This piece was selected for the DEGEM CD 22 – Soundscape Komposition, Aktuelle Positionen!
Whoohooo!!! To be on one CD with Hildegard Westerkamp and all the other fantastic artists is a real pleasure and honor! Hell yeah!
About the piece: (6.30min/2022) – The title derives from the „Greek word „kaleidoscope” and means: to hear beautiful shapes. Specifically, the three words are: καλός kalós “beautiful”, εἶδος eidos “form, shape” and ακούω akuo “to hear”. The title is also a simple compositional technique. The material consists of various binaural recordings, which are arranged in time, according to the structure of a kaleidoscope with its axial reflections. The three axes in the visual correspond in the auditory to the content or the tags of the files; in this case water, urbanity and movement (in terms of content, e.g. cars and through a moving microphone).
The soundscape recordings are taken out of my audio diary and were made in the summer of 2011, in Germany, Estonia, and Egypt. The diary is a kind of database consisting of audio files of various recordings like soundscapes, acoustic environments, sounds or phrases, rehearsal or concert recordings, interviews, etc. that are arranged chronologically with descriptive tags that allow alternative orders.
Digital technologies were used for the mobile recording with OKM II – original head microphones, for the archiving, as well as for the selection and mixing of the files from the database, which was automated by means of a Max 8 patch.
On the meta-level, the piece is a) the classic archiving of sounds at a specific place and time for a soundscape or acoustic environment, b) a composition with content, sound and narrative, and c) a diary entry linked with very personal, additional sounds (e.g. the opening of a can) and thus private memories..
