on an Iñupiak woman named Ada Blackjack who was the only surviving member of an ill-fated mission to Wrangel Island in 1921. Themes of ecology, the precarity of the environment we live in and what isolation feels like will be recounted through the diaries of Ada Blackjack. Her words echo our current experiences of being faced with long-term isolation and social distancing.
a project by Katharina Swoboda and Kamen Stoyanov
a short-fiction and exhibition
“A film about an unusual encounter in front of the Monument to Alyosha on the Bunardzhika hill in Plovdiv and some archival photographs. Through the means of the song, the film shows two different points of view on the monument, its prehistory and how mythologies are born. The main characters Vasil and Katarina respond to the Alyosha song, created in 1966 and enjoying great popularity, with the Alexey Skurlatov song, specially composed for the film.”
Please visit the project’s website. Trailer below.
2018 – 15′ – NY/USA
A short-film by Trey Chapman. Fully available here. Trailer below.
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Fargo Film Festival 2019
SCAD Savannah Film Festival 2019
Ridgefield Film Festival 2019
Blow-Up Chicago Arthouse Film Festival 2019
Los Angeles CineFest 2019
NOVA Film Festival 2019
Rosewood Ledge Trailer from Trey Chapman on Vimeo.
2018 – 30′ – AT
A documentary essay by Kamen Stoyanov.
IN-VISIBLE_trailer from kamen stoyanov on Vimeo.
2017 – 14′ – AT
A project by Katharina Swoboda.
“”Marguerite’s Desires” is a video work about French Feminist Marguerite Durand (1864-1936). The work makes a connection between two places founded by Durand: the pet cemetery Cimetière des Chiens and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris. Durand, a former actress at Comédie-Française, became interested in politics after the Congrès féministe international in 1896. She then founded the journal “La Fronde” (The Sling), a journal solely written and edited by women. Marguerite had a lion, which she lovingly called tiger and which brought her also publicity for her political campaign. In 1899 she founded the pet cemetery Cimetière des chiens in Asnières-sur-Seine, close to Paris. Although an animal lover, she founded the cemetery for purely hygienic reasons. In 1932, she donated her extensive collection of journals and literature to the government, and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand was founded. It was the very same place where Durand died in 1936 of a heart attack.” (by k. s.)
2017 – 12′ – CZ
a film by Steen Agro.
The Sleeper - Trailer from Steen Agro on Vimeo.
2017 – 1′ – AT
a project by Katharina Swoboda
“A project about the Ostend Company, which was founded by Austrian Emperor Charles VI in 1722. At the time, Ostend was part of the Austrian South Netherlands. After the War of the Spanish Succession, the Southern Netherlands became Austrian territory. The Ostend Company was modeled after the successful models of the Dutch and English East India Companies, which were very profitable at that time. In Banquibazar, which is now Ichapore, the Austrians established one commercial post, or “colony.” Due to political pressure from England and the Netherlands, the company was short-lived.” (by k. s.)
2017 – 7′ – AT
a video by Katharina Swoboda.
“A video about `Highpoint´ by Tecton architecture group in London. The apartment blocks at Highpoint are most probably the most celebrated of all 1930s works. They are widely illustrated and object of international acclaim, eg by Le Corbusier during his visit after its completion in 1935.” (by k. s.)
2017 – 10′ – CZ
a film by Diego Fandos.
Awarded ‘Grand Prix’ at Short Movie Club Festival (Minsk, Belarus).
Screened at
::Festival Mediterránea, Plzen (Czech Republic), May 2017
::One Shot Film Festival, organized by the Center for Contemporary Experimental Art of Yerevan (Armenia), June 2017
::Short Movie Club Festival, National Center of Contemporary Arts, Minsk (Belarus), July 2017…
> winner of the Grand Prix (Best film)
::Bangkok Thai International Film Festival, Bangkok, October 2017
::Crossing the Screen Int. Film Festival, Eastbourne (Towner Art Gallery, UK), November 2017
::Alcine, (Divergences section) International Film Festival of Alcalá de Henares (Spain), November 2017
::TiSFF, Thessaloniki (Greece), December 2017
::Steps ISFF, Latakia (Syria), March 2018
2017 – 7′ – AT
a video by Katharina Swoboda
exhibition:
“The frame that blinds us.” APA Galéria Budapest, 2017.
“According to a survey from 2003 and confirmed by a Google Maps entry in 2016, the center of the Earth is placed close to the Anatolian city Corum in Turkey. The coordinates provided are: 42´´ 52´ N 34´´ 34´ E. I enter these coordinates in one of my navigation devices and follow its direction to the center of the world. I arrive and I am happy to be at the center. But something seems odd. I decide to double check and I enter the coordinates again into a second navigation device. It says I am not in the correct location. So the journey goes on. I get into my car again.” (by k. s.)
2016 – 3′ – ES
web-art, gif-loop, a concept by Salomé Lamas, available here.
2017 – 14′ – UK
A film by Michelle Williams Gamaker.
Shot on 16 mm. Sound design by me.
Premiered at BFI London Film Festival, this film was purchased for the national Arts Council Collection and contributed to Williams-Gamaker’s joint-win of the Film London Artist Moving Image Jarman Award in 2020.
2016 – 10′ – AT
A video by Katharina Swoboda, sound design by me.
2016 – 90′ – CZ
Sound by Sound4Film/Mix by Ivo Heger, Cinepost – Barrandov Studios.
Foley and Atmos by me.
Please visit the website for more information.