Culinary Belfast: Soundscaping Food

The Culinary Belfast project is an exploration of the city's food culture through sound. Field recordings and interviews from the kitchens of the city's top restaurants, St George's market and numerous food outlets make up a collection of sounds that tell the story of a city through food.
"Culinary Belfast :Soundscaping Food" collates some of these recordings into an 8 minute composition exploring, on one hand, the verbal articulation of food sounds by the city's chefs and food vendors and, on the other, the more abstract, close up and microscopic sound qualities of processes like chopping, frying and boiling.

Culinary Belfast is part of the Belfast Soundwalks project (www.belfastsoundwalks.org).

Som da Maré: Um Projeto Participativo de Arte Sonora

In May 2014, the participative Project Som da Maré brings together the creative energy of a group of inhabitants from a cluster of favelas in Maré (Rio de Janeiro)* through the sonic arts. The work recalls everyday experiences, memories, stories and places. These memories elicit narratives that leave traces in space while contributing to the workings of local cultural.

The result of four months of workshops and fieldwork forms the basis of two cultural interventions: an exhibition in Museu da Maré** and guided soundwalks in the city of Rio de Janeiro. These interventions present realities, histories and ambitions of everyday life in the Maré favelas through immersive sound installation, documentary photography, text and objects.

Som da Maré brings together various groups of participants who together have developed themes, materials and strategies for the articulation of elements of everyday life in Maré. Participants include secondary level students under the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) “Young Talent” scholarships and their families, post-graduate students at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), PhD students from the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Queen’s University Belfast) and members of the Cia Marginal, a theatre company based in Maré. The project also counts with the participation of academics from music, ethnomusicology, visual art and architecture at the UFRJ and a partnership with the Museu da Maré. Over thirty people have come together to make this project possible.

The Local and the Distributed in the Sonic Arts

This paper addresses the relationship between local and distributed strategies with reference to two recent participatory sound art projects in Belfast and Rio de Janeiro. The local concern for site and place is discussed and juxtaposed with distributed practices, which,by definition question and extend the very notion of site or locale. I refer to examples from ethnomusicology, anthropology and education in which participative horizontal research methodologies lead to a dynamic articulation of local conditions and allow for a reflection on how technology impacts on social interaction and relationships with place. The works of Samuel Araújo, Georgina Born and Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire provide a framework of reference in this context.

Composing with Graphics: Revealing the Compositional Process through Performance.

The research presented here is product of a practice-based process that primarily generates knowledge through collaboration and exchange in performance situations. This collaboration and exchange with various musicians over a period of five years that constitutes a body of practice that is here reflected upon. The paper focuses on non-instructional graphic scores and presents some insights based on performances of works by the author. We address how composition processes are revealed in graphic scores by looking at the conditions of decision making at the point of preparing a performance. We argue that three key elements are at play in the interpretation of these types of graphic scores: performance practice, mapping and musical form. By reflecting particularly on the work Cipher Series (Rebelo, 2010) we offer insights into the strategies for approaching the performance of graphic scores that go beyond symbolic codification.

Review of Pedro Ramos Brandão, A Igreja Católica e o “Estado Novo” em Moçambique, 1960/1974.

Book review of Pedro Ramos Brandão, A Igreja Católica e o “Estado Novo” em Moçambique, 1960/1974, Lisbonne, Editorial Notícias, 2004, 259p. ISBN: 972-46-1567-7, préface de José Capela, note scientifique de António Costa Pinto