1 – "Poetry incarnate"

 
 
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Language, story and voice are uniquely important to Hungarian culture, in large part because the language itself is so unique. Hungarian, or Magyar, belongs to the Finno- Ugric family of languages, which includes Finnish and Estonian. But it is distinctive in sound and structure from other languages in this family, and unrelated to the Indo- European languages that surround the Magyar homelands. It is an “agglutinative” language, using suffixes and prefixes to imply meaning. This to me is one clue as to why magyar is so rhythmic, melodic, and ultimately poetic. George Bernard Shaw wrote that in Hungarian “it is possible to precisely describe the tiniest differences and the most secretive tremors of emotions.”

The poets and the storytellers hold a hugely important place in life here that feels profound on an emotional as well as a social level. The history of Hungary is a history of turbulent invasions and separations, and externally drawn borders. The poets of Eastern Europe often needed to write in surrealistic verse, in hidden message, in times of persecution of ethnic language and culture. Many poets here were also important political figures.

During my first week in Budapest I visit the Petöfi Museum of Literature. The introduction to the exhibition seems to encapsulate the sensibility of where I find myself: “Sándor Petöfi is much more to Hungary than an important poet, rather he is seen as poetry incarnate.”

Petöfi was a liberal revolutionary, the author of the Nemzeti dal and the 12 points list of demands. He read the latter aloud in Pest in March 1848, drawing together a crowd who began chanting the refrains, marching through the city, declaring revolution... Ultimately, he fought in the Hungarian revolutionary army and apparently died in action, although legends differ.

The mythology surrounding Petöfi is powerful, and it has been a powerful introduction to this place. But it is not only this important poet who defines Budapest. The city is peopled with statues to the great poets, and street names and bridges are named after them. It is a city of stories.

So, I’m in the right place...

I know that I could not hope to learn enough of Hungarian to even break the surface, and since this residency is happening three months before I intended, I arrive with a hopelessly tied tongue. What saves me in this situation, I think (I hope) is that I have arrived to listen. I have not arrived as an expert, translator, or even interpreter. I am not here to refract Hungarian poetry or language for other audiences. I am hear to listen, learn, absorb, and create a musical composition through the instruments that Hungary offers to me, to explore the very act and practice of listening. The sounds, voices, harmonies, notes, rhythms, refrains of the cities, countryside, and stories.

I need a guide through this journey, more than a translator – a navigator. On arrival in late June, I discover the work of Hungarian storyteller Zalka Csenge, and send an email. I state my wish for the work to be created in collaboration with Hungary, not as an outside interpretation of Hungary’s storytelling tradition and sounds, but as an open, imaginative response to the stories of this place, as well as an exploration of “deep listening” - of creating ideal sound environments for receiving stories.

Csenge and I meet in a coffee bar and she tells me, not long after we’ve begun to talk, the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. “The shoes that were danced to pieces.”

Image courtesy Zalka Csenge’s blog: “The shoes that were danced to pieces” by Elenore Abbott 1920

Image courtesy Zalka Csenge’s blog: “The shoes that were danced to pieces” by Elenore Abbott 1920

She tells me of the different dialects, and regions, of Hungary and surrounding cultures, across current borders. Slovakia, Croatia, Transylvania ... Magyar.

The variations in this story in particular, that reveal influences of cultural change and social law, in particular the control and subordination of women. Shamanistic tales overlaid with Christian morals. It is one of Csenge’s favourite folktales, and she has written about it on her blog (which is a rich and interesting read):

“Some fairy tale researchers note that "shoes" can be symbolic for sex and sexuality. Add that to the pregnant princesses and the father's (and the male protagonist's) violent judgment, and it is clear what these stories were told about: Girls overstepping their boundaries and "dancing" with men in secret, out of wedlock.

There is also a mythical/religious element to all this - secret trips into the Other World slowly turning from alluring fairy dances to witches' Sabbaths or journeys to Hell, and girls being punished for the mentorship of older, "sinister" female figures in the art of breaking free of the palace at night.”

We discuss the broad seven regions of Hungary. Whether we could gather together seven different versions of this one folktale from each of these regions, seven storytellers speaking in seven dialects, in concert and harmony with one another, ‘dancing’ in the spatial dimensions of the 4DSOUND installation. Seven women storytellers, both young and old – only women. Csenge makes an interesting point in her blog that most of the versions she has found of this story were by men.

If this is a moralistic tale of transgressive women (and their punishment and ultimate capture/release) how interesting is it to interpret this, in many manifestations, in the embodied/disembodied female voice…

I’m excited - and daunted - by this idea. To find and record seven storytellers is one thing. Csenge is enthusiastic and incredibly knowledgeable and connected with the global folklore and storytelling community. I invite her to be my co-creator on this project, and in many ways I feel that she is the soul of the story of this installation. The language and the culture.

Realising this idea technically is daunting to say the least. To weave seven voices together, in a way that is not only interesting sonically but is also entertaining and - critically - gives justice to the telling of the story … this is not going to be easy.

But this is also an opportunity to really explore the power of spatial sound as a way of challenging audiences to really listen, and to really listen in different ways.

I believe 4DSOUND may possibly be one of the only spaces, systems, where it really will be a cohesive experience to listen to multiple storytelling voices simultaneously; to absorb the sensibility of different landscapes and environments and rhythms and melodies of language, spatially. I’m only just learning the system at this point but I feel this to be possible.

Can the spatial sound environment in itself allow for more complex listening experiences? Normally an idea like this would have a great many restrictions, boundaries, in order to maintain cohesiveness, “listenability”. Is this studio going to enable me to weave these voices together in more harmonious ways?

 


 

2 – Deep listening

 
 

The first days in the 4DSOUND studio are both peaceful and disconcerting. The room is built into 3 (or 4?) floors of the old brewery warehouse. The system is installed in the gorgeous wooden beams, in the false floor, above and below. The floor is floating, the subs underneath. Importantly, the air in here feels very light.

It’s disconcerting, not just because of the new technology to learn, or the blank canvas / blank page to face. It’s disconcerting on quite an intrinsic, artistic and emotional level. Discussions with the other residents turn to the strange nature of time, how it may simultaneously stretch and contract. Here, this phenomenon seems intensified. Perhaps it’s the fact that, for once, you are working on one project, for one long period. This is your entire world, your whole focus, your total intent. Outside distractions, especially the pressure of the hustle, begin to fall away. For now none of that is necessary. Time begins to mean something else.

In the 4DSOUND studio, time stretches and contracts across five hour sessions in profound ways. The room is fully absorbing. Sometimes a total sanctuary, sometimes weirdly uncomfortable. The system resists traditional conceptualisations of speaker placement and amplification. Forget the speakers. Think about object, dimension, location, space. The system requires subtlety. Above all, it requires listening. And after a week in the studio I realise I have to re-learn how to listen. Completely.

I also realise that I have to let go of preconceived ideas about how this is going to “sound” and what I am going to “do”. This is both a conceptual and a bodily challenge. Conceptually, what is created in here needs to follow a particular logic, but the way into that logic is not immediately clear. The experience of working in here is a bodily experience – I am still unlearning the habit of the sitting-in-theprime-listening-position of the sound producer that’s been the habit my whole life … I’m walking around, I’m closing my eyes, I’m going outside to walk in the little park area above AQB, along the hilly streets of Budafok, up on the AQB roof, into the Budafok market, into the heart of noisy bustling Budapest … and hearing the world very, very differently.

I’m very slowly beginning to understand what does not work, but don’t yet have much of a handle on what does work. It’s a process… At this point all I can say is that this system does not respond to a heavy hand but it does need a tight, precise hand. Fuzzy sound and fuzzy process don’t generate what I want. This requires sharpness.

Conversations over the lunch and dinner table about deep listening, and listening meditation, prompt reminders to self to practice.

Preparation for sessions in the studio – stopping, breathing, listening. After setting up, I take extended moments to walk slowly, to tune myself through breathing, listening, stopping, moving. Taking notice of the most subtle of sounds, inside and outside the walls. Inside and outside myself.

There are resident artists coming and going in the Art Quarter Budapest space. Approaching 4DSOUND from different backgrounds, philosophies and technological approaches, they are defining and refining this system as they explore it. Alyssa Miserendino has brought a 5.1 recording of the Peruvian Amazon to the SSI, and has spent the past few weeks adapting it to the 4DSOUND system. Over 24 hours, she holds a listening session, where people are invited to sleep overnight. The complexity and subtlety of this work is astonishing, enlightening. I lay in the space in the afternoon, listening to the raindrops following the spatialised storm, feeling negative ion energy, feeling it physically and emotionally. It’s a hugely inspiring introduction to the studio.

Kate de Lorme is working on a guided meditation piece. She records us all separately, in conversation about the internal dialogue in our heads – the common feeling of ‘imposter syndrome’ – the negative voices that plague us all. It’s a curiously confronting conversation to have but also freeing. I’ve been having a similar conversation virtually in messages to an old friend. Being honest about, and vocalising, my fears of not being “up to this” has freed me from all kinds of old constraints. Kate uses the recordings in the opening of her work, our voices circling the room, much in the way the voices in our heads circle. It reminds me of being two or three days into a Vipassana retreat, how the negative voices became clear, distinguishable enough to observe and ultimately reject and put away. This process, of Kate’s work, is enormously valuable, to be able to reflect openly on the experience as we live it.

 


 

3 – Experiments

 
 

Part of the practice is in creating new sketches, experiments. Learning the system and discovering what I can do; what I want to do.

