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.

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).

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.