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 – 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.

2021 – stereo – 10 min

Made from samples from all the archives of SOA’s previous editions: www.lisboasoa.com, for SOA’s book presentation (19 set 2021, Castelejo, Cast. São Jorge). In 2023, the piece was released by Cronica Electronica in that year’s edition of SOA (also available here).

2016 – str – 10 min

Before the tractors and the machines, during the grape picking, in the quarry, in the sewing, in the places where each one was supposed to be. All the “environment” was surrounded by sound: the rhythms of routines and tasks, the prayers, and the need to renew each day. In a litany in which remain the perspective of the objects that have witnessed what people have experienced over the years. The passage of time, in which little changes, but what remains is a distant echo of the memory of when “everything was done.”

official selection, binaural nodar.

This piece is exclusively composed of sounds taken from the Viseu Rural 2.0 archive. There is no processing that modifies the recordings, only equalization, compression and related treatments, in order to filter out what (in the perspective of the piece) is important to be emphasized. It is a piece to be moderately amplified as it aims to keep each sound in a horizontal, accessible level in which the recording or amplification device should remain as discreet as possible.

2016 – str – 6 min

part of something to hold onto. featured in audio dh

2013 – str installation – 20 min loop

This installation is part of a multiscreen installation by the visual artists Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams-Gamaker based on the prophetic novel from 1856, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. Emma (Madame B.) is an attentive ‘listener’ and sensitive to her surroundings. The soundtrack (both installation and the feature-lenght versions) has been developed into a series of sound-motifs that characterize Emma via sound. Listening to these sound-motifs becomes an exercise in sound-focalization. In Emma’s Soundscape, we reflect on the accumulated sounds of an individual life, which simultaneously shape and enclose the space defining her. These sounds mark and leave traces, and ultimately outline ‘her expansion into the world as well as her confinement in it’.

For more information about the project please visit the project’s website.

2012 – str – 10 min

This is the first piece studying the twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey accordingly to Vogler. (folowed by “quem conta um conto” and “chapter three, in betweens”)

It makes use of a long recording done in a bus, with the idea of “sound character” underneath. To listen is a condition that discloses the multiplicity of being in a place. It is to choose a focus, and the freedom of that choice. in the bus is in a place-extension that harking is.

this piece relies on the listening context and conditions, therefore it is not available online. 

2011 – str – 8 min

quem conta um conto, II is a study in narrative. The individual sounds in the piece grow as characters, based on film theorist Chris Vogler’s twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey. It juxtaposes sound spaces to join together disparate times and places; ignoring the physical impossibilities of their junction in order to potentiate the conflict that can emerge from their friction.

more info at radius.

2011 – str – 5 min

It alternates between a sharp loyalty to the original actions of the event and its surrealism, wondering if this story can be told and perceived in different ways and influence one another.

2011 – str – radio – 4 min

my contribution for the 55 minutes collective work, within the context of aural tectonics lectures (Raviv Ganchrow, Institute of Sonology).
a collection of sounds, somewhere between unplanned and detailed choices, which result in the idea that sound has no borders or physical limitations (…). den haag here & there is also the product of the first living experiences i went through in this city.

2009 – str – 10 min

a sound documentary of the Swedish city växjö. a place surrounded by nature, where all the seasons make the difference, and a rich source of sounds. time kept passing, sounds kept changing and thus the city’s identity too.