I record Szabadság, the beautiful green ‘Liberty Bridge’ built by a railroad engineer, iron and graceful and tough. Trams run across the bridge creating a rhythmic music. In the studio, I bring the tram through the room, from outside one end, across the centre, out the other wall. It has a true weight, a true rumbling dimension. It is an object that, when I close my eyes, I can feel moving through the space. This is not just a given in this studio – the effect (every effect) needs to be created. I have to break down the recorded sound into its elements, extract those elements that need to move, re-insert them as individual objects, and move them. Control the doppler effect, the real-world effects of objects moving through space. What is a given in this studio is that you are working with sound in a very physical sense, and this is changing the way I work on a fundamental level.

Next I place a recording of breathing and a recording of a speaking voice and I aim to place them where a speaking voice would be in physical space – the dimension, the height, the resonance of a person, about 5’10”, walking across the room. Late one night, I’m standing alone in the studio focused on something else when heavy breathing (that I’ve forgotten about) approaches me from behind, passes through and around me and continues on … scaring the hell out of me. Again, the physicality of the sound is becoming super clear.

Recording Szabadság. Photos by Ana Amorós López

Recording Szabadság. Photos by Ana Amorós López

Still waiting for the content for the Sonority work, I begin an entirely different composition. It develops out of three things: experimentation with sounds under the floor, specifically creating the sounds and sense of an ocean beneath our feet; a meditation on trust as a way of flowing with the necessary waiting-time as this project develops, which manifests as a new poem written on walks around Budafok; and the melody of the Seikilos Epitaph - the oldest complete song notation known. I have had a midi file of this melody for a long time but have never used it. Early on a Saturday morning, I weave it into a piece that contains a multitudes of old dreams.

Dreams from Greece, from visiting the Delphi oracle and receiving the word “TRUST”. Sounds of the ocean, the wind on the Acropolis hill. Dreams from Australia, from times of mistrust. Sounds of the wind, the birds of Bondi. Dreams from Barcelona, from times of misplaced trust. Sounds of the streets of the Raval, a storm recorded on a rooftop. And dreams from Budapest, the present, where trust is coming into sharper and easier focus. Sounds of friends splashing in puddles in a downpour, thunder resonating around the buildings of Budafok, the trams running across the Szabadság bridge, city traffic in the rain.

I record the voices of the artists who are also staying and working in the institute saying three words: “Bizalom. εμπιστοσύνη. Trust.”

I record Petko, one of the artists, reciting the words from the epitaph:

“While you live, shine
Have no grief at all;
Life exists only for a short while
And time demands its toll.

While you live,
dance and sing, be joyful:
For life is short,
And time carries away his prize.”

Once the recording for the Hungary piece begin, I’ll shelve this. But it feels like a piece that needs to grow, and hopefully will manifest in another time and place, another context.

 
 

Postscript: This piece, called “Bizalom”, continues to develop.

In October in Athens I performed it live in Chimeres Space, using a video mix made from videos of my travels in the previous months.

 
 


 

4 – Maps, circles, and descents

 
 

Csenge has put me in touch with four other professional storytellers who will tell different versions in different dialects. Ana has introduced me to a traditional Hungarian dancer, Bitó Katalin, who in turn suggests a family friend as a teller. So things are beginning to move.

The concept for the work is developing also. I draw on maps of the seven broad regions of Hungary. The idea is to use seven versions of the story; seven dialects. Csenge explains that the number seven has significance in folklore and fairytales. (There are many origins of this – one that sticks in my mind is the lunar cycle. Each of the 4 lunar phases lasts approximately 7.4 days.)

An early version of the 7 regions / 7 environments “map”

Looking at the 4DSOUND studio as a geographical space I map the seven regions, with the studio door in the south-west. To create ‘regions’ of soundscape, environments that listeners walking around the space will move in and out of. Each storyteller will be ‘placed’ in their region – from which they begin, from which they move as the storytelling progresses, in concert with the other voices.

The question of whether this is an exhibition - into which people will come and go, and move around - or a theatrical show in which people stay put and experience it in a linear way, is still moot. I discuss this with Paul Oomen. Initially, the concept of the seven regions seems to lend itself more to an exhibition, but as we discuss it my instinct is that this will be a theatre experience. I decide to wait until the stories are recorded, and I can hear them in the space, how the voices interact and how much of a linear experience it becomes. This is where the trust comes in – trust the time this will take!

We have six storytellers at this stage. I’m undecided whether to include the English version as the seventh voice. I feel as though the English language may be disruptive to the ‘music’ of the Hungarian dialects. Ana points out that the sound design becomes the seventh storyteller.

I have invited filmmaker, artist, and SSI intern Ana Amorós López to join me on this project, to document the journey for a film. We are also talking about visual projections for the exhibition in December. For the exhibition, I want to use projected light in a way that plays with the ‘edges’ of visual information, exploring the focus of listeners with low-visual input. How much visual input is distracting to active listening? The studio has LED lights that can be used under the floor, to change colours and highlight the room, but I’ve been thinking about projected light and colour since working with the projection/sound installations on the White Night projects. I’m really interested in using projected light rather than LED or bulb light, to colour a room at low intensity. There is something about projected light that I find more ethereal. It’s more conducive to a dreaming state. Most of the time when I’ve been working with projected light and video artists, the artists are too consumed with a need to make it super visual and not really capable of thinking in subtle terms or of stepping back for the audio to lead. Ana is a different kind of artist. She has the sensibility and the sensitivity to sound, especially since she is now a visual artist and craftsperson, working with 4DSOUND. She understands what I’m talking about immediately, so I think this is possible to do and I’m excited about what we might come up with.

So the journey really begins now, in the 4DSOUND studio, recording Csenge telling both an English version, and Transcarpathian storyteller Pályuk Anna’s version of the tale of the dancing princesses. Csenge’s version of the story is quite long, about 20 minutes, and has a depth of philosophy; of the significance of the events to the women themselves. Pályuk Anna re-interpreted these stories from a more feminist perspective, so there are many more layers of meaning. There is a coda to her story in which the married princess and shepherd talk about how he was able to uncover the mystery. He tells her of three pieces of advice that he got from his mother, all of which he used to make decisions that led him to the right place and time to discover the secret. This is the first - and only - mention of any mother in any of these tales or in any of my research into this story so far. That’s interesting. Where is the mother?

Csenge is going to be the “anchor” of this work, something I understand even before I record any others. Not only in her role in creating the work but also in her voice and her telling. Her voice is soft and rounded and calm. It is one of those voices that you can easily listen to for a long time, that lulls you into a comfortable state of listening. There is a smile in her voice too, and an intelligent defiance.

The second story to record is Nagy Enikő who tells a version in the Kamocsai dialect, from Hungarian-speaking western Slovakia. I record Enikő and Csenge in a makeshift “booth” constructed from the foam sound baffles in the FOH area of the 4D studio. Unfortunately it’s a bad-star day for recording when Enikő is here. We have to stop at various times for intrusive loud noises (hammering) coming from somewhere in the building below (the AQB gallery), from outside (trucks and planes), and then one of the baffles collapses on Enikő’s head! Enikő is very patient, and we’re in good humour. But it’s a challenge, just due to the location. There is always noise to deal with – often industrial noise from outside, also often internal AQB-generated noise. It becomes a part of any sound you’re working on or listening to in the 4D studio – you just kind of incorporate it into your experience. And sometimes that’s a great thing. It’s enhancing the effects of the immersive sound, and the act of active listening. Sometimes however let’s face it, it’s not ideal to have a sound studio in an industrial area. Without any dedicated soundproofed space, there is really nowhere to record safely. In fact I’d rather all of the stories were recorded somewhere out ‘in the field’ where there is a different energy. But for some it’s not practical.

I’m reading Csenge’s book, “Dancing on Blades: Rare and exquisite folktales from the Carpathian Mountains,” along with a book she has lent me, Heidi Anne Heiner’s “Twelve Dancing Princesses: Tales From Around the World,” which documents many versions of the folk tale we want to tell. Also known under titles such as "The Dancing Shoes," "The Worn-out Shoes," and "The Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces," it may not be as famous as stories like Cinderella yet the dancing princesses have a very wide reach, right through Eastern and Central Europe. The differences in the story are fascinating; my favourite is from one of the Hungarian versions in which the princesses descend to a palace in a lake of fire, and dance with devils with hooves instead of feet, and some of the older princesses already have devil babies waiting for them every night underground. The Hungarian versions really are dark.

In all of the stories, there is a series of descents. The princesses open a portal in their bedroom every night, and pass through a series of forests – forests of copper, silver, and gold (or diamond). They sometimes also drink from a fountain in each forest. They sometimes cross a lake. They always arrive at a palace, where they dance all night with princes. So we need to descend into the forests and down to the palace with them, which means using ascending waves of sound to create the illusion. I begin to experiment using a modulated synth sound, playing with EQ and chorus and phasing, trying to create an effect of it building from below, growing and filling the space as it envelops us, resonating within our bodies, and ‘thickening’ as it sweeps above. Working with the spatial delay, the reflecting ‘walls’ and the dimensions within the 4DSOUND controls, I begin to achieve the effect of descent but it’s still not profound … I find that I want it to be more physical, more of an intense sensation.

This process is interesting, building also on experiments for a White Night installation – “The Seadragon’s Lair” last year. In that work, I needed to create the illusion of the La Trobe Reading Room diving underwater, into Port Phillip Bay. In that space, I was restricted to essentially four surround speakers plus the central subs, but had the advantage of a room with immense vertical height and huge natural reverb, and I ended up using the room’s reverb and EQ mostly to create the effect. Here, you can simply create an object that emerges from deep below and grows in dimension as it rises, however there are other complications here with the diffusion of the sound once it is amplified in all speakers and especially with big diffused synth sounds and with the subs under the floor – vertical movement actually feels harder to achieve in this setting. I’m not entirely happy with it yet and need to explore other ways of creating a sense of vertical movement with an atmospheric sound.

