Tag: framework radio show

Remembering Joe Stevens

Last week our friend Joe Stevens sadly passed away.

Joe was a dedicated recordist of everyday life and a wonderful listener. His was an original voice in discussions about what it means to record everyday life in sound; he approached field recording with curiosity; and he was very sensitive to how sounds are intimately bound up with the lives of people. Many of his projects explicitly connected sounds with social history, and he was always inventing new ways to engage communities through sound.

Our Working Lives documents sixty years of changing work practices around Poole, and involved collecting many oral histories from local residents. The bus tour which coincided with this amazing project brought the voices and textures of those histories together with the landscape itself. Sounds of the Seaside – one of many shows produced for framework radio by Joe – opens with the sincere, warm reminder that people’s voices have been kept throughout the show, because they are an integral part of the soundscape. These examples speak of Joe’s generous and sociable focus in his work with sounds.

In a discipline where people often say we need more silence, Joe seemed to often say that we needed to talk more, and to listen better.

[mejsaudio src=”https://archive.org/download/CreativeConversations01/01CreativeConversations1.mp3″]
Creative Conversations #1 – Joe Stevens

Creative Conversations explored questions around funding for the arts, the cultural legacy of the London 2012 Olympics for the people of Dorset, the practices and ideas of local artists, and the thorny issue of how to make a living through creative work. The series is a DIY inquiry, both rich and practical. Unfunded and self-initiated, Creative Conversations were fueled purely by a wish to talk to other artists, to share knowledge, to address issues around public projects and community engagement. All of this seems somehow very Joe.

I will miss conversations with him immensely and am glad for the handful of times when we got to talk, record sounds, and wander round beaches and industrial landscapes together.

His life and work are remembered in the most recent edition of framework, produced by Patrick McGinley; the show makes for highly recommended listening, and includes several unreleased recordings and a fantastic introduction from among many that Joe recorded for framework.

Here are a handful of recordings that Joe made – little snippets of sound, connected with times shared with this wonderful sonic comrade.

[mejsaudio src=”https://archive.org/download/SoundsiteTripBrentfordToBracknell/BrentfordToBracknell.mp3″]
This is a recording of some of Joe’s journey to the sound:site event which we co-organised with Martin Franklin at the Digital Media Centre at South Hill Park, in October 2010.

[mejsaudio src=”https://archive.org/download/aporee_9070_10920/kimmeridgebayseashore.mp3″]

[mejsaudio src=”https://archive.org/download/aporee_9071_10921/kimmeridgebaywaterdrippingdowncliff.mp3″]

[mejsaudio src=”https://archive.org/download/aporee_9069_10919/birdtwitteringatkimmeridge.mp3″]
All recorded on January 9th, at Kimmeridge Bay, where Mark and I met with Joe, Ben from the National Trust and many other folk enlisted through Twitter, for a walk around the bay. I remember these sounds, and pausing in our conversations to listen to them.

[mejsaudio src=”https://archive.org/download/SonicBusTourOfPoolesWorkingLandscape/coachTrip.mp3″]
This is a recording of the amazing Routemaster Bus tour of Poole’s working landscape, which Joe organised as part of the project, Our Working Lives.

Goodbye Joe: you will be greatly missed.

Documenting sound art events using field-recording

Building on the Audiograft 2011 Sound Diary, and the experiences of working with Valeria Merlini at Tuned City and Audiograft 2012, Felicity Ford has produced a radio show for the framework:afield series which can now be heard and downloaded here.

information & tracklist

this week’s framework:afield has been produced in the uk by felicity ford, and is a collection of thoughts and recordings exploring the idea of documenting sound art events. It features recordings created in summer, 2011 at the tuned city tallinn festival during the framework radio documentation and production workshop, which was run jointly by felicity and valeria merlini, and also recordings made by felicity at the audiograft festival in oxford in 2011. this is the first of a 2-part series exploring sonic documentation; the next edition has been jointly produced by felicity and valeria, and will feature recordings from this year’s audiograft festival. It’s hoped that this first show will set the scene for some of the documentary tactics which the pair have been developing in their work together over the past year.

