Un/natural Field Recordings//Natural Overdubs: Workshop
Un/natural Field Recordings//Natural Overdubs is a workshop which utilizes urban, architectural, and natural spaces as both a source for cultivating and processing/re-recording sound.
This workshop is open to artists of any medium (dance, visual art, sound art, experimental music, performance, etc.) who are interested in experimenting with sound.
The goal of the workshop is to create personal sound palettes which can be used for composition, experimentation, and performance.
Un/natural Field Recordings//Natural Overdubs Workshop is based on the project Un/natural Fields, in which William “Bilwa” Costa records man-made, digital, analogue, and mechanical sounds, as well as many other incidental sounds, which make up a city’s soundscape on metros and other indoor and outside public spaces. These recordings are arranged in sound palettes which, combined with sine-tones, are used for experimental sound compositions, installations, and live performances.
Employing techniques associated with Musique Concrète, generative electronic music, and auditory illusion; including: multi-track phasing, oscillation, binaural beating, panning, cancellation, etc., this project uses no plug-in effects. His palettes are comprised of sounds from many cities including: Istanbul, Mexico City, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, NY, Berlin,Vienna, Prague, Kaunas, Riga, etc.
Un/natural Field Recordings are audio recordings comprised of man-made, digital, analogue, and mechanical sounds, as well as many other incidental sounds, which make up a city’s soundscape in public spaces. This process can be done systematically, intentionally, or at random; using various quality levels of recording devices.
Natural Overdubs Un/natural Field Recordings are played back, in the same space as the original recording and/or in various spaces with different sound qualities, using portable speakers; essentially “overdubbing” the recording with the sound event happening in the current space. We will experiment with recorder – speaker relationships, alternating the foreground and background sounds; as well as utilizing a spaces sound qualities (reverberation, reflection, echo, noise, etc.)
This process can be looked at as a sound intervention/concert and/or a recording session which utilizes public spaces.
PRACTICAL
Working in small groups, we will:
– record a series of Unnatural Field Recordings in spaces near workshop
– search locations with interesting sound qualities for playback/overdubbing
– make a series of “overdub” recordings in these locations
– create a sound palette of these recordings
– experiment with playback options through loudspeakers, hand held speakers, etc.
– create scores (graphic, time-based, thematic, etc.) based on research during the workshop
– experiment with ways of utilizing individual sound palettes to perform these scores
– perform scores created during the workshop
The workshop culminates in a performance by the participants, when possible.
Un/natural Field Recordings//Natural Overdubs: Workshop began in Kaunas, Lithuania and has since taken place at Liepaja University, Latvia, and Liebig12, Berlin.
Performance as Practice Workshop
Performance as Practice | solo and collaborative development is a practical workshop, focused on inter-disciplinary performance. PaP is open to dance, movement, performance art, and improvisation artists of all levels, professional and university, who are interested in further developing a solo and collaborative body-based art practices.
Participants will be introduced to various approaches to creating a personal performance practice, including: concept development, physical and mental preparation, experimentation, and execution. We will focus on different aspects, elements, disciplines, modes and/or methods of performance. The goal is to identify and develop a personal practice which is applicable to solo and group situations.
This workshop may culminate in a public performance, conceived and realized by the participants.
Performance as Practice Workshop began as semester long workshop at The University of Applied arts in Vienna; and has since happened in Tallinn, Estonia and Berlin, Germany.
resonance workshop
resonance is a collaborative research network founded in 2011 by William “Bilwa” Costa and Martín Lanz Landázuri to explore figurative, physical, and mechanical phenomena related to resonance. Developed by a varying constellation of artists in the US, MX, & EU, the resonance score continues to emerge through repeated exploration of methods for reverberating mindfully in improvisation.
resonance workshop can be offered for movement, sound, theatre, and other performing artists. We practice listening, observing, sensing, and acting from sound, movement, language, and memory impulses. By reapplying terms and processes typically used to describe the physical behaviors of sound and movement, such as: frequency, amplitude, timbre, source, input, filtering, output, sending, panning, wavelength, particle, and molecule, we engage with expansions and contractions of energy and sound in our bodies and in the spaces where we work. We experiment with deprivation, isolation, and heightening of our various senses to bring new understandings of the potentials lying dormant in our bodies and the spaces they inhabit.
resonance workshop might explore questions like: How do we transmit material that perpetuates in different forms throughout a space? How does material travel from one body to another? How do we translate or morph material into different media? How do sound and movement inhabit different areas of the body, and different places in a space? How can we use practices of vibration, reflection, speaking, sounding, panning, resounding, writing, drawing, imagining, and remembering to cultivate a resonating body?
resonance workshops are designed for various durations: from a single 3-hour session, to multiple sessions spread over a week. A resonance workshop series can culminate in a public performance by the workshop leaders and participants, who collaboratively compose a score from the experiences shared during the workshop.
resonance workshop has taken place in Philadelphia, NYC, Helsinki, Mexico City, Berlin, and Vienna.
sub_space workshop
sub_space is a workshop, based on the performance structure, for dance, movement, visual, and sound artists. This workshop is open to professional and/or university students. During the workshop participants explore various techniques, scores, and exercises based on listening, seeing, identifying and utilizing the entire (macro) space, as well as the (micro) spaces that exist within it.
sub_space workshop has taken place at Tatwerk, Berlin and at LAPS dept. of Teak Helsinki, as part of the Lapsody Festival.
Co- (lab)
Co- (lab) is a site-relative lab, comprised of: dance, movement, performance, sound, and visual artists of various disciplines and levels, from university to professional.
During the lab, we will focus on the specific physical characteristics of the studio, and other indoor and outdoor spaces; and how we, individually and as a group, relate and respond to them. We will use this research to create graphic scores for task-based movements, sound, and visual performances.
Individually, and collectively, we will develop understandings of these scores, and how they can manifest into performances in different places. Using techniques of reduction and refinement, we will compose final scores that are based on all of the material generated during our lab. We will work individually, and as a group, focusing on the topic: collaboration and collectivity.
Co- (lab) has taken place in Vienna, Berlin, Philadelphia, and Aizpute, Latvia.
william bilwa costa 