The other fundamental movement of this work will be circular, counter-clockwise, as the traditional women dance in groups. I find that the horizontal movement is much easier to achieve in here, especially with simpler sounds. The reflections of the room, the large expanse of ceiling in particular, mean that sharper sounds on the periphery are much easier to control. The earlier experiments with voices and creating the illusion of bodies in the space are going to be the key here.

Ana takes me and the other resident artists to a regular Friday night traditional dance party in a Budapest bar. It’s the height of summer, very hot and humid, and late. As we enter the bar, no one is dancing (the band is taking a break) but the air is thick with the energy of dancing that has only just stopped. This is real, alive, tradition. Sweat, pheromones, happiness, intensity, seriousness about the dance, and pálinka! We also meet with Katalin to discuss recording her dancing some traditional partner dances from different regions of Hungary. I will record their feet. I have the idea that I can use these recordings to build up the illusion of feet dancing around us. Ana, Katalin and I plan a trip to her family’s farm, near Szeged south of Budapest. There, we will also record her family friend Irén’s version of the story of the dancing princesses.

 


 

5 – The stories and the storytellers

 
 

From mid-July through August, I record versions of the Dancing Princesses from the six storytellers. Nagy Enikő, Mónica and Csenge are recorded in the SSI in Budapest. To record Irén, Szabo Enikő and Mariann, Ana and I go on three adventures into Hungary’s regions … adventures I’ll tell later. Below is Csenge’s insight into the folk tale and its variations and interest. Then I’d like to introduce you to all of the storytellers, and their versions of the story.

About the tale of the twelve dancing princesses
by Zalka Csenge Virág

The folktale type of the Dancing Princesses (ATU 306) is very popular in Hungarian tradition. It is the story of a group of princesses (three, seven, or twelve, depending on the text) who sneak out of their palace every night and go into a magical realm to dance their shoes to shreds. They are not found out until a brave (male) hero secretly follows them on their nighttime journey and brings proof of his adventures. In the end, he either marries one of the princesses or is otherwise rewarded, while the princesses are either married off or punished for their escapades.

Interestingly, this folktale type seems to be confined to Eastern and Central Europe and is little known outside of this region. As a tale about nighttime revelries and descent into the Underworld, the story is believed to have ancient Greek origins, and ties to the cult of Bacchus. While it is best known from the pretty and child-friendly Grimm version, the story exists in more than 40 variants in Hungary, and most of them are neither quaint nor childish. In many cases, the princesses descend into Hell to dance with devils, and shred their shoes by dancing on a floor made of blades. In even more straightforward texts, the elder princesses become pregnant on their journey, and keep returning to Hell every night to feed their babies. Usually it is only the youngest sister, the one with her “shoes untorn”, who gets away unscathed in the end; the punishment for attending the dances in Hell is death by burning, or a lifetime in prison for the fallen women.

What makes this tale type particularly interesting is how much it can shift in meaning depending on how – and by whom – it is told. It is fascinating to compare female storytellers’ treatment of the story with the versions of male tellers’. Especially in the Hungarian tradition, where cruel elements abound at the end, female tellers are more inclined to feel for the dancing sisters, and have them married off to their dancers, rather than burning them for witchcraft. This phenomenon probably requires no deep explanation, but it does make this tale type a story with a particular interest to women, tellers and audience alike.

 

Zalka Csenge Virág

Zalka Csenge is a professional storyteller and author. She was born in Győr, in the northwestern part of Hungary, and grew up in a rich family storytelling tradition. After getting a degree in Archaeology, she studied storytelling in the USA as a Fulbright scholar, earning a master’s degree in Storytelling, and a PhD in Culture Studies. She currently lives in Budapest and works for the Világszép Foundation for Children in State Care as a resident storyteller and researcher.

Video still: Ana Amorós López

Csenge’s version of the tale was collected from Transcarpathian storyteller Pályuk Anna in the first decades of the 20th century. Csenge published thirty of Pályuk Anna’s folktales in English, in her book “Dancing on Blades.”

Installation video by Ana Amorós López (no sound)

In Csenge’s telling of Pályuk Anna’s version, there are 7 princesses. The king had always wanted sons, so doesn’t care much for his daughters. The royal shoemaker complains to the kind that every night, the princesses’ shoes are torn, and he cannot keep up with the repairs. The king announces that whoever finds out what the princesses are doing every night will get a reward - and, a princess to marry. Many try but they all fall asleep. A shepherd volunteers, asking that he gets 3 tries, and that he be allowed to take his pig into the bedroom. He is locked in the bedroom at night. The princesses give him dinner – he feeds the food to the pig, the pig falls asleep, the shepherd pretends to sleep. The princesses open a trap door and descend through a copper forest, silver forest, and then golden forest. The shepherd follows and, in each forest, breaks off a branch which rings out, startling the youngest princess. They arrive at a diamond palace, and the princesses enter with the shepherd watching through the windows. There is a dance floor, made of razor blades. 12 princes emerge to dance with the princesses, but the youngest refuses to dance. They all return to the room, where the youngest princess finds the pig in her bed. She says nothing. The next night, the shepherd takes his puli dog into the bedroom with him. The dog eats the dinner and falls asleep, the youngest princess leaves a key for the shepherd as they descend through the trapdoor. He follows, the journey repeats. On return to the bedroom, the princess finds the dog in the bed, and reaches out to hold the shepherd’s hand. On the third night, the shepherd takes a raven to the bedroom, but doesn't feed it. He follows the princesses again to the palace. The youngest again refuses to dance, and the youngest prince attempts to drag her onto the floor, at which the raven attacks the prince who falls into a barrel and drowns. The next morning, the shepherd tells the king the story, and shows his evidence. The princesses explain that they and the princes are cursed, and they ask to marry the princes – except the youngest, who marries the shepherd. The king agrees, then locks the trapdoor so that there would no longer be a portal to the other world. The youngest princess and the shepherd rule the kingdom.

In the coda to this story, the princess asks her husband years later how he was able to stay awake and discover what they were doing. He answers by telling her 3 pieces of advice he was given by his mother, who had died when he was very young: ‘Never to eat from the table of the rich until I am rich myself’ – why he gave the food to the pig and dog, so he could stay awake; ‘Never to look back’ – how he never lost track of them through the forests; ‘To always share what I have with somebody who’s poorer than I am’ – so he will rule with his princess wisely over his kingdom. *

* All story summaries on this page are from Csenge’s translations.

 

Nagy Enikő

Video still: Ana Amorós López

“[I tell] the tale in the Kamocsai dialect (from Hungarian-speaking western Slovakia), which I brought to you from the banks of the River Vág, where three golden apples fell from the skies.” Nagy Enikő's version

Installation video by Ana Amorós López (no sound)

“In everyday life I'm the kind-hearted witch - I've been working with herbs for over 5 years. Just like my profession, folktales found me too. In 2017 I realized my own direction, in the form of a storytelling series called KismadárMesék.”

In Nagy Enikő's version, there are 12 princesses tearing apart their shoes every night. The king announces that whoever can find out why, can have a princess, and half the kingdom. A shepherd discovers 3 dwarves fighting over 3 magic items – a hat that lets you see far, a cloak of invisibility, and seven league boots. The shepherd offers to judge a running race, but while the dwarves run, he takes all 3 items and runs home. The next day, the shepherd meets an old woman, who gives him the advice that he’ll need the 3 magic items, and also not to drink the wine the princesses give him. The shepherd gets 3 nights to try. The princesses open the trapdoor and descend into a copper, silver, then diamond forest. The palace is spinning on a duck leg. The youngest princess has no lover; the invisible shepherd dances with her. He also drinks wine and steals utensils from the party. He uses the boots to get back before the princesses, and on the way takes branches and cups from all three forests. The journey repeats twice, and on the fourth morning recounts all he’s seen to the king, who marches down to the palace and threatens the 11 princes to attack their kingdom if they don’t marry the princesses right away. The shepherd marries the youngest princess.

 

Lovászi Irén

Video still: Ana Amorós López

Installation video by Ana Amorós López (no sound)

“What could I tell about myself...I'm a simple farmer's child. We remained just how we were. I finished school too, of course... There were some who changed completely when they got to the city to do the school there. My soul is much richer than a soul of one who grew up in those "cube" houses in the city. We could play well even with a chicken. We collected nutshells, we filled them with chicken shit and we took it to someone ‘Here's some walnut for you’...”

Irén is 60 years old, and lives in Üllés, in south Hungary, next to Szeged. Fonó folkdance company is very important in the social life of the village since more than fifty years. A lot of people get to know the folk culture of the Karpathian basin. Irén also got to know folk music and started to play. She plays still, as well as a performing as a contrabass player in a band called "Rézhúros banda", also from Üllés. She used to go a lot to folk music camps, mostly to Transylvania. She learned most of her stories in these camps as well.

Irén tells the Grimm Brothers version of the tale, with some personal twists. There are 13 princesses, who the kind locks in at night so that no one can hurt them. The king finds torn shoes every morning and announces that whoever can find out the reason can marry a princess. There is a soldier, who hears about the challenge and wants to try. He encounters a hermit who gives him advice, and a cloak of invisibility. The soldier asks the king for a room adjacent to the princesses’ bedroom. At night, the princesses offer the soldier some wine with sleeping powder in it, but he only pretends to drink it, then pretends to sleep. He puts on the cloak of invisibility, and watches as they open a trapdoor and descend. They pass through a copper forest, silver forest, then gold forest. In each, the soldier breaks off a branch, startling the youngest princess. They also arrive at a lake, where princes are waiting with boats. The soldier gets into the boat with the youngest princess (the prince complains that the rowing is harder than usual). The row to a beautiful palace, where they dance all night. As dawn breaks, they go home, and the soldier runs ahead to pretend to be asleep. The journey repeats twice. On the third night, the soldier notices that the chalices have the names of the princesses engraved on them, and steals one for proof. Telling the king the story and showing his proof, the soldier is offered the youngest princess but chooses the oldest, since she is closer to him in age. They marry.

