LABoral offers its visitors ten “sound walks” based on the works produced in the ‘Spatial Narratives’ workshop
Using mobiles equipped with Android system, different sound experiences are presented in the real space of the Art Centre’s surroundings
An image of one of the presentations at the workshop 'Narrativas espaciales'. Photo:LABoral
LABoral offers its visitors ten “sound walks” in which -with the use of a mobile equipped with the Android operating system- they will be able to have many different experiences in the surrounding areas of the Art Centre. The majority of these works have been produced in the Spatial Narratives workshop, held in the first week of November as part of the programme at Plataforma Cero, the LABoral Production Centre. From this Friday 25 November, they are available to the public, which will be able to discover and experience the narrative fictions proposed to them by some of the writers and visual artists who participated in this research process.
Centred on the exploration of geolocalised audio, the Spatial Narratives workshop broadens a line of work developed by the Art Centre since its very opening. Through a variety of works presented in exhibitions and other initiatives, different sound cartography proposals have been produced.
Geolocalised audio is the capacity to locate a sound in a physical space and reproduce it when the users –equipped with a Smartphone or a similar device- find themselves physically present in this place. Locative audio creates virtual sound spaces superimposed over the physical world and has multiple uses: from tourist guides to targeted advertising onto navigation aids for the blind, the exchange of audio files and the reclamation of these spaces.
The Spatial Narratives programme consists of a meeting, the exhibit which is now being presented and two residencies – one in development and the other in artistic research – and sets out to explore the artistic, narrative and imaginative use of audio geolocalisation tools, especially the noTours platform, intersecting literature and sound.
From 17 October to 8 November, Enrique Tomás, a member of Escoitar.org and one of the main developers of this platform for the creation of sound compositions and narratives, noTours, worked at Plataforma Cero to create a version "one", in connection with a workshop to be held at LABoral.
In addition, for an artist residency call for the production of a work, the Art Centre launched an international proposal call, which selected Helena Torres Sbarbati, who on the basis of this meeting has begun to develop her own locative audio project Serendipia [Serendipity]. Helena Torres proposes an investigation centred in Gijón which puts together an acoustic historical drift through Sucu cemetery in order to have an interactive experience, creating dialogues which build bridges between the past and present, history and personal destinies, power and territory.
AN APPLICATION BY ESCOITAR.ORG
The more than 20 participants in the workshop learned how to use the different technical resources, experiment with script writing and work with audio files in order to produce the projects which are now presented. To achieve this they used the noTours application, created by the group Escoitar.org, which utilises open source (Android) mobile devices, equipped with GPS and a digital compass for editing a place with sounds and then reproduce these contents in binaural and ambisonic audio. In this way, pieces are created which allow you to explore spaces while experiencing an augmented acoustic reality, altering the perception of the space through the overlapping of one or more sound layers.
Escoitar.org is a collective of artists, researchers and engineers involved in analysing and working with sociological phenomena through sound landscaping. They started their joint enterprise with the construction of a sound file map of Galicia and then later went on to diversify their activities into other areas consistently in the intersections where performance, musicality and social matters meet through listening. At LABoral they presented noTours, 2009, a stroll around Cimadevilla, produced for the exhibition El pasado en el presente y lo propio en lo ajeno [The Past in the Present and the Foreign in the Self].
PROJECTS PRODUCED AT LABoral
All of the “sound walks” presented below have in common the redefinition of space through sound and the construction of stories in new landscapes. The public will be able to access the documentation in the lobby at LABoral and then embark on the proposed tours in the vicinity of the Art Centre.
DePoética espacial [Spatial DePoética]. Cristina Moreno García, Olalla Hernández, David Aguilar Sánchez
The project proposes to dislocate audio from an exhibition conceived for LABoral’s interior spaces, Experimental Station, and relocate it to the outside of the Art Centre with the intention of creating a poetic image on the partial and disorientated perception of a whole. With this experiment DePoética juxtaposes the intimacy connoted by enclosed space with the extroversion and unmanageability of open space.
LABerinto [LAByrinth]. Enrique Tomás
Developed as a test for the participants in the encounter, the project is a labyrinth of invisible walls. To find the exit and treasure (a sound poem), it is necessary to be guided solely by hearing in order to sense the limits of sound. Lacking visual references, the visitors find they need to walk very slowly while a voice guides them. LABerinto [LAByrinth] is therefore a real exercise in navigation by sound. A blind walk. A demonstration that sometimes the best way to find your way is by closing your eyes. www.ultranoise.es
159 Otro sonido posporno es posible [Another Post-porn Sound is Possible], Lilia Villafuerte; Alejandra Pérez; Isabel Espín; Helena Torres
The exploration of post-porn sound, something which has yet to be categorised, raises expectations of making possible a playful space for meaning creation. The main variables of this proposal are territory, sound and movement through space. By not having rigid narrative lines, the space appears defragmented and the passers-by form unique experiences.
