Sonic Memories


active listening

Till Bovermann

Sound compositions based on field recordings from various sites and occations.

some 210 meters of orange wire

Till Bovermann (2019)

Recorded at Field_Notes 2019 featuring activities of the HAB group (Melissa Grant, Oliver de Peyer, Anne Yoncha, Hannah Imlach, Heidi Pietarinen, Noora Sandgren, Till Bovermann). Mixed and mastered by Till Bovermann, cover artwork by Till Bovermann.

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imagining godzilla — memories of an excursion

Recorded at imagining godzilla, 19.8.2019, featuring activities of Andy Best-Dunkley, Merja Puustinen, Gary Markle, Lauri Hyvärinen, Mohamed Sleiman Labat, Pekka Niskanen, Till Bovermann. Mixed and mastered for headphones by Till Bovermann, cover artwork by Till Bovermann.

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How to approach a complex environment such as the Baltic Sea with its unique interrelations and cultural connotations? How to deal with its insurmountable borders between rock, air, and water, separating the above from the below, the wet from the dry? Sound and augmented listening is a powerful instrument to convey feelings and evoke emotions. The absence of (moving) images allows the listener to focus on the imaginative, the implicit. As Hildegard Westerklamp puts it on her website, “[…] conscious listening and soundmaking is a way of placing ourselves inside the workings of our cultures, societies and landscapes as involved, living participants”. “imagining godzilla — memories of an excursion” is an attempt to sonically tell a story about the week of Imagining Godzilla mini residencies through sounds and sonic impressions I collected during my stay on the vessel. It is a sonic narration in which I did not try to provide objective truth but rather focused on collecting subjective impressions, inviting listeners to associate to the narrated situation through their senses. They are invited to not only take my position as a passenger on the vessel, but also listen through the boat itself, its structural elements and moving, creaking joints. Hence, the aim of my work was to give voice to both, human as well as other-than-human participants of our journey. The piece is divided into six parts: excitement — There was a feeling of excitement amongst travellers, paired with a certain unsettledness caused by both the novelty of being on a catamaran and being surrounded by unknown people. The typical chatter that arises in such situations was soon drowned by the overwhelming drone of Godzilla’s twin motors moving us out into the archipelago.

  • coordination — The silence after this motorised entrance introduced a strange calmness in me, paired with the slightly discomforting feeling of not being in control. Heavily rocking over the waves, it took lots of coordination of our skippers to make our way through the surprisingly heavy gusts.
  • internalisation — After listening out, we now turn to listening into and through the boat’s structure, how it is moving and twisting; rigging banging the metallic mast, the canoes slightly shifting in their dynamic suspension to the platform.
  • perspective — Shifting perspective, slowly moving from the inside to the outside; listening to stories told by the wind, the waves, and the skippers.
  • inspection — We listen to the sounds of approaching an island, connections between the floating raft and the seemingly stable ground of a large, solid rock where established, if only temporarily and with the help of rubber bumpers.
  • return — We eventually return, recognition of the repetitive rolling sounds of the wind turbine is slowly overridden by the twin motors bringing us back to the Helsinki harbour.

Resonance Fields

Till Bovermann, Sybille Neumeyer (2019)

A composed sound map based on recordings of sites and their inhabitants near Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Resonance Fields is a collaboration of Till Bovermann & Sybille Neumeyer for the project “Voicing Encounters – a narrative cartography of virus” (Sybille Neumeyer). More information behind the link.

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Articles related to Sonic Memories are tagged with 'field recording'.