 

Szabó Enikő

Video still: Ana Amorós López

Enikő from Sepsiszentgyörgy, Transylvania (which she calls the Garden of Fairies) is a Metamorphoses story therapist and the founder of the Holnemvolt Storytelling Festival of Székelyföld. She also started the Golden Key storytelling day camp series. She tells to an average of 2,000 children and 200 adults a year, and conducts storytelling activities in schools, camps, and other venues.

Installation video by Ana Amorós López (no sound)

Enikő has been a full-time storyteller for 4 years. She recently published her first English-language folktale collection under the title Magical Christmas (Chapeltown, 2018.)

Her version of the tale comes from her grandfather. 

In Szabó Enikő's version there are 12 princesses, tearing apart their shoes every night. The king offers whomever can find out why, a princess for a wife, and half the kingdom. But in this version, if he fails he loses his head. Many try, many are beheaded. A shepherd boy encounters 3 dwarves fighting over their inheritance – a hat that enables you to hear people’s thoughts, a cloak of invisibility, and boots to take you anywhere. He offers to judge the argument with a race, and whilst the dwarves race, he steals the magic items. He then overhears, through wearing the hat, about the 12 princesses and the challenge of the king. He goes to the kingdom and asks to try, requesting that he sleep in the room next to the princesses. The shepherd uses the hat to find out that the princesses have put sleeping powder in his wine. He pours the wine into his shirt and pretends to sleep. The princesses kick him and stick needles into his foot to make sure he’s asleep, but he manages to fool them. The princesses open a door under the eldest’s bed, and descend, passing through a copper forest (with copper birds, leaves, dogs barking), a silver forest, and a gold forest. In each forest the shepherd breaks off a branch, startling the youngest princess. But her older sisters laugh at her. They reach a gold castle standing on a rooster leg. There are 11 princes, a feast, golden plates. The 11 older princesses dance with the princes. The youngest dances alone and then with the invisible shepherd. The shepherd beats them back to the room, pretends to be asleep. The journey repeats twice. On the dawn of the third day, the king sends for the shepherd who takes the king to the room, wakes the princesses, moves the bed and shows the stairs. They descend through the forests and to the palace. The king tells the princes that they can either marry the girls or they will be attacked. The princes agree to marry the princesses, and the shepherd marries the youngest.
The end … “Three apples fell from heaven: one for the teller, one for the listener, one for the one who is on the way.” **

** An Armenian closing formula

 

Kovács Marianna

Photo: Ana Amorós López

Born in an almost fully Croatian-speaking village, Drávasztára, along the River Drava in southern Hungary, Marianna’s storytelling combines two cultures and two languages. She studied in Budapest and Zagreb, lived in various places, and is currently the director of the Hamvas Béla City Library in Százhalombatta.

Installation video by Ana Amorós López (no sound)

She has been a storyteller for more than ten years and is an active advocate of traditional oral storytelling – she organizes storytelling conferences, started the Day of the Hungarian Folktale movement, and is president of the Meseszó Association for Hungarian Storytelling and Oral Folklore.

Her version of the tale comes from a Bukovinian collection, shaped to her own style.

In Marianna’s version, there are 12 princesses. The king announces that anyone who can find out why they are shredding their shoes every night, will get a princess and half the kingdom. Everyone tries, but they all fall asleep before they find out. A shepherd sees 3 dwarves fighting over magic items – a hat that makes you hear everything, a cloak of invisibility, and seven league boots) – and he tricks them by telling them to run a race, while he steals the items. He meets an old woman on the way home who tells him about the king’s announcement. He goes to the king to volunteer. The king warns him that if he fails three nights in a row, he’ll be beheaded. That night, the shepherd is in a room next to the princesses’ room. They offer him wine, but he pours it into his boot. He pretends to be asleep. The princesses open a secret door and descend; the shepherd follows. He steps on the youngest princess’ skirt, who cries out, but the others tell her not to worry. The descend through a silver forest, a gold forest and a diamond forest, to a palace in the middle of the diamond forest filled with music. 11 princes greet the princesses, and go to dance. The invisible shepherd dances with the youngest princess. They go home, and on the way the shepherd collects branches from the forests. He runs ahead to pretend to still be asleep. The journey repeats twice. Finally, the king summons the shepherd who tells him everything and shows him the castle. The king threatens the princes, unless they marry the princesses. The youngest princess marries the shepherd, they live happily ever after.

 

Szeleczki Mónika

Photo: Ana Amorós López

Mónika was born in the westernmost Palóc town, Kéménd (Kamenín, Slovakia), and tells her stories in the western Palóc dialect. She learned storytelling from her grandmother and other Palóc storytelling elders.

Installation video by Ana Amorós López (no sound)

She enjoys the freedom of oral storytelling, the creation of a narrative in the moment together with the audience, and the flexibility of elaborating and embroidering the stories according to her mood. To her, storytelling means playfulness, self-healing, relaxation, respect for our elders, tradition, heritage, and joy. She wishes that all listeners may take the stories in their open hands, put them in their bags, pockets, or the folds of their skirts, and when they have a chance, pass them on.

Her version of the story comes from a Palóc collection; it was originally told by Szűcs József in 1902. She added phrases and motifs from storyteller Bartusz Józsefné sz. Szandai Teréz, a famous traditional teller from the Palóc village of Herencsény.

In Mónica’s version, there are 12 princesses tearing their shoes each night. The king offers anyone who can find out why, half the kingdom and one of the princesses. The king’s shepherd finds 3 devils fighting over an invisibility cloak. He tells them to run a race, and steals the cloak. He volunteers to the king to guard the princesses, asking to be allowed to sleep in the doorway. He waits until midnight, at which point an old hag flies in through the window with a pot of ointment which she smears on the backs of the girls. They grow butterfly wings and fly out the window. The shepherd also puts the ointment on his back, grows wings, and follows them. The pass through a silver forest, gold forest, and diamond forest. In each, they drink at a well, using silver/gold/diamond cups. The shepherd breaks a branch and takes the cups in each forest. They arrive at a castle and climb to the attic, where they dance with 12 devils on razorblades until they shred all 12 pairs of shoes. Then, they sit to eat at a table with golden plates and cutlery. The youngest princess drops her spoon and fork, and the invisible shepherd pockets them. They all fly home, the shepherd flying ahead to pretend to be asleep. The shepherd tells the king everything, and shows him the evidence. The king then locks his daughters up in a room – apart from the youngest, who falls in love with the shepherd. They get married, and eventually inherit the kingdom.

 


 

6 – Field recording, Csongrád

 
 

I’ve been able to upgrade my equipment for this trip, with the support of the Australia Council. Armed with a new ZoomH6 and RØDE shotgun mic, I rove Budapest streets and hills and go out early in the morning / late at night in attempts to catch the nightingales. The ZoomH6 is a tidy little recorder and AI, and they have to a great extent dealt with the issues of capsule noise that has prevented me from buying their recorders before – I still have to carry it like a fragile egg which to someone accustomed to having a recorder strapped over my shoulder is annoying, but I feel I can move more freely.

I’ve learned that to get the best directional sounds in the 4DSOUND studio, wide stereo atmospheres need to give way to directional captures. So I’ve returned to field recording with shotgun, something I haven’t done much of recently. The stereo capsule on the Zoom is clean enough though to gather atmospheric field recordings, and my philosophy at this point is to gather everything I can, to have as many options as possible for the ‘regions’ in the room.

Ana, Katalin and I travel to Kati’s family farm in Bordány, near Szeged, the centre of the Southern Great Plain. We literally drive through a field to arrive at the farmhouse, where Kati’s mother Katalin Kisapáti sets about cooking a magnificent stew, and we engage in the warm confused smiles and laughter of those who do not speak each other’s language. Over the next couple of days in this country idyll I get up at dawn to do some literal field recording and wander in the gathering dark capturing frogs and crickets and curious birdsong. I spend a blissful couple of hours on the little lake in the early summer morning recovering myself through listening. After an intense first half of 2018, being here now is only just really sinking in. I record the lake, the dragonflies and water grasses, the distant machinery and road traffic, the wandering winds. In turn with the stereo capsules, and with the shotgun. And then I just turn everything off and listen, deeply, properly, to where I am. To now. I feel 100% present for the first time in a long time. The experiences in the 4DSOUND studio has opened my ears and the sensitivity of my body to sound. I’m pausing to listen to the world in a very clarifying way.

Recording at Katalin Kisapáti’s farm

I record three Transylvanian folk songs, played by the trio Szkojáni Charlatans / Hét Hat Club: this is Kati’s brother Bitó János, Valentin Desmarais and Kjaratan Code, who are staying on the farm rehearsing for summer gigs. I’m at this point just curious as to how music will play a part in this installation – right now I’m really not sure, but it’s a serendipitous moment to be able to record these musicians, and I will figure out the rest later … On the night after recording Irén’s story, we are all in the kitchen with the instruments, the dogs, the pálinka, the wine and the cigarettes, and the band is playing and the mood is up. I grab the Zoom and put it on the kitchen table in record, and just leave it there as the party rolls on.

We go to Irén’s house in the next town to record her story. First, we help tie up tomatoes in her wild and fertile kitchen garden. Irén has the magic hands of a gardener. The soil is sandy and grey, yet is producing all sorts of wonderful vegetables, fruits and flowers. She shows us around with great pride and picks and washes grapes for a bowl. I’ve brought her some Unicum, the herbal liqueur, and we toast each other a few times (perhaps a few times too many) before we sit down to record. With Katalin translating, we get to know each other. Irén is a beautiful, open, energetic spirit, full of the soul of music and stories. Although I cannot understand her language, I understand her. This is something to do with the universality of story and – for those of us who live with stories and work with stories all our lives – the rhythms of the story that we intrinsically share.

