Son[i]a #361

In this podcast, we talk with Edwin van der Heide about using radio as a way into the public, outside world, and about radio as a highly regulated space that sometimes resists experimentation. We discuss his early interest in short and medium wave radio and how it came to be expressed in these immersive, awe-inspiring installations, and we speculate about the production of meaning inherent in each of them.

Edwin van der Heide's Spiral of Time offers a gentle, non-intrusive auditory portrait of Plaça dels Àngels in Barcelona’s Raval neighborhood, inviting us to observe changes in temporal and meteorological patterns, the varied uses of the space, and the subtle shifts that occur from day to day. By presenting soundscapes over different intervals—hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly—it helps listeners perceive the scale of time differently and understand how the square evolves with each season and moment. In this podcast, we sit down with Edwin van der Heide exactly to discuss this work. We reflect on concepts of time travel and spirals, on creating staged memories and living archives, on the far-reaching sounds that traverse the square, and on the intriguing possibility of expanding Spiral of Time to encompass diverse, non-human landscapes.

Anthea Caddy is a Tasmanian-born and now Berlin-based experimental cellist and sound artist who explores projected sound energy through spatial practices that highlight acoustic and physical phenomena. In this podcast, Anthea walks us through her journey from playing cello in rock bands as a teenager to her ongoing research into projected sound energy. She explains her long-term research on directional speakers and the results of the iterations and testing of the parabolic speakers. She also talks about documentation and about the difficulties of approaching large-scale sound performance.

We dig up some unreleased bits of our conversation with the Tasmanian-born, Berlin-based experimental cellist and sound artist Anthea Caddy. We talk about the dialogue between her practice and science and academia, but also about infrasound, long wave data, mirrors, reflection, the ungraspable and the negotiation with the environment and space.

Roc Jiménez de Cisneros talks about EVOL’s very free deconstruction and reinterpretation of György Ligeti's 'Continuum' and Hanne Darboven’s 'Opus 17A', and how these works relate to the duo's current artistic practice. Unusual notions of time in relation to music, algorithmic reverse engineering, complexity through simplicity, anti-climax, ancient trance music, weird mental states and Dick Higgins’ Superboredom concept pop up in the conversation.