Lom +You Award / April 24, 2023 by John Hooper

We are delighted to share that Pale Blue Dot Collective was selected as one of 20 awardees to be supported by Lom, from 170 proposals from more than 50 countries around the world. We will be given a Lom Geofón microphone.

Geofón is a sensitive omnidirectional geophone adjusted for field recording purposes. Originally designed for seismic measurements, it can be used with regular field recording equipment to capture very faint vibrations in various materials and even soil.

We will use our Geofón mic to record the vibrations of and around the sea defences on the island of Great Britain. We will let the recordings dictate a process of composition, layering them with recordings from our catalogue of sounds from around the world. Our work will explore the urgency of our environmental situation and investigate how rising sea levels are and will continue to affect ecosystems in many different ways.

Supported artists
Alexis Perpelycia (Argentina)
Anmol Tikoo (India)
Arielle Estrada (Senegal)
Chris Dooks (Scotland)
Jami Reimer (Canada)
George Moraitis (Greece)
Kosmas Phan Dinh (Germany)
Lisa Schonberg (Brazil)
Nithin Shamsudhin (India)
Viki Arvay (Slovakia)
Cia Himiân Lí (Taiwan)
Cosmo Sheldrake (UK)
Douglas Tewksbury (Arctic)
Frontyard space (Australia)
Chris Myhr (Canada)
Eleni-Ira Panourgia (Germany)
Leonard Maassen (Switzerland)
Mafalda Ramos (Brazil)
Pale Blue Dot collective (UK)
Raphaële Dupire (France)

Goldsmiths short course Field Recording: Soundscape Composition / March 23, 2021 by John Hooper

Since the 13th January I have been doing a short course at Goldsmiths lead by Marcus Leadley, not actually at Goldsmiths because as with almost everyone else in the world I have been restricted in movement in the hope we will one day get “back to normal”. Anyway this post isn’t about that.

Last year I successfully applied for Arts Council National Lottery funding to develop my creative practice. One of the things I wanted to do was develop a more academic approach to the sound recording I have been doing for a while (since 2014) under the moniker of Landsounds . I had found out about the Field Recording: Soundscape Composition course and on successfully securing funding I booked to start in January.

The course took us through so many elements of sound recording I won’t list it all but I wanted to touch on some of the sections which have been most influential so far. I say so far as I am still digesting much of it and I am sure it will all eventually permeate my practice.

Contact Mics

I have made 4 now and love how simple they are. The sound below is recorded using two of them.

Binaural Mics

Listening through binaural mics has opened up a whole new experience for me. When I began sound recording the first thing that amazed me was the altered perspective of the sound, binaural mics appear to bring another dimension to that sense of perspective. I have been using a matched pair of mics from FEL Communications Ltd, they are small and sound amazing and were recommended by a fellow student on the course.

Reaper

Until starting the course I had been using Audacity to complete my sound recordings. I had tried using Garage Band, Logic and more recently Qbase as these have been free with hardware but I never really clicked with them. Reaper seems more intuitive for me and I have picked up the basics very quickly.

The following composition was made using many of the things I learnt on the course