Recording Irén. Photo by Ana Amorós López

Recording Irén. Photo by Ana Amorós López

This first recording isn’t my greatest work let’s be honest … due to some issue with the phantom power for the RØDE. I don’t know if the microphone or the Zoom is the problem, but it’s not working, so I swap for Ana’s Zoom. Then the issue of not having a ‘dead cat’ for the microphone becomes clear as wind catches on the shotgun mic. I’m kicking myself for neglecting this … Afterwards, I need to splice the back-up recording of the Zoom’s capsule microphone in places where the shotgun recording is no good. The Zoom was resting on the ground throughout. That means that Irén’s voice changes quality significantly. She sounds distant at times, close at times. The result is that (as Paul points out) she sounds like she was recorded in the ‘60s.

In terms of sound recording and production, this is a technical failure I guess. And I have thoughts of going back to re-record her. But there is a magic to this recording that I’ve grown to love above all the others. The decision to record in the backyard of her home was deliberate. My feeling has been that I want to capture the spontaneity of storytelling, how it lives and breathes in the lives of people, in their homes and in their hearths. If I recorded all of the stories in the studio, I would have the good clear vocal to work with but what else would I miss? In this case, I’d miss the laughter of Irén as the chickens jump up on the table to eat the grapes in the bowl, distracting her from where she is in the tale. I’d miss the sense of this place, the breezes swirling down into the courtyard, the rustle of the birds around the vines and flowers. There is something about the quality of place and of time and moment that this recording captures, that I wouldn’t be able to replicate in the studio. That quality is inherent in the experience of being told a story. It’s the magic of the storyteller, of the 100% presence of being the listener. The point is, this is what is happening. This hasn’t been artificially created. We were here, and this is how it is.

I’ve always been a bit of a ‘guerilla’ sound artist, in that I’ll use whatever I capture, and I enjoy the sounds of something compelling recorded imperfectly, of found sound and archival recordings. In this period in the studio I’ve occasionally questioned my own abilities in terms of being a ‘clean’ sound recordist, perhaps feeling the pressure of creating something ‘professional’ and ‘slick’ (the imposter syndrome, naturally). Doubting this sensibility and freedom that has actually marked all of my work with something unique. I need to embrace this aspect of what I do, it’s part of the magic of what I can do.

The deal, Irén says before we record, is that she will tell her version of the dancing princesses, and then she has another story to tell me but I can’t use it in my piece, it’s too rude. Poor Katarin has to translate what turns out to be an hilarious dirty story, even more hilarious in the process of telling and translating (and after more Unicum) … And no, I won’t tell you that story now, but the Zoom was still recording so it’s a gift I’ll treasure, the rough, colourful, found sound of a joyful meeting.

Kati takes us to the dance hall out in a field near her house. It’s an airy open hall surrounded by fields populated with thistles and butterflies. She and her dance partner Vass Józsi dance five partner dances for me, and I crouch and circle them with the shotgun mic, capturing the rhythmic pounding of their feet on the floor, Józsi’s slapping of his palms on his thighs and calves. Vlad has given me two radio headphone sets, so that Kati and Józsi can dance listening to the same music, but all I’m recording is the sound of their feet. It’s a very hot and humid day and I’m feeling guilty for making them sweat through these dances, but they are both good natured about it. The dances are from regions of Dél-Alföld, Szatma’r, Vajdaszentivány, Rábaköz and Szlavónia. These recordings go really well. I’m able to follow easily with the shotgun, which records super clean and directional. The hall is beautifully quiet, with just the right amount of air around the percussive footsteps. As with the music, I’m not yet sure how I might work with these dances. The idea is to have the feet dancing around the audience – perhaps to create the illusion of 12 princesses dancing in a circle. I’m not even sure this will sound any good. But it’s all about gathering now, collecting the tools to tell the story in sound.

 


 

7 – Field recording, Transylvania

 
 

We open the trapdoor and descend, west-east across Transylvania, through the copper, silver and gold ….

To record the storyteller Szabo Enikő, Anita and I drive to Sepsiszentgyörgy, Transylvania, The capital city of Covasna County. (In Romanian, Sfântu Gheorghe). Before the 1920 Treaty of Trianon which effectively broke up the Austria-Hungarian empire, the region known as Transylvania was a part of Hungary. 77% of the inhabitants of Covasna County are ethnic Hungarian in recent census. It is a complicated history of the traumas and consequences of war, cultural upheaval and geopolitics. Enikő says to me during our first recording, “we are Magyar.”

Travelling. Big horizons, resonant forests, distant mountains, big cities and small towns. No fences. The pace of life at once terrifyingly fast (mad highway drivers) and disarmingly slow (horse power). It’s a journey that feels like a story all its own – a hero’s journey, we only half-joke. We meet and overcome various obstacles, of varying grades of difficulty. A hobbled white horse in the middle of the road, getting lost in forests and on plains with Google Maps leading us to impassable routes, our own adventurous spirits leading us down other impassable routes, a freak accident with a parked truck at 2am (no one hurt but the car and pride), and another freak meeting with the only muddy bog for miles in the middle of a field in 36° heat, with the only sound of civilisation a distant tractor … Anita is a champion, driving us through all of this and home again. We make friends with and hug the police officers after the truck incident. We push the car out of that muddy bog. As we drive deeper into Romania it becomes a game to spot copper, or silver, or gold spires on the churches that spear out of every horizon, loom over every town. Along the way I’m recording cow bells, fields, forests, towns, church bells and random indignant sheepdogs.

Sepsiszentgyörgy is a pretty town with its fortified church crowning a central hill. From Enikő’s backyard the church spire is lit up with shining silver light, floating above the rooftops and trees. We arrive later than expected (having not accounted for the fact that every journey through Romania takes about 2 and a half hours longer than Google suggests). Enikő is a beautiful soul, very in touch with the magic of the world. She also makes a mean plum pálinka! We sample this as I record her story. Her storytelling style is so compelling. She leans into her words, with a gravelly low voice and powerful presence. The story she tells is from her grandfather. But she is not entirely happy with her telling, and wants to include a section about the princesses pricking the shepherd with a pin to make sure he’s asleep. So the next morning, we go up early to the citadel church where Enikő holds storytelling camps for children. In the churchyard, we record again, and this is the recording I’ll use. Her voice is lower, more sonorous. Enikő’s telling draws out some of the darkness in the story and the transgressive magic. It’s in her tone and spirit. And after driving for two days across this country, I recognise the landscape in her voice.

We power back to the border of Hungary to get to a dance camp. This is a place Anita knows, and I’m grateful again for her vibrant adventurous spirit and love of music and culture, which has become an intrinsic part of this project. She has introduced me to the musicians, the dancers, who embody the tale we’re telling. At the Mezőség summer camp at Válaszút, Hungarians young and old meet. During the day they learn the dances and songs, during the night they dance and sing. We arrive just after sunset. We set up a little tent, get out the bottle of Enikő’s pálinka (not necessarily in that order) and join the party. By 4am, full of pálinka and beer and sausages and with the music continuing in the halls on the hill, I crawl into the tent to sleep.

The next morning we settle in the top hall where a singer is teaching the large group (perhaps 100 people in the hall) a song. She sings a refrain, they repeat. She sings it again, they repeat. Then they all sing it together. The song is a repetitive melody, a falling melody. A lament. The melody seems timeless and ancient, familiar and unfamiliar. I have the Zoom on the floor beside me, in the small strip of shadow afforded by a post (it’s August, the sun hot and bright). I’m recording, aware that it will be probably awful sound since it is propped up on my satchel just centimetres from the concrete floor. Still …

Soon I’m in tears and not certain why. It is a beautiful song, but I don’t know what the words are saying, I don’t know what it’s about. Perhaps it’s the hangover. Perhaps it’s the four hours of kind of sleep. Perhaps it’s actually a tuning in to the depths of emotional magic that this project has spun me into. It’s gratitude and wonder at the generosity and openness of all of the people I’m meeting. The beauty and sadness of this culture and it’s turbulent history. The deep listening that I’m so privileged to be able to practice, in this moment, in this place, and the surrendering of control it has taken to enable me to relax and simply do that. So OK, it’s just the natural effects of being in an actual fairy tale. And of course I am in an actual fairy tale, because here I am sitting in Szabo Enikő’s Garden of Fairies, listening to music.

 


 

8 – Százhalombatta, studio developments, and where is the mother?

 
 

We travel out to Százhalombatta, about half an hour south of Budapest, to record Marianna. Marianna is director of the Hamvas Béla City Library in Százhalombatta. Born in an almost fully Croatian-speaking village, Drávasztára, along the River Drava in southern Hungary, Marianna’s storytelling combines two cultures and two languages. She has been a storyteller for more than ten years and is an active advocate of traditional oral storytelling – she organizes storytelling conferences, started the Day of the Hungarian Folktale movement, and is president of the Meseszó Association for Hungarian Storytelling and Oral Folklore.

Meeting Marianna is a lovely experience. We do not speak each other’s language, so we communicate through a translator. But we do speak a common language, of storytelling. After recording her story we continue to talk about the joy of storytelling and the importance of story. Marianna asks me a thought-provoking question regarding my separation of the storyteller’s physical presence in this work. I love that she questions me on this. It’s something I’ve questioned myself on. Especially since I’m sitting across from Marianna as she tells her story and I’m transported by her eyes, her smile, her guiding attention. The way she leans forward and lowers her head when slowing the story down for the message or the punchline; the way she leans back and raises her voice defining moments of action. These presences are there in the recordings, in the dynamics of voice and language. And I do believe that sound is physical, that our experience of sound and language is a bodily experience. Part of the concept of this project is to take people into their own experience of listening to stories; into their own memories of the storytellers in their own lives. So in that, in listening we will cast the story with our own images and characters – this is one of the things I love most about spoken word, listening. I also believe that the visual is not necessarily the defining aspect of presence. So much of us is in our voice. But I can understand why a storyteller would question why the physical body of the teller is absent. And what does that mean? It’s not something I can easily answer. I hope that all of these storytellers will be able to come and witness the work when it is finished. At the same time I’m afraid of disappointing them.

