Danish composer and sound artist Ask Kæreby will be hosting a series of workshops around experimental ways of working with sound during his upcoming Fresh Milk residency in November, 2015.

Find out more about the programme below and email us at freshmilkbarbados@gmail.com to let us know if you are interested in attending, as space will be limited. More detailed information about the dates & times of the workshops will follow:  

About the workshop:

What sounds are available for artistic expression and how can we approach them?

As a composer or musician it is very possible to take available instruments and their sounds for granted, as most have a heritage of hundreds of years, and many new are simply variations or emulations of earlier models. But what if we suspend “the usual suspects” for a while, and try to listen in a different way? What if we refrain from identifying a sound by its source, origin or processing, and instead try and describe what we hear by its own merits? If we open ourselves to the soundscape surrounding us, how can we appreciate this in a meaningful way, and can we communicate to others by means of our own soundscapes, composed or fabricated from field recordings?

In a number of workshops, we will focus on sound as a medium of intrinsic value and its own source of information. With inspiration from the World Soundscape Project from the 1970’s, we will begin an aural mapping of the environment, documenting the local soundscape via field recordings and discussing possible signature sounds or soundmarks. Using different types of transducers, we will investigate vibrations in different types of materials such as gasses, liquids and solids – thereby exploring different modes of perception and listening. These recordings will also function as the compositional base for experimental construction of sonic narratives, musical compounds or combinations thereof.

Ask Kæreby

Artist Statement:

My artistic practice is interdisciplinary and research-based, involving experimental composition, sound design and electroacoustic music. I’m interested in the presentation of narratives by means of sound – not through traditional musical gestures, but using different approaches such as musique concrète or the futurists’ bruitism, thereby giving the listener a more subtle way of experiencing the essence of the work. By placing myself in the intersection between the known formats, I wish to challenge our ways of listening – to music (live as well as recorded), to our surroundings and to (sonic) art.

Since the days of Aristotle, narratives in art have been characterised by a “poetic” organising principle, which is both logically and aesthetically superior to the random historicity of factual events. The incorporation and processing of pieces of reality in the shape of sounds in forming an audible work, contains possibilities for combining and juxtaposing these two principles, which I find extremely interesting.

My projects begin with a longer period of research, where I collect factual and historical information and gather impressions and sounds from the area and/or subject. Particularly interesting ideological or technological methods may appear, and form the basis of my further compositional work.

Bio:

Ask Kæreby is a Danish composer. He studied music production in Copenhagen, earning a MMus degree from The Royal Danish Academy of Music.

Kæreby’s artistic practice is interdisciplinary and research-based, including elements of experimental composition, sound design and electroacoustic music. He is interested in the presentation of narratives by means of sound – not through traditional musical gestures, but using different approaches such as musique concrète or the futurists’ bruitism. Working in the intersection between known formats, Kæreby wishes to challenge our ways of listening – to music (live as well as recorded), to our surroundings and to (sonic) art.

He has been awarded grants in support of his work from The Danish Arts Foundation, Danish Musicians’ Union, Wilhelm Hansen Foundation, Familien Hede Nielsen Foundation, Dansk Artist Association, Ellen & Erik Valdemar Jensen Music Grant, Anders Månsson & wife Memorial Grant and Karen Margrethe Torp-Pedersen & husband Foundation.