Day 31: Fatigue

Lauren and I are taking it easy this evening watching some Family Guy dubbed in German which makes it twice as amusing. The German version of Judge Judy isn't so much...when they start to shout I get chills. We went for a walk by the river and parklands early today, taunted some friendly ducks, threw stones into the water and made videos of me walking across pebbles. It doesn't sound like HOT FUN but it's good tepid fun. Munich itself is a nice town - we found a new media art gallery in a disused subway station (see image) exhibiting work by artists from Tiblisi, which always makes for interesting viewing.

Aside from televisual procrastination, Max patching has been the order of the afternoon and I've also made some field recordings outside our hotel window which actually sound like a sound installation.

Day 12: The sights and sounds of Weimar town

Today was casual. Slept in through a very sunny (slightly warm) morning then went roaming about in search quick sustenance before heading down to the viaduct to make some recordings on my mini disc. I'm very pleased that I've found a location on my travels that I want to spend time working with - exploring the environment, finding its focal points, exciting its resonances. When you look all the way to the top of the viaduct arch (about 100m), there is this drain hole where rainwater drips down to the ground. The slightest breeze causes the drips to swirl in the air on their way down, striking leaves and the concrete steps on one side of the arch. The slapping sound of drops hitting the leaves and steps is immediately perceivable, but listening closer you can hear the reverberations of the sound inside the viaduct - a very subtle colouration, a residual quality. I made some recordings specific to this sonic event. I spent the afternoon listening to them closely, where the reverberations (due to the close proximity of the microphone) are more instantly perceivable.

In the evening Lauren and I searched out a restaurant and a place for a drink. In the Theatre platz there was a fashion event taking place showcasing Weimar's department stores. Complete with fairground rides, bratwurst/beer/hot wine stalls and a power permed MC straight out of 1988 it was a distinctly Euro-trashy spectacle. It was a great deal of fun though! About half of the fashion was terrible, the song content was Eurovision meshed with American Idol and the sight of the 50-ish female MC singing Tina Turner's "Simply The Best" with leg kicks (in leather pants!) was something that will stick in my memory for a while. We watched a finale of very colourful and loud fireworks from our hostel window.

What an interesting day it was.

Day 4: Evading wasp/hornet nests

Today was spent wandering around Kronberg - exploring the castle, making some fine field recordings of creeks and running away from wasp/hornet nests. This afternoon/evening was spent making some cute real-time Max/MSP compositions with Lauren and I playing musicboxes and chopping up some Bahnhof Rail audio. I'll probably post some mp3s in the next couple of days. I also seem to be listening to be listening to an awful lot of Kraftwerk at the moment, which strikes me as a bit of a cliche.

Day 3: Hiking through the forests of the Taunus mountains

Went hiking through the shallow Taunus mountains that overlook Kronberg. Lauren, Phillipp and I now have sore feet, though I've got some interesting field recordings and we've got a dinner of meaty goodness to look forward to courtesy of Mr.Jacks (Phillipp.)

Tomorrow: scarf shopping, some more recording, a bit of music making and general relaxing.

Mini-disc redux

The other weekend I realised that my neglected mini-disc player still works perfectly fine. I've been making some quiet filed recordings since then with the intention of doing something with them eventually. But in the meantime it's nice to be out and about listening closely to windmills, rain and a multitude of drones.

[30.3.07] soundtransit

Now there's a very clever idea.

My friend Jason sent me a link to an online community called soundtransit, it allows you to take a sonic trip to a variety of locations around the world. Anyone can contribute field recordings and phonography to the site. I'm off to book my flight.