t o k e n o

For the last three months I am recording the Venetian harbour in Chania. Unfortunately, a great part of it's soundscape has been degraded over the years by the tourism development. However, there are still some acoustically rich and animated spots around the area, covering a wide band of the listening spectrum. Some have their own tempo and phase shifting properties depending on the volume and the direction of wind respectively. One of the most acoustically interesting spots, is the second wooden dock when walking down from Neorio Moro towards the harbour centre. There you get the feeling that you are inside the sea - and in a way you are. You are able to listen the sea more closely and you also get all the small sounds generated by the friction of the boats with the dock louder - either the buoys or the steel springs and the ropes. Zooming in to each of these sounds you start to hear their individual performances. Using contact microphones I was able to capture some of these perf...

I have discovered John Duncan through one of my favourite youtube channels, Anal Device. His  work includes performance arts, installations, experimental video art and films and of course music...where he use shortwave radio recordings amongst many other.  Here is the meditative: Mantra  

Masters of Sound Collage and Juxtaposition  Negativland  is an American  experimental music  band which originated in the  San Francisco Bay Area  in the late 1970s. Negativland has released a number of albums ranging from pure sound collage to more musical expositions. These have mostly been released on their own label,  Seeland Records . In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they produced several recordings for  SST Records , most notably  Escape from Noise ,  Helter Stupid  and  U2 . Negativland were sued by the band  U2 's record label,  Island Records , and by  SST Records , which brought them widespread publicity and notoriety. The band is also part of the  Church of the SubGenius  parody religion . Here is: Negativland  

Neither a painter or a sculptor, Cage is best known for revolutionising modern music through his incorporation of unconventional instrumentation and the idea of environmental music dictated by chance. His approach to composition was deeply influenced by Asian philosophies, focusing on the harmony that exists in nature, as well as elements of chance. Cage is famous not only for his radical works, like  4'33"  (1952), in which the ambient noise of the recital hall created the music, but also for his innovative collaborations with artists like Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg.  These partnerships helped break down the divisions between the various realms of art production, such as music, performance, painting, and dance, allowing for new interdisciplinary work to be produced. Cage's influence ushered in groundbreaking stylistic developments key to contemporary art and paved the way for the postmodern artistic inquiries, which began in the late 1960s and further ...

Vicki Bennett,  one of my favourite artists who I was lucky to meet and attend one of her workshops some years ago in Athens.   Since 1991 she has been working across the field of audio-visual collage and is recognised as an influential and pioneering figure in the still growing area of sampling, appropriation and cutting up of found footage and archives. Working under the name People Like Us, Vicki specialises in the manipulation and reworking of original sources from both the experimental and popular worlds of music, film and radio.  People Like Us believe in open access to archives for creative use.   Her Personal Page:  People Like Us  and one of my favourite videos:  Story without end

Fani Konstantinidou is a composer, sound artist, performer and music researcher based in the Netherlands. Her music and research focuses on conceptual composition, sonic images and the perception/imagination of the listener in electroacoustic music. Currently, she is investigating how the cultural, social and individual differences of the audience affect the listening process and the educational practices of contemporary music. https://soundcloud.com/fanikonstantinidou https://www.fanikonstantinidou.com/

I love to discover women in electronic music, especially experimental music.  They used to be generally very underrated and not very well known, however recently many people rediscover these beautiful works of music art by many of them. This is Else Marie Pade a Danish composer, the first person in Denmark, and among the first people in the world, to compose concrete and electronic music. She worked with Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as Pierre Boulez. Here is a small presentation of her in the Wire:  Else Marie Pade and one of my favourite pieces of her: Faust (1962)

Writings about Acoustic Ecology by my favourite sound artist Hildegard Westerkamp.  https://www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca/writings/writingsby/?post_id=15&title=linking-soundscape-composition(1)-and-acoustic-ecology Here is one of her music works which actually changed my perception about music making and introduced me to the world of soundscape composition:  Transformations