Touch at a Distance - Soundscape Broadcast

Touch at a distance

an outdoor broadcast event organized by Publik Secrets

This year’s outdoor broadcast continues our focus on ambient & soundscape based practices. We invite audiences to think of ambience as a state of awareness and conduct, a kind of immersion in, and with, other entities. Vancouver-based interdisciplinary sound artists Helena Krobath, Jean Brazeau, and George Rahi will share compositions for Hadden Park, based on a collection of field recordings collected in the park and surrounding environments as inspirations for their electro-acoustic creations. The compositions will be diffused through the park, provoking listening as a kind of ambient sensitivity, what Jean-Paul Thibaud describes as “not a simple passive reception but rather the power of intensification and transformation of our relation to the world”.

The event begins at 6:30pm next to the fieldhouse (1015 Maple Street).

Please register your attendance in advance of the event using the free ticket listed here. We will be social distancing during this event. Please be mindful of your proximity to others at all times. You are encouraged to bring a blanket and join us for an evening of sounds under the canopy of trees at Hadden Park, unceded coast salish territory.

Public washrooms can be accessed in this park.

About the artists:

Helena Krobath is a sound artist and educator exploring ways that information is created, communicated, and made meaningful. She uses listening, recording, and composition to consider infrastructures and narratives in places like ports, neighbourhoods and nature zones. Her work has appeared in sound and radio festivals; her recent composition ‘Surveillance Drones Hatchlings First Flight’ appeared in NAISA’s Sound Travels compilation and her audio essay on street economies during COVID-19 was published in the Journal of Design and Culture’s special issue on Covid Materialities. Helena has presented many workshops on storytelling with audio field recording, including work with Nuxalk Radio’s podcasting project in Bella Cool and Megaphone Magazine’s podcasting project in Vancouver. She volunteers with the Vancouver Tenants Union.

Jean Brazeau is an electroacoustic composer and performer currently based in Vancouver, BC. Selected performances include Sky Island (Vancouver, BC), Dig Your Own Rave (Outer Heaven, Victoria, BC), and Luminocity hosted by the Kamloops Art Gallery. His commercial work has been featured on the record labels: Acting Press (DE), 1080p (CA), Pacific Rhythm (CA), and Isla Records (CA). Past commissions have included This Chime Has a Door (2018) for the Pollyanna 圖書館 Library at 221a, as well as Fraser (2019) for Nicolas Sassoon’s Liquid Landscapes at the Surrey UrbanScreen. As an extension of his artistic practice, Jean is a Director at Deep Blue, an experimental sound studio in Vancouver where prior to COVID-19 he co-curated a program of sound-based performances. Jean is currently perusing a graduate degree in interdisciplinary studies at Simon Fraser University where he is studying compositional strategies for the Serge Modular Synthesizer.

George Rahi (b 1987, Philadelphia) is a composer and sound artist based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories. He uses self-created and altered instruments as a method of exploring the intersections between acoustic and digital technologies, modes of listening, and spatial and architectural thinking. His work includes installations, instrument making, compositions for pipe organ, solo + ensemble performance, and works for radio, theatre + public spaces. He has presented throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University and is the recipient of the 2018 R. Murray Schafer Soundscape award. In 2019 he began a year-long mentorship with sound artist and kinetic sculptor Trimpin.

Acknowledgements: This event is organized as part of the Publik Secrets residency at Hadden Park and is supported by the Vancouver Park Board's Fieldhouse Activation Program

Hadden Park is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded Indigenous territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

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