blog.Crónica

En el mundo de las grabaciones de campo el australiano Philip Samartzis junto al francés Eric La Casa trabajaron en el Parque Nacional Kruger ubicado al noreste de Sudáfrica. Allí Eric La Casa y Philip Samartzis estuvieron realizando registros de campo durante diez días para el álbum “Captured Space”.
Philip Samartzis es un artista sonoro con un interés específico en las condiciones sociales y ambientales que ocurren en las regiones remotas. 
En los últimos 25 años, Eric La Casa ha estado escuchando el medio ambiente y cuestionando la percepción de la realidad, así como expandiendo la noción de lo que es musical hoy en día. A través de su estética de capturar sonido, su trabajo encaja en los campos del arte sonoro y la música.
Para esta grabación se utilizó una instalación de sonido multicanal en la que se aprecian la vida salvaje del Parque Nacional Kruger con sus animales e insectos y afluentes, así como los vehículos que transportan a los visitantes y la comunicación por radio que tienen los vigilantes del parque.
El ser humano en este entorno tan vívido como peligroso, es como el homo sapiens cuando se iba de caza por la sabana africana, que podía ser blanco de los mismos animales salvajes que quería cazar.
Este trabajo logra capturar el medio ambiente para que el oyente pueda percibir a través de sus sentidos y crear sus propias imágenes de un mundo salvaje y fascinante. Guillermo Escudero

via Loop

What is the role of wilderness in the imagination?  Is wilderness still wild if it is walled?  In a preserve, who are the captors, and who are the captives?  These are only a few of the questions asked by Philip Samartzis and Eric La Casa as they record the soundscape of South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

The recording starts with something that sounds like a warthog, along with a trickle, crickets and birds.  This will remain the most direct moment of interaction until minute fourteen, as collecting more of the local animal sounds proved maddeningly frustrating.  The duo were confined to cars and paths for their own protection, as are the citizens who live in the middle of the preserve, surrounded by an electrified fence.  But to see it from the animals’ perspective, it’s also a frustration, like having food behind glass in an automat and no way to reach it.

The wilderness is changed by the proximity of humans, as demonstrated in the intrusion of planes and jeeps. Visitors may go on safari or enjoy cooking in the local restaurants as other creatures salivate over them.  Nine minutes in, someone gets to go for a walk ~ but how far?  The mosquitos are buzzing and the birds seem agitated.  The “wild” becomes a tourist trap as the same time as it becomes less wild ~ yet without the tourism the area would become less protected: a conundrum.

The title can be read in multiple ways.  The artists “captured” their sounds; the residents “captured” a space in which to live and shop; the animals are “captured” in that they are restricted from wandering into certain areas; the captors become the captives as their own movements are restricted in turn.  The soundscape is rich and engrossing despite being a left turn.  Samartzis writes, “sound always seemed to appear from somewhere other than where we were. Always at a distance, concealed from view, and frustratingly elusive.”

Yet when the rain falls, it falls on all, a common drenching.  When the sun shines, it shines on all.  Creatures on the inside (however “inside” is defined) imagine eating those on the outside, and vice versa.  Samartzis and La Casa may not have captured the sounds they intended, but stumbled upon an equally fragile ecosystem, like Jurassic Park only one electrical failure away from entropy.  The seeming power of the controllers in the 25th minute leads one to consider other manners of walls: between host and guest, rich and poor, armed and unarmed, and how quickly these walls might crumble in a crisis.  *Crash* ~ “Control, control?”  (Richard Allen)

via A Closer Listen

“Captured Space” comprises two ambient pieces built up from field recordings made over the space of ten days in and around the Kruger National Park in the corner of South Africa. Individual recordings have been layered up to create something denser than real life, but still essentially realistic. It’s a sonic portrait that, unsurprisingly, is dominated by the wildlife sounds from the generally tranquil sub-tropical park, gentle river sounds, and so on.

Crucially though, it doesn’t shy away from the interjection of human artifice- ranger trucks come and go, distant aeroplanes can be heard, tour guides speaking on loudhailers, and so on. Towards the end of the second part, the pulsing electric safety fence is almost full-on electronica in its droning. This is not purely “the natural world” and the work makes us consciously aware that we are sonic tourists.

The recording quality, incidentally, is absolutely pristine- this is the carefully processed stereo result of what was initially conceived as a multichannel sound installation, and it would be fascinating to step inside that space, though I’m unlikely to get that opportunity.

I’m honestly not sure what the animals we hear at fourteen minutes into the first part are, but their deep calls are loud and decidedly comical, a bizarre cameo in a generally relaxed environment. Between sounds like this and the conscious highlighting of human intervention, this precludes the work from working as a piece of chill-out ambient, and instead it begins to feel more narrative driven- a passively-told drama giving us an impression, rather than a message, of the natural world being pinched and encroached by humanity. The result is an unusual compromise, not too much of any one thing, a work that’s curiously both relaxing and unsettling at the same time. Stuart Bruce

via Chain DLK

Now, here’s a name that I haven’t heard in some time. Philip Samartzis was quite active some fifteen to twenty years ago as what was then called a laptop artist. Funnily the last time his name appeared in these pages, back in Vital Weekly 675, was with work also recorded with Eric La Casa. That was a trio, also including Jean-Luc Guionnet, and I wasn’t blown away by that work. Now the two of them return with a forty-seven-minute cassette of recordings made in South Africa. That seems to be a popular location for field recordings (do any of these field-recording artists worry about their carbon footprint? I once raised that question on social media, to which there was one reaction, ‘everybody should worry about their footprint’. I am sure young miss Thunberg would not agree). They recorded wildlife I’d say, but also rivers, trees and “bush camps and safari lodges, gift shops and restaurants”. The audio was used in an installation of which this cassette is a stereo version, which is all about the natural world (animals, rivers, trees) and the constructed world (roads and restaurants). They were limited in moving around in the Kruger National Park, everything was recorded inside a vehicle, another captured space, perhaps. yet there is nothing muffled or distant in these recordings. Instead, it is all very vibrant, moving around with extended choirs of cicadas singing, animals breathing, cars passing and people talking. Even if one was never in this part of the world, you have a pretty good idea of life over there. It is a very fine, no doubt, but like the previous, also not something you haven’t heard before. I was thinking that goes for many things reviewed in these pages and it is perhaps not a great argument. It is lovely stuff. (FdW)

via Vital Weekly