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.

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.

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:

• 21 June 2024 @ Cinemateca Portuguesa, Lisbon
• 17 February 2024 @ Eletroacoustic Music Festival, Bangor – Wales, UK
• 30 November 2023 @ Ponrepo, Prague (premiere)

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

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).

2022 – stereo + 6 bluetooth speakers – 30 min

reticências explores FM, noise, repetition, rhythm and randomness. It is an unfinished sentence, a never-ending story, it’s a continuation, a transition in between. It departs from a broken radio that speaks on its own towards the exploration of its patterns and spatial findings. It is noise and texture. It is a sonic drama.

The original radio recording is played “untouched” from the bluetooth speakers and it can be heard here on archive.org. In the main P.A. system… I answer it.
The full performance is available in video thanks to Punctum/Radim Labuda.
The bluetooth speakers are from Synth Library Prague. Thanks to Mary C.

Performed at

• AUSLAND (Berlin, GE), Jan 2025;
• Dx10 (Prague, Cz), Jan 2023;
• MeetFactory (Prague, Cz) on Nov 2022;
• Moozak (Vienna, Austria) on Oct 2022;
• Prisma Estúdio (Lisbon, Pt) Set 2022;
• SONOSCOPIA (Porto, Pt) on August 2022;
• Punctum (Prague, Cz) on April 2022.

2020 – 4 channels – 8 min

A fixed-media composition to be premiered at the Bangor Electroacoustic Music Festival.

A research exposition about this composition is published in the Research Catalogue.

2018 – 4 channels – 25 min

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 – 4 channels – mixed media

A live performance that looks into the idea of sound-acting. It was premiered in Barcelona, played in Lisbon, Prague and The Hague.

“Something to Hold Onto” is an exercise on white noise.

It belongs to a series of studies within the project “Acousmatic Foley”. One of the main ideas is that of treating sound as an actor. Thus, the piece explores an attempt to make a single sound sound-like many other things. By recording an object on stage and sampling it live, the sound proceeds with other forms in order to produce other sorts of suggestions beyond what was seen as the original source of it. The title of the piece is borrowed from a project originally created by Leigh Landy (1990) and followed up by Rob Waele (2006), the “Intention/Reception” project, which studied the relationship between the listener and the sounds, the listener’s ability and willingness to figure out what is happening based on what sort of information is given beforehand. For that reason, the piece starts with providing the visual source of the sound, to be held onto as a reference.

2016 – 4 channels – 30 min

For a residency in Q-02, Acousmatic Foley took Chantal Akerman’s first short movie “Saute Ma Ville” (1968) as a case study. Throughout Akerman’s sound-work, the project foregrounded concepts as “sound-motif”, “sound-actor” and “sound-prop”.

This residency was kindly authorized by Chantal Akerman’ State, through the Beligium Cinematek.

The performance starts of with Live Foley for the silent parts of the film, and then proceeds acousmatically with the samples taken from the original track. It has been performed at PAF (2018) and Ponrepo (2019).

In 2020, a study of the movie has been published in Iluminace (2019/4).

2016 – str – 6 min

part of something to hold onto. featured in audio dh

2015 – radio – 16 min

This piece is based in three main sounds that result of research-project entitled “acousmatic foley”. The subject is mainly the idea that both Musique Concrète and Foley Art deal with a similar conception of sound-objects.

: full piece and interview available here

: playlist available here

: more information about the project here

In this case, each recorded object stands for one different field of interest, namely filmmaking, acousmatic sound and acoustic ecology. To support each object, a sound-field was chosen to reinforce the concrete materiality of the sounds. However, the research works towards a theory of sound objects as sound actors, instead of addressing them as tangible items. Still, each sound is likely to produce associations and connect to their referential value. This corroborates the ideas of sound acting, enactment and fictionality. Following these premisses, the arrangement of this composition is mainly a piece of dramaturgy.On that account, the idea of dramaturgy itself is based on three different conceptions of time. These conceptions emerge, once again, from the three different fields of research mentioned above. They are time as in length/duration, time as in a rhythmical pattern and time as a time-frame, in society. Each object follows one single conception, mostly because they can be thought of as icons of that specific field. The idea of contextualization is fundamental to listening to any of these sounds, which corroborates the ambiguity always implicit in reduced listening. Mostly, these are ideas in development in a proposal named “staging sound fiction”, which states that a recorded sound does not replace the experience of listening to its source, it is an experience per se. It was made with the kind support of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (PT) and the Barandov studios Cinepost – Sound4Film (CZ). It was premiered on September 25, at Radiocustica.

2015 – 17 channels – 60 min

Treatise of a purr is a play in three acts. It starts with curiosity did nothing to the cat, follows with the cat and the glove and ends with a scalded cat, who was said to be afraid of cold water. The scalded cat is the final act, which completes the “treatise of a purr”. In it, the cat returns to face a new element. May fire walk with him.

Although each act can be played autonomously, they depend on one another to formulate its sense. The piece uses a variable arrangement of loudspeakers, in three different sets. It is an exercise of “sound theatre” as a result of “staging sound fiction”.

2014 – 6 channels – loop

This piece is a site-specific composition created for the passage in Usti Nad Labem (Cz), turned into a gallery dedicated to sound art.
6 channels are aligned in the corridor, a passage that connects the centre to an older part of the town.

