For the next instalment of the School of Wild Listening composer/sound artist Karen Power will present a listening group featuring a performance of ...sounds like the amazon...(2017) on an 8-channel surround sound system. The listening group will also include a short talk by Karen contextualising her work and allowing space for questions and discussion.

...sounds like the amazon... (2017)

Every place has its own character and sense of time. This, for me, is most especially palpable in more isolated or unheard places like the Amazon Rainforest. This piece, which is based entirely on multichannel and full frequency field recordings made by the composer in the Amazon Rainforest in July 2016, explores the possibilities of hearing and approaching the natural structures and harmonies of our world as an integral part of our own existence. It highlights how, when we alter our listening, such places can connect us and perhaps offer us an alternative way of being in our world. In a musical sense, sounds like the amazon... aims to bring this largely natural space and it’s sense of time, harmony and structure, to bare on our constructed spaces, performers, audiences and the musical material itself.

During a live performance the audience + composer are placed inside a multichannel speaker setup where the composer adds a ‘living’ element, in which acoustic elements of each unique performance space are considered as a new listening space of this now extracted and composed environment and therefore alter the way we hear everything within the space - both during and potentially after.Photo by Frida Sjögren

Karen Power

I am an Irish composer/sound artist, based in Cork, Ireland. My compositions utilise two primary sources; acoustic instruments and everyday sounds. My creative output is diverse - from orchestral to installation works - and for the last decade has been focused on field recording as a means of bringing every day environments into a variety of artistic settings. Environments and how we hear every day sounds lies at the core of my practice, with a continued interest in blurring the distinction between what we consider ‘music’ and all other sound. For over a decade, I have listened and recorded in some of the worlds most isolated locations, such as The Arctic, Amazon, Living Namib Desert, Outback Australia and Antartica, alongside more popular and occupied environments such as global cities and native countrysides. Each and every environment is both unique - in its possession of a sonic signature - and local to someone. Resulting field recordings are most often form the basis of new works and are paired with musicians or composed spaces. My work with musicians involves new types of ‘aural scores + parts’, co-creative techniques and live collaborative exchanges, which are unique to each pairing + designed to encourage a shared active listening environment between composer, performer and audience.

To listen + read more go to: www.karenpower.ie

Monday 16th October 2023

Unit 44 (Kirkos) 44 Park Shopping Centre, Prussia St, Dublin, D07 AE10

Doors: 7pm

Event begins: 7:15pm

Pay what you can tickets. Attend for free if you like with donations encouraged and all proceeds going to the running costs of this and future School of Wild Listening events.

Photo used in event artwork by John Godfrey

The School of Wild Listening is a platform for the discussion and dissemination of ecological sound art and music. In our current age of ecological disconnection, listening provides a means to explore and cultivate a deeper connection to the world around us. This listening provides a knowledge for initiating cultural change and allows us to pro-actively engage with the biodiversity and climate crisis conversation.

This programme will include listening group sessions, discussions and workshops with guest artists, performances, soundwalks and more.

Directed by Robert Coleman.