Mónika is my final storyteller to record. I have much better luck recording in the 4DSOUND makeshift studio with a quiet day at AQB. Mónika’s dialect is the western Palóc dialect. She was born in the westernmost Palóc town, Kéménd (Kamenín, Slovakia). It is a very ‘sharp’ and dynamic dialect, and Mónika’s intonation and telling is bright, big, powerful and energetic. I get such a strong image of rising, and falling, as she tells the story – I can feel the descent as the princesses go down into the forests. I can feel the energy of the fighting devils. In this version of the story the princesses are dancing with devils, are assisted by a witch, and are all excepting the youngest locked up by their father in the end. This is the darkest story, from the northern regions. I’m excited, listening to Mónika. Her energy is so awesome and youthful, a counterpoint to the quieter and softer voices.

With the door to the bottom right … the foundations of the “regions”. The blue arc is the movement of the cows; the zig zag is the movement of the wasp.

With the door to the bottom right … the foundations of the “regions”. The blue arc is the movement of the cows; the zig zag is the movement of the wasp.

In the studio, I’m illustrating ‘scenes’, working on ascending/descending tones for the transitions, working with the voices I already have as objects in the space, experimenting with their movement and chorusing. Csenge is translating the recorded stories for me so until then, I work on the sound illustration. Some things are working well, some things feel really stuck. The modulated rising tones are working great (with thanks to Vlad for helping me get the right intensity). A heartbeat drum under the floor is sounding the resonating frequency (with thanks to Paul for finding that). The twig snap, not so much – sounds like the speaker is broken. The footsteps of Kati’s dancing are not working in the way I’d hoped and the songs recorded also, in Bordány – anything too literal, basically, is not feeling right. That’s … interesting.

The opening soundscape, of the ‘regions’, is working though. Really well. It isn’t really possible to separate the regions in the way I thought I would. To get the right intensity of sound in the space, the right drama, they need to merge. It’s not like passing through walls or rooms, more like subtly shifting energies, and focus. I think this is a more interesting situation actually.

This is the world we enter: From the door, you move in through the oscillating sounds of crickets. The birds and further-away sounds are filling the room, with varying distance and clarity. Walking straight, along the right wall, you pass through the Bordány fields, with a wasp zooming up and down (my favourite creation!) Reaching the far corner, the bells of Transylvania’s cows become more distinct, and the birds and dogs of Sepsiszentgyörgy wash in from a distance. Moving across to the left, Budafok storms and rain, and crows. Back down the left wall, a forest of songbirds. And in the far corner, the bottom left, is the Százhalombatta fountain, recorded this week. I’m still toying with what to do with the middle. The Danube river running across the room? I work on balancing the various environments, which are basically large objects in the space working with variations on spatial delays and sends to the reflective ‘walls.’ They are also subtly moving, modulating. Particularly for the forest, bird sounds, this slight movement adds a surprising amount of space. For the crickets, it’s important – that is a plane, deep under the floor, modulating in all directions. You never know exactly where a cricket is … This and the spatial delay also seem to erase the awareness of the (necessary) looping of the sounds. I’m not trying to create a naturalistic environment, I want it to be unreal, a dark fairytale. But I don’t want it to be too obviously ‘looping’ either.

I spend almost a whole afternoon making sure the cow bells are really, believably, moving around at “cow height” ……. that sort of thing.

I joke at one point that in many exhibitions, just this walk-in state would be the whole damn thing…

Anyway. This is basically the “map”, as described earlier. And this is the “walk-in state”; the preparation soundscape. I want people to linger here for a while before the show starts; to lose themselves first in this abstracted landscape that hopefully triggers some sensibility of magic. I want them to have a long period of time to settle into the space, to be in a receptive state to hear the stories.

I’m taking this lesson from Kate de Lorme’s work. She had the voices of four or five of us residents swirling around the room, above the audience's heads (these are the voices I mentioned in part 2) as the walk-in state. It was meant to go for 15 minutes or so until the audience settled but due to delays waiting for people to come in, it was at least 20 minutes of this, maybe half an hour, and the loop of content became obvious. I went through a series of mental states whilst waiting – listening with interest, wondering about the delay, checking out the other audience members, being drawn back in to listen to the voices, thinking about the things I’d said and the things others had said about confidence, lack of confidence, and so on, feeling the twinge of that lack of confidence again, putting that aside, getting bored and restless, thinking about my to do lists, getting drawn back in …. so I went through the cycle of attention/boredom and reached a point where I was 100% present, and receptive. Then the show began with the voices fading, and Kate’s voice looming large: “You are safe.” I cried a little.

Then another lesson, from the experience of Sydney artist Tiernan Cross’ work, which was programmed without a break following another electronic work in the studio. I felt as though the audience for his work were not prepared, were not present yet as it began. Perhaps the impact of the work was affected because of that. This is only my experience, of course. But the difference was notable to me. Tiernan’s work is definitely one of my favourite of the works I’ve heard in the 4DSOUND studio. His use of crisp, clear, electronic sounds, the dimensionality and speed of the movement was really profound. I felt as though he really “sounded” the room. He gave the room voice. I felt as though the character of the place was expressing itself through his sounds. When I first heard it, when he played it to us before the exhibition, it was unexpectedly very moving. In exhibition the lack of space around his piece made it harder to ‘settle in’ to be receptive to it.

The practices of Pauline Oliveros – the deep listening practices – are about preparing yourself to be open and responsive to the rhythms, melodies, connections of sound and aural experience. It’s not just an internal process, it’s also about being open to collaborative composition and collective experience. Environments like the 4DSOUND studio invite audiences into communal deep listening practice. We need to help them enter a receptive state. Because active listening can be difficult. And in my work, I’m very aware that I am asking a lot of people, to listen to an hour of story. So, I want this “walk-in state” to go for some time. I want people to walk around, explore the whole breadth and length of the studio, stop, move, listen. Then, when everyone is really settled, really present, the story begins.

Since the folk camp in Válaszút, I’ve been thinking about the folk song. One night I place it into the object that I have on a path from deep below the room to high above. That object has been the foundation of the ascending sound that will plunge us down, into the forests. I have it on a path from deep under, growing in size and triggering the reflective walls as it takes over the room, then flying above. I’ve used it with deep frequency drones, modulated basic synth sounds. Putting this song into this object is something else. The recording of course is a rough stereo recording from the Zoom hastily turned on on a wooden floor in a big open hall. And because of the recording’s fuzzy nature it becomes ethereal in this space, like something from another time.

Emotionally, it feels ‘right’ somehow too, but I still don’t know why. I play it to Paul, who later plays the song to his wife and tells me that she recognises the song, and that it is a song about a mother. The song describes “all of the wise things my mother told me, that I did not listen to.” Csenge and I had been discussing the lack of the mother in this folk tale. In all of these versions – and in fact, in many folk tales around the world – the mother is entirely absent. Where is she? We joke about the fact that if the mother had been around, none of this nonsense would have happened in the first place. But it holds a deeper significance of course. And I think this absence, and the impact of the folk song on me, is a piece of powerful magic. I’m growing accustomed to magic, here in Hungary. I don’t question it. And then I remember that the third point to this triangle of magic is Csenge’s story (in the coda to her version, the princess asks her husband years later how he was able to stay awake and discover what she and her sisters were doing. He answers by telling her three pieces of advice he was given by his mother.) So, I want to end this show with this song. When the story is over, the drama and the resolution have happened, in total darkness the chorus of song will rise up from deep below, fill the room, and float up into the roof where it will disappear, leaving us in silence.

All the story recordings are done, I have a swag of field recordings to play with, I have recordings of dancing feet and a great trio of musicians playing razor blade music. The first stage of the residency here is over and I have two months away from it. The studio and most of the residents are leaving AQB for September. The 4DSOUND system is going to Berlin. Most of the other artists are leaving too. The frenetic, hot, magical summer is over and the last few days at AQB are strange and quiet. I’ve got a huge task ahead of me, but first I need to take a break, and make a soundscape for the MPavilion in Melbourne, which feels like worlds away.

 


 

9 – In the eye of the storm

 
 

In September at the start of the two-month break in the residency, in the eye of the storm, I’m in Berlin. Coincidentally the 4DSOUND system is also there – they have combined the Budapest and Berlin systems into one huge installation in Saal 1, the vintage orchestral recording concert hall at Funkhaus. This ‘Symphonic Sound System’ is made up of 100+ speakers, and multiple subs.

Paul gives a demonstration for the Red Bull Music Academy students. Vanessa Li is another 4D artist who has transferred along with the system from Budapest to Berlin. Her work is fascinating, approaching the system from an entirely different perspective. She has been using POZYX, a real-time position tracking system that makes the 4DSOUND system truly interactive for audiences. Vanessa has also been experimenting with brain wave responses as interactions with the sounds, which I got to experience back in Budapest. I love her gentle and inquisitive approach to this work. Vanessa and I sit in for the demonstration. This is a whole different experience to the Budapest studio. It’s big and it’s loud, sounds sweep predominantly across and above our heads. Paul demonstrates with a “wall” that carves across the space and I feel the wall very clearly, and, oddly (this is the only way I can think to explain) with less weight than I’d feel it in Budapest. Perhaps the dark walls, the black space beneath, the heavy wooden beams of the studio in Budafok lend the experiences of sound a kind of metaphysical weight? I have to think so since the concert hall at Funkhaus is big and airy and bright, the wood is light, I even fancy that the organ pipes lining one wall must tune the room some way.

