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.

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.

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.