(details of utilised recordings)

Open Field (1980) by Pauline Oliveros (the score is read)
Heikou by Radu Malfatti, performed by the SET ensemble at the Concept as Score Concert, Audiograft 2011
Interviews with students at Oxford Brookes & David Grundy, who went to the Concept as Score Concert, Audiograft 2011
Rhodri Davis speaking about performing in For Rilke at the Concept as Score Concert, Audiograft 2011
For Rilke by Sarah Hughes, performed by the SET ensemble at the Concept as Score Concert, Audiograft 2011
For a drummer, fluxus version 2 by George Brecht, performed by Patrick Farmer
Geophone in the ground, recording by Shirley Pegna as research for her piece at Audiograft 2011, Ground Sound.
Valeria Merlini and Felicity Ford sounding the gates, the metal, the space around the Linahalle in Tallinn, Estonia, 2011
excerpt from the introductory session at the framework radio – documentation and production workshop in Tallinn, Estonia, 2011, where Felicity Ford demonstrates that the edirol recorder is recording
Sound Collage from Audiograft 2011 pre-event podcast, feat. Ray Lee, Shirley Pegna, Stephen Cornford, Mike Blow, Paul Dibley and Paul Whitty, and works by those practitioners, including Murmur by Ray Lee, Ground Sound by Shirley Pegna, Stephen Cornford’s old reel-to-reel cassette player, Shower Piece by Mike Blow and an electroacoustic composition by Paul Dibley
3 words – a collage of interviews with artists and presenters at the Tuned City festival, Tallinn, Estonia. Recordings made by Kadi Pilt and compiled by the framework radio – documentation and production group
Polishing by George Brecht, performed by Patrick Farmer and Saragh Hughes at Audiograft 2011
eBows placed inside a piano in the Richard Hamilton Building, Oxford Brookes University, by Paul Whitty during a performance at Audiograft 2011
Stephen Cornford playing the piano and performers dragging benches around the Richard Hamilton Building, Oxford Brookes University at Audiograft 2011
Sounds of Tallinn sound collage compiled during the framework radio – documentation and production group workshop at Tuned City, Tallinn, 2011
Derek Holzer introducing Tomas Ankersmit’s performance in the Linahalle at Tuned City, Tallinn, 2011
Tomas Ankersmit giving an acoustic tour of the Linahalle during the Tuned City Festival, Tallinn, 2011
Paul Whitty introducing the Concept as Score Concert at Audiograft 2011
Paper Piece by Benjamin Patterson, performed by Dominic Lash, Rhodri Davies, David Stent, Bruno Guastalla and Paul Whitty
Polishing by George Brecht, performed by Patrick Farmer and Saragh Hughes at Audiograft 2011
The section from the short produced during the framework radio – documentation and production group workshop at Tuned City, Tallinn, 2011 where we mixed our field recordings of exploring the Cromatico sonically, as field-recordists, with our recordings of Tomas Ankersmit’s performance in that space
Max Eastley’s Aeolian Device, installed at Oxford Brookes University during Audiograft 2011
Max Eastley discussing the wind, Felicity Ford and Stephen Cornford contemplating/discovering the work
Orange Event Number 24 by Bengt af Klintberg, performed by the SET ensemble at the Concept as Score Concert, Audiograft 2011
Schlingen Blängen (organ performance) by Charlemagne Palestine, performed by Palestine at the Niguliste Church, Niguliste 3, Tallinn, 2011
Sound collage from the framework radio – documentation and production group workshop at Tuned City, Tallinn, 2011 which featured Charlemagne Palestine’s performance, in the context of many other works
Worker at Paterei Prison Fortress talking to us about our entry fee to the prison, then noticing our microphones and letting us go through to make our recordings
Echolocator by Aernoudt Jacobs, performed at Patarei Prison Fortress during the Tuned City Festival, Tallinn, 2011
Tomas Ankersmit giving an acoustic tour of the Linahalle during the Tuned City Festival, Tallinn, 2011
Schlingen Blängen (organ performance) by Charlemagne Palestine, performed by Palestine at the Niguliste Church, Niguliste 3, Tallinn, 2011
Shirley Pegna talking about her installation, Listening through Walls, at Audiograft 2011
The best coffee shop in Tallinn, recorded by Felicity Ford and Valeria Merlini
Paper Piece by Benjamin Patterson, performed by Dominic Lash, Rhodri Davies, David Stent, Bruno
Guastalla and Paul Whitty – discussion about score, then a recording of the performance in the concert
eBows placed inside a piano in the Richard Hamilton Building, Oxford Brookes University, by Paul Whitty during a performance at Audiograft 2011
Electro-acoustic Vocals performed at the Rotermann warehouse by Nisu-Rukkijahu Veski, with seagulls going wild, during the Tuned City Festival, Tallinn, 2011
Alouetta, performed by Felicity Ford and Pierre-Laurent Cassiere, and then deconstructed by Kadi Pilt, Felicity Ford and Pierre-Laurent Cassiere