Returning to Budapest as my Schengen Visa runs out, now it’s a risk to leave the country. Since my arrival I’ve been jumping through the various hoops required to get residency here, to enable me to stay beyond the Schengen 3 month tourist Visa. It’s complicated, a process punctuated with unnecessary frustrations. I’ve been given a temporary Visa, which enables me to stay in Hungary until January, but I’m told by various people and immigration officers that if I leave Hungary and my passport is checked, they will take this temporary Visa away from me and send me back to Australia. It’s probably a small risk and I don’t usually mind risk, but it seems too much to chance not being able to finish this project and even not being able to return for a few years. Plans to travel to Italy and Greece are put on hold. I rent a little apartment near Margit Island, then another at Gutenberg tér, and I wait it out.

Strange but lovely days in Budapest with most people I know here out of town. I explore the city in a completely different way. It’s lonely sometimes, but it’s also satisfying and meditative, feeling the weather slowly change, seeing the leaves begin to colour and then fall like soft rain. I spend a whole day in the Kerepesi Cemetery, an enormous park full of the most extraordinary sculptures and monuments. As the clouds gather I end up in the section of the park which has been reclaimed by forest, and slowly realise that this area is the children’s graveyard. The forest is peopled with tiny cherubs, clothed in vines. Friends visit and we have an afternoon idyll on Margit Island. I spend a large chunk of my time in Király bath house, mostly because of the acoustics. The ancient concrete dome is built such that the low frequencies are the ones that resonate, and all voices around the room diffuse and join together in chorus in the centre of the dome, above the water, as a low drone. It’s very loud, but never disturbing. I feel so extraordinarily peaceful in the water under the dome.

I visit the museums and parks, parks and towns outside the city, I shop in the local markets, through new friends I find the monthly secondhand clothes market where I get the boots that will keep me warm in November, and of course I spend a significant amount of time waiting with others in the immigration office … basically, I get to inhabit and understand Budapest in a way that is very personal. I’m working on a completely different project during this time, making a soundscape for a Melbourne park. But the effect of this time and the things I learned about Hungary, and Hungarians, has changed what I will end up doing in some fundamental way. I may not know the language, I may never … but I can feel this place far more deeply now. I read the history and visit the monuments to 1956, to more distant struggles, more recent struggles, and realise the darkness and pain under the beauty. I can witness the effects and significance of the current government in a way I hadn’t understood before. I’m out of the bubble of the Institute, of the Budafok magic. Meeting more people from different walks of life who are the souls of any city. This is how you begin to know a place. The Sonority piece will inevitably embrace darker emotions, deeper emotions, because of this time.

I get properly back to the Sonority project in October, listening over and over to the stories, beginning to weave them together. Paul has programmed Sonority on the Friday night, part of the CESSE Conference. Mainly as it would be more of a ‘show’ than an exhibition. A theatrical experience. Storytelling doesn’t always need to be linear of course, but folk tales by definition probably do. I do want it to be presented as a theatrical experience, for people to receive it as such. My feeling of concern I think is that in all of the 4DSOUND exhibitions I’ve been into, people walk in and out all the time, slam the door, look at their phones, even turn on the flashlight on their phones to walk around. The SSI doesn’t have a theatrical setup. There are no ushers, no acoustic doors or light controlling doors, no real control of audiences at all actually. Definitely I think the perception of this place is more of an experimental, relaxed kind of thing, and the ‘rules’ of theatre don’t seem to apply. Only in Kate de Lorme’s show, did people really stay put. And I wonder about that, why that was. Possibly the fact that she was there physically changed the perception – it became theatre?

I am keenly aware of the responsibility I have to these storytellers, to do justice to their tellings and to the versions that they tell. This brings up a complicated question for me as I begin to edit the recordings. I can’t cut any of the stories. Often when working with poets and storytellers it’s a collaborative thing where if I think that it might work better, flow better, I will suggest cutting or shifting sections … but this is different. I do not have the warrant to do that. I also set out with this project to reflect the truth as it’s told, and to respond to the sounds and stories of this place. Obviously, I am changing the way the place sounds, the way a story is told. I am interpreting, and I am abstracting. But there is, I feel, I line that I don’t want to cross – and that line itself makes this project different. Sound artists, composers, we remix the world and those in it to satisfy our own agendas and desires. I’m interested in how I can create something meaningful to those other than me through treading more lightly … I don’t want to cut these stories. I need to find a way to work with the rhythm here, not adapt it to my own.

So I listen, listen, listen. Find the natural pauses, the song of the language and the singer, and I shift them around subtly to where they work together. Csenge has transcribed each story, and I have broken up the story into 11 broad 'chapters’, or scenes. So for each scene, a certain amount of action or exposition happens. In each scene each teller’s story moves forward essentially to the same place. Each of the stories gets there in different ways. At times, there is only one storyteller continuing, when the others have stopped (moved on to the next scene). I like this – each voice has its own moment alone. Mostly however, there are six voices in my head. And I’m working in Cubase, in headphones. If it sounds bearable this way it can only get better in 4DSOUND!

Working in Cubase, cutting up the stories into chapters.

Working in Cubase, cutting up the stories into chapters.

There are broadly 11 scenes. Some are very short, under a minute, some longer – the longest is about 4 minutes. Leaving about 1 minute space around scenes, it is approximately 50 minutes now. Add to that a walk-in state – which could be 15-20 minutes – and also the folk song ending. It will be a 60 minute show, at least.

I’ve now written a synopsis/storyboard for the show. At the time of writing it down, I feel as though it’s still fragmented but it has a momentum of its own and a lot of this work now may involve me setting the scene and the dynamics or mechanics of movement, then getting out of the way of the story.

Synopsis

Walk-in state:

Six environments, defined ‘regions’ around the room, which are static at the walk-in state, movement only within their ‘regions’ - some overlap. On walls or columns in each ‘region’ projected video of the storytellers. This I imagine being slightly abstract, not too ‘portrait’, using some movement of landscape captured as well as Ana’s up-close shots of each face, to create a ‘flickering’ effect. These are the only light sources. This for as long as it takes for audience to enter, and to settle. [*six projectors needed for this]

Gradually, the atmospheres begin to shift - swirling, counter-clockwise, very very slowly at first, dancing feet counter-clockwise, just a suggestion … as this happens the videos flicker and stop.

Darkness.

Ascending warm tone emerges from below, fills the room. “Egyszer volt, hol nem volt” (once upon a time) collage of voices, swirling.

This resolves into scene 1 - the preface/story set up, all voices.

Single elements from their ‘regions’ remain with each voice but the predominant sound is of the voice. Here it is important to establish the voices, and the movement of the voices, the harmonies and interest in listening to them.

The voices do not remain static in place. They move around, in a kind of ‘dance’ that reflects the dance of the women in the story, also Hungarian traditional women’s dances, that move in a circle. So sometimes when one or two voices are speaking they will move, take centre, move back. When all are speaking they may move in a circle, or sway.

We descend, each scene descending further. Signified by ascending tones. As we descend, light changes colour. As we first enter the forest, haze introduced (?)

Copper forest (descend)

Silver forest (descend)

Gold/diamond forest (descend)

Arriving at lake/palace, inside palace, party. Dancing feet, music, and the lake, ascend from below.

The dancing feet multiply, dance counter-clockwise around the room. The lake transforms into sharper “razor” effect/Musical elements are abstracted, sharpened.

We return to the bedroom (ascending)

This journey repeats in some stories. We go through the same descent/ascent, but faster. (not exactly repeating anything; using the musical tones together, i.e. the copper/silver/diamond, as music)

Descending tone, reversal of opening .. bring it back to the ‘swirling’ atmospheres from the opening, reverse direction

Story resolution - happy (and unhappy) endings.

Bringing us back to ‘our’ world … video fades or flickers back in - perhaps the same, the faces, or perhaps something different?

“Coda” - Csenge’s voice solo, where the hero explains advice his mother gave him. During this, the ‘mother’ song ascends from below the floor, very quiet until Csenge is finished, then the song rises and fills the room, keeps rising, fades and disappears above.

Silence

 


 

10 – This is also theatre

 
 
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Back in Budafok in November, I have about 4 and 1/2 weeks until the premiere. Csenge comes in to work with me in the studio. It’s important to make sure that I haven’t cut off or disrupted the tellers in the middle of phrases or story flows – the perils of working with text in a foreign language. So Csenge listens and advises where I need to move things back together, where I need to make more space.

In our first session, I’m amazed to discover that there are not that many fixes to make. When I was cutting up the stories in Cubase in the past month I was isolating each voice, then gradually putting together each group of voices. That meant that I was cutting and shifting things around quite a lot. I did this with confidence in my ability to hear the natural rhythm and flow of storytelling, but I had expected that I would disrupt the grammar and the phrasing much more than it appears I have.

Part of my linguistics training, and understanding, is in hearing the prosody in language – the dynamic rhythms and intonation, tone, stress, that signify meaning and also, in storytelling, actions. These six storytellers are all excellent at their craft, so they use very dynamic rhythmic and tonal ‘music’ in their speech to signify action / pause in action, important moment or thought, and change of scene or concept. I was aware of this as I worked but it hits me profoundly in the sessions with Csenge listening through all of the storytellers, one by one. There is more magic in this than I knew.