Parking. Julie Faubert
A sound experiment that attempts to articulate the body’s movement, cars journeying and a sound ambience made up by real sounds (recorded in the actual car park outside LABoral) and fictional ones (which come from other spaces). The sound acts as a magical tool which allows you to move between the real, imaginary and fictitious spaces.
Les mots des animaux. Juego de comprensión transgeneracional [The Words of Animals. Transgenerational Game] Fred Adam and Verónica Perales
Les mots des animaux [The Words of Animals] is a simple game of sound association. It has been produced with the help of a 4-year-old girl (Kotodama) who has reproduced the sound of each animal and made a drawing for each one of them. The goal of the players is to guess which animal corresponds to each sound. In doing this they are helped by a file showing the drawings of the animals and a clue about the letters that form its name.
En tu ausencia [In Your Absence]. Lilia Villafuerte
En tu ausencia [In Your Absence] is a sound object, abandoned and invisible with a radius of 30 metres. Discovered during the week of research in the Spatial Narratives workshop at LABoral, this vestige of human presence is located exactly at the following coordinates: Latitude 43.525219 (N), Longtitud -5.611 (W). Like a poetic entity in itself, its structure is made up by layers of sounds. These represent small details cast by the presence of “someone”. All of the pieces build up a whole of “who” went through space leaving behind his or her traces.
Space Track. Luca Rullo
Space Track suggests a spatial tour, using public transport. To be precise, line 1 which goes to LABoral. It leaves from Gijón en route to LABoral in a space shuttle; land space is left behind, crossing over the boundaries of the space launch station and as it travels, spaces and close senses are transformed on the basis of sound.
noTours Cimadevilla (2011 version). Escoitar.org
This stroll around Cimadevilla was produced in 2009 for the El pasado en el presente y lo propio en lo ajeno [The Past in the Present and the Foreign in the Self] exhibition held at LABoral. Two and a half years later, the Escoitar.org group renovated its project, realized under the Mscape platform, and adapted it to noTours for Android telephones. The walk deals with the historical memory of a mythical inhabitant of Cimadevilla (Pepe Bajamar) whose songs narrate the changes his neighbourhood has undergone, its illustrious locals and its legends, intertwining this content with the sound landscape and the reality today.
Serendipia [Serendipity]. Helena Torres
A historical fiction story in the detective genre is the guiding thread of the walk which seeks to discover the temporal matter that makes up a physical space, and the relevance of sound in the perception of our surroundings, stimulating the involvement of the public with the physical context. This project has been developed over an artist residency at LABoral Centro de Arte and will be presented to the public throughout 2012.
AR Route (Ruta Anarquista) Anarchist Route and Tactical AR Tools. Mariano Maturana and Consol Rodríguez from Turismo Táctico, in collaboration with Sander Veenhof
Two augmented reality projects built by the Layar platform, with which the collective continues its TacticalTools series of interventions in the public space using AR technology for mobile devices.
http://www.turismotactico.org/marianomaturana/?p=154
La máquina de escribir de Google Maps [The Google Maps Typewriter]. Marc Antoni Malagarriga i Picas
A writing application using “geoglyphs”, the letters found in Google Maps views. The alphabets which are used are formed by live writing characters, sensitive to space/time.
http://tinyurl.com/geoglifs
http://www.tinyurl.com/artDbutxaca/
Re_colectors [Re_collectors]. Colectivo Y1m [the Y1m Collective] (Ester Barreto, Pedro Coelho, Pedro Dias and Enric Carreras)
Emerging figure in Barcelona’s public space. In the context of the crisis in which we find ourselves, the scrap metal collector is living in poverty-stricken and precarious conditions. The project consists in documenting the rounds they make all over the city, looking for scrap metal.
With the participation of: ACVic
http://mapes.hangar.org/ReColectors/
Mapa mudo [Mute Map]. Sandra García i Piñero with the collaboration of Roc Parés, Joan Llabata (Rez) and Lluís Gómez i Bigordà.
A reflection on silence, tranquility and serenity.
The mute map is an application for Android devices which makes it possible to add the silences and instantaneously make them available for viewing on the net.
http://www.sandragarciaphoto.com/mobile-app/mapamut
