Melanie Velarde

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My work in Nodar was conceived as a platform in the form of an installation and a performance, which formed an aleatorical process in acoustic communication across geographic, physical and emotional boarders. Acousmatic sounds, field recordings and electro acoustic works were sourced and generated through analogue means from the surrounding area to participate in an improvisation and “hoerspiel” that were situated in the landscape of Nodar.

My idea was to create a frame work that allowed for improvisation andnew combinations of (visual) local residues, field recordings, electro acoustic compositions and experimental sound works. I was particularly interested in a compositional approach that is characterized by the participating sound’s location and heritage, bringing time and place as modulating elements into the framework and that is coloured by low-fiand analog methods.

My project sought to bring together people, places, nature, textures, phonographers and listeners, to actively participate and experience a sonic and subjective journey that shall never be the same twice. I wanted to createan artwork that not only held reference to locations and time frames but also to private and emotional experiences. My intent was to produce a stage much like a musical garden that allowed for musical and sonic cross-cultural dissemination. When I first came to Nodar I had this idea of creating a musical garden, I felt like planting different things in it: some would grow and some wouldn’t grow too much. Each thing would be a recording or texture, but how each works is a process. All these different things tell a story. I would like people who came to my installation could participate in it by moving through the set up and move things around.

This most likely interactive work consisted of multiple points of departurein the physical realm, each having as signed sounds of various lengths, from several seconds to several minutes. Singular fields generated sound whenever activated, running in a loop or indefinitely. Multiple sources could be triggered, each loop and sequence modulating with others and together weaving a web of a complex audio sensual experience. I chose and edited the sources in respect to the composition for a subjective framework of some sort, but emphasis remained on “aleatorik”, morphology, mutation and spatialization, and that involved improvisation.

I come from a field recording background but I have been more and more interested in bringing also musical elements into the composition, not in a strict way but allowing different scenes, different landscapes, different moods, all these different layers, to create a new story by coming together in a new or even accidental way. Instead of creating it inside apre-designed framework it is something that occurs in space. I was interested in the landscape (the sounds), people, night and day, things that happen, stories, and bring them together to create a composition that becomes a new story. I was also interested in the textures of the rawmaterials like wood, metal and stones and I wanted to take these elements into the composition as well. I wanted to bring some emotion, some poetry into it, which is not so controllable, it could switch, it could go wrong as well.

I didn’t want to structure it too early; I wanted just to collect things almost like in a diary, so I recorded sounds with my tape recorder, and took pictures, picked up stones and sticks, gathered a lot of material. I discovered the guitar sounds very differently when I played it on metal or with the stones by the river. I also liked to play to the animals.

I was interested in resonance of the instruments in different spaces, the guitar on the river with the wind trembling, the keyboard in the tunnelunder the bridge. I didn’t want to record just frogs or just water sounds or just wood. I wanted to record me being there, my journey, like doings ketches of the environment and bringing them together.

In Nodar I had the opportunity to explore how my work can establish networks of relationships based on the natural perceptual abilities of the listener; including elements of metaphor and symbolism, and how the overall architecture of a work can function in both an acoustically/musically structured manner, as well as in a metaphoric/symbolic manner. What kind of approach, based on aural landscape concepts, can be used to establish a discourse within a work, one that has the potential for establishing lines of communication between a composer and a listener?

I invited and sourced the sounds across Nodar, and some nearby places, then edited and developed the compositional parts whatever form they end up taking. I designed the stage and structured all parts for application. I kept the general process of work open to allow for an active participation and involvement.

My aim was to create an environment of experimentation and fluid exchange with a focus on the compositions and sounds themselves on their multiple levels. A place of listening, improvising and playing, where e.g. brittle leaves can be triggered along with a local church, a dog running through the night, the speech of a market woman and a girl singing in the shower…

Visual documentation, drawings, a space, light, projection, tape decks, 9volt powered speakers, film footage, contact mikes, binaural field recordings, a Casio SK1 keyboard, a zither, an e bow, bricks, stones, sticks and wire were among the many tools, ephemera and objects that were involved in my work.

Melanie Velarde is an Australian sound artist currently living in Berlin. She received a Master in New Media Art (Sound Studies) from RMIT, Melbourne Australia in 2001. She has been using mainly field recordings to produce audio/sensual textures that can be experienced within a defined space, usually in form of sound and video installations as well as performance. Her work has been presented in galleries and festivals through out Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, etc. as well as in art radio broadcasts.