Jenga Walking is a sound installation based on affection. Due to the characteristics of the passage (a dark, cold and impersonal space) I chose a sound that relates to the passers-by in a friendly way. Eventually, each of the transients has its own affection for the sound in question, once it is recognized. Moreover, the sound is not foreign to the space itself, not only because it happens “in reality” quite frequently, but also because its acoustic properties match to the space. The piece results from the prominent presence of dogs in czech society and the charming quietness of individuals walking their dogs at the end of the day, when social routine is in pause and it gives turn to personal habits. Ideally, the sound will relate to the space as a cross over between these two moments just as much as the gallery is a cross over between two distinct parts of the city.

I’m in debt to my dear friends Isabel and Pedro, for Jenga is the name of their inspiring dog.

2014 – front array/back array – 20 min

For it is the second act, it follows the idea of a main character established in “curiosity did nothing to the cat”. However, that character did not follow a logic social context previously, and so it continues. This piece is searching for ways to frame sound, in its specificity and detail, as a sonic scanner willing to find an internal logic in its own fictionality.
The sounds in use are a slightly counter-intuitive of agglomerated sounds and their hermitic same in content and form.

This installation was thought of for Gamu, in Prague.
It consisted of an omni-microphone amplifying the sounds from the other installations in the gallery, and playing them back to these little speakers attached to the aquarium. Then, inside the aquarium, there was a hydrophone which would amplify the sound inside through the water.

The recording lasts 30min and I will be glad to share it on a personal request. Headphones recommended.

The proposal is to think of listening as a casting, the choice of seeking a sound and the choice of finding it enclosed. It invites the audience to approach the act of listening in reciprocal way: to be the object and the subject, as in nature, within an aural situation that resembles our primary perception of the outside world (in the womb).

The audience could choose to play with the EQ filters in the mixer. For that reason… some people considered this piece an instrument itself. I thought of it as a filter, a reality filter, and a resemblance to our embryonic relation to sound. Somehow it is more comfortable to listen to the sounds in this gallery through the water than themselves. It’s personal and optional.
For the visual layer of it… again, a little bit of an echo of my animal-political values.

2014 – headphones – 50 min loop

This installation is based on two very familiar rituals of mine: cooking and recording sound. In berlinskejh model gallery, in Prague, it is usual to have the artist cooking for the audience.
Within a collective exhibition based on rituals and loops, i proposed myself to cook while my colleagues would install their pieces. With that said, i cooked a nice bulgur salad at the gallery and after a little editing, which as usual excludes human voices and sounds that do not belong to the action, i invited the audience to sit, eat and listen to the sound of that very same food being prepared, while they were eating it. It is important to think of what we eat and it is important to think of our audition sensibility too. To combine these two senses was very logical to me, for being two very dominant topics in my everyday life.

more info: http://artycok.tv/en/25058/25058

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.

2014 – headphones – woundwalk

Composed in collaboration with Gyz la Rivière, for Soundtrack City and Worm. It is permanently available at Worm (and at soundtrack city).

The soundwalk ‘2.2 kilometres’ starts at WORM towards Eendrachtsplein through the entire Nieuwe Binnenweg and ends at the Lage Erfbrug. It consists of recordings from the Nieuwe Binnenweg and other parts of the city, as proposing a soundscape exchange. The piece is also concerned with a sound historical memory of the street. For that reason, there is a certain revivalism implied by the use of specific sounds that once belonged there.

2012 – 7 channels – 12 min

This piece is made for 7 speakers, which are placed under the audience’s seats. This first part is ca. 10 minutes long and it is the beginning of “teatrise of a purr” which lasts ca. 60 minutes and works the idea of sound theater.

2012-15 – 5 channels – 20 min

This piece aims at riding the listener through a walk that should sound both familiar and foreign. The sounds have a strong visual reference, for it is objectively abstract.
This composition started as an attempt to find balance between the idea (the abstraction) and the material itself (the object), thinking of the legitimacy of the former and the possibilities of the latter. It aims at generating different sensibilities in relation to reality and fiction. It is a walk, which starts after its beginning and ends before it is over. It wanders between what is present and what is not, what was been included or not; and how much weight can absence have.

2011 – 4 channels + headphones – 17 min

“to know the momentum of a society, measure the footsteps of its citizens” (r. murray schafer, in the tuning of the world).
The curiosity to break geographical limitations, trying to be in different places at the same time, in between, the possibility of being nowhere, the edge of a continuous transition. Seeking for unbalanced positions, that of the surroundings, allowing my body to swing freely, throughout intuition, creating micro routines in an improvised perception, learning with my own ambiguity of listening, making choices. And wondering about listening and how I can open the door for an invitation that has no claims beyond the act itself of inviting.

A composition for 4 channels + headphones premiered in studio loos in The Hague.

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.

2011 – 8 channels – 19 min

an exercise in the concepts of sound documentary and sound fiction. it aims to be a pleasant journey into this universe of sounds, until one is able to liberate oneself and the sounds from any referential logics.
: swing lives is my first multichannel work.
: s’wing lives was awarded the 1st prize in the category of “electronic sonorities” @ FIM.

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.