This is a long process and there are no shortcuts. Csenge’s innate understanding of narrative and story flow is also invaluable. Here my lack of understanding of the language is both problematic and interesting. (I guess it depends on your point of view as to how problematic it is – that weighs on me sometimes.) There are actions and moments in the stories that need to be highlighted, or shifted into different modes. Towards the end of the work, Csenge’s version continues after others have stopped. She suggests we keep the dance going, circling under the floor, but move it over to ‘her corner’ – where her voice is mostly based. It’s kind of like zooming out, shifting focus from being inside the action, to being outside looking in. In the studio these things are often quite subtle, especially with ambient sounds. But the physicality of the sound in here means that the effect, whilst consciously subtle, is powerful subconsciously/emotionally.

Ana and I are also working on the video for the exhibition. With the help of Peter at SSI, we have six small projectors and a media server to sync them. The concept is to have the storytellers’ faces in the space during the opening “walk-in state” as audiences enter, wander, and settle. Ana edits looped footage of each storyteller, to be projected in small “portals” straight onto the black walls of the studio, diffused by haze. As the story begins the faces will fade and the projected light will provide colour, texture, and mood for the rest of the show.

The “walk-in state” with primary sound fields and locations of the ‘portals’, projectors mounted on the studio’s wooden beams.

The “walk-in state” with primary sound fields and locations of the ‘portals’, projectors mounted on the studio’s wooden beams.

The idea is that the physical nature of projected light, its interactions with dust particles and haze/smoke, works in concert with the heightened sense of the physical nature of sound which the 4DSOUND system enables. Winding things back to subtlety, to minimalism, especially using video, feels refreshing. It’s tricky to figure out the balance and at first it always just feels way too bright. Ana experiments with filters both digital and physical, transparencies and brightness of the projector. When the image is around 15 inches on the black wall, the brightness wound right down, filtered with a colour overlay, there is a wonderful sense of timelessness. It just really works.

One of the first loops she works on is Irén, and Irén is timeless, so it’s truly magical. Ana’s films turn out to be beautiful little poems in themselves, lingering on the facial features, the eyes, the mouth, the hands, the back, the graceful and expressive animation of the tellers. Her camera focuses, un-focuses, weaves around them in a way that makes it seem the camera is not even there. The films are wistful and full of love.

For the rest of the show it is a matter of balancing the colour, and keeping the visual narrative to a minimum. Super-macro closeups, movement without arresting the attention. The visual colour scheme shifts with the ‘scenes’ of the story. We go from these loops into soft greens; into yellows; then the copper, silver, gold of the forests; then red/fire and in here, the only real visual storytelling - the dancing shoes of Válaszút; then blues, purples; then back to greens; then to black. The ‘black’ is actually very close-up footage of the feathers on the back of a crow – beautiful.

In Ana’s words:

“It was important for us to introduce the storytellers during the 'walk-in state' of the show, for the audience to get to know the details in their personality; their eyes, their expression explaining the story, their feeling... who are these woman? where do they come from? how do their eyes talk? Being all the storytellers so different it was so beautiful to be able to capture them and build a conversation, also, with their visual presence. Therefore during the show the audience would picture in some way who is telling the story to them, enhancing in this way the importance and power of these women, of the storytellers, by giving space for them to appear complementing their voices. Once the show starts, this 'realistic' image fades as well as the need to explain a linear narrative through visual sources as the soundscape rises inviting the audience to dive into the imaginary, driven by the story in itself and the soundscape to all the different worlds, emotions... During the show the film aims to encompass and follow the story by means of six flickering dim light sources that remind of old film projections of pale light shifting and moving as if they were the voices in itself. Through the evolution of the story, in every world, you are brought to a gradient of colour and to a rhythm that keeps evolving. All of the tones are born by a process of magnifying details of nature, pieces of the travelling that we underwent to listen to the different storytellers around diverse Hungarian regions. The film wants to bring up the concept of faded visual stimulation, not interfering on the main focus of attention which is deep listening, by creating atmospheres where details of our everyday world are shown as particles in itself, with its magnified details and movement, such as in Lisa's subtle soundscape.”

Vlad tapes up the edges of the projector lenses with gaffer tape, giving each of the projections a fuzzy edge. It’s the perfect touch – we are now in the realms of the imagination. He and Peter also put a fan downstairs to better disperse the haze through the room. I could spend hours here listing all of the ways in which Vlad has made all of this possible for me. From producing super glue when my boot broke, producing wireless headphones when I suddenly decided I needed them for the dancers, producing a glow-stick in a nightclub when we started to get bored … to fixing my camera, fixing my occasional stuff-ups in Ableton, fixing anyone’s lack or surfeit of anything, really.

I’m a little tired by now, feeling the pressure of getting all of the multi-layered threads of the sound installation tied up, in time. I’m working heavily with automation in Ableton, in Session mode. I had early on tried recording in the Arrangement mode but that became far too fiddly and also just a frustrating mode to work in. The session view gives me a sense of being able to ‘play’ this ‘live’ … triggering clips and being able to see where everything is, tweak as I go, and allow for possible serendipities. Not too automated – keep it real if you can. But every object that needs to travel on a path, or grow or contract, or otherwise change, needs automation in the clips. I am organising clips into scenes and in each scene clips are triggering more automation. Particularly for the voices, I need to make sure that their position at the end of one scene correlates to their position at the start of the next, or they ‘bounce’ when the next scene is triggered. This is the most time consuming thing, managing the voices. At times, one of the storytellers will suddenly walk across the room to the other side, or wander off into the distance. This is not magic – this is me not getting the automation right – but it feels sometimes like they are playing with me. It is very like herding cats! This happens with Irén, and I decide to leave it in. As she finishes her story her voice wanders off the ‘stage’, through the wall, out into the distance, her laugh fading. It’s funny, perfect for her. Every object has a movement, of some kind, sometimes extremely subtle. Using a global clip, I have the entire room spinning counter-clockwise, at two moments in the show – the beginning of the show and near the end, with the dance. All of this kind of movement needs to be drawn. I won’t be playing the show live (though I could). Vlad will record it the night before. So I’ll play it through for the recording. That reminds me of the early days of using tape, doing the final recording, start to finish. It’s a nice sense of completion, ‘putting it in the can’.

My parents visit in the middle of the month and we have a lovely weekend exploring Budapest. It’s a nice break from all the intensity. My father is a powerful artistic soul and to get his perspective on this work, and his grounding support, is so valuable at this moment in the process. At one point, Ana had suggested that we use film of my mother’s eyes to close the show. We were both transported by this idea for a while. “…So the show ends. So we open the door, and there is your mother...” Ana films my mother and it’s a satisfying moment. But, later, the video file vanishes. When that happens it seems ‘meant’ – like everything in this project. It’s fine; it possibly just isn’t necessary. But the acknowledgement of my mother is important to me even if it’s not in the final show. Having her here gives me strength and energy and re-focuses me. Also, I can’t help pulling on this thread throughout this project of the mother being absent … of the mother’s wisdom being ignored, or lost …

Paul is a huge help in one of the last sessions, working on the quality and presence of the voices, pulling up the frequencies that bring the different voices to life. I work more on their movement, finding moments where the different voices pair or match well, and moving them around so that they complement each other – finding the sonority. This whole project has been about this, in essence. The sonority of this chorus of spoken voice. Voices that are both present and absent. Absent in physical human form, but present in the physical form of the sound that this room produces. When I get it right, the voice is not an amplified voice – it is a substantive, dimensional being. The most exciting thing about this, when it works, is that the technology has really, finally, disappeared. And I keep saying this when talking about 4DSOUND - this is a hugely emotional experience. Because the amplification (perhaps the fourth wall in sound terms) has been removed, we are listening in a very intimate way. The way we listen to our friends, our mothers, our fathers, our children, our guides, our storytellers. It seems to trigger a more fundamental emotion. Irén’s voice is more obviously ‘amplified’ due to the treatment I’ve had to give it, and Nagy Eniko mostly seems to float above. But all of the other storytellers have real, profound moments of presence in the room.

We also work on the final folk song, finding the frequencies that are feeling unnatural, as it sweeps up and through the room. With his help I am able to give this moment far more presence and impact. Balancing frequencies has been probably the most challenging thing for me in this space. That is to a great extent due to variance in the raw recordings, but it’s also due to the unfamiliar nature of this system and the way that sounds mix and resonate. I’ve written about this earlier. These final sessions, I feel that I have got the balance right overall, but I would definitely like more time to make some sections sound cleaner. Then again, I am interested to know what the audience response is since this work is perhaps more organic, less refined than what is often presented in here.

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The work in the studio is happening alongside the administration of contracts, and payments, budgeting, and promotional texts, and preparing for the trip back to Australia. I’m feeling calm but I know that ideally one more week would lead to a completely finished show. There are two sections in which I’d like to change the atmospheric sound, provide more dynamic movement, provide a shift of interest. I’m aware that in these two sections, there is potential for the experience to “drag” – the voices become monotonous. If I had the time, I’d change that … but I don’t have the time. And also, this is a part of this experimental work. Observe the audience, especially in these sections. How taxing is this for the listeners? Let’s find out.

There are moments when I feel as though I need to justify my focus on the theatrical elements and my desire for it to be all in place. This is theatre, as much as this is experiment. This experiment is partly about theatre. Theatre is the play with the border of illusion/reality. It is bringing a story to vivid life in a physical, sensory experience, and that takes a lot to achieve. So much sound art, sound installation, is a kind of revolving door, walk-in/walk-out experience. I’m interested by this slight pressure to care less about the little things that add up to the theatrical experience. It’s really only slight and perhaps some of it comes from me. I make a conscious decision to embrace these uncertainties, and observe how it plays to an audience. I’m feeling enormously grateful for being in this place, being supported in trying to achieve this, and also being supported in my fiercely focused and slightly scattered work-in-progress-state through the warm and happy family of artists in residence. There is amazing work happening all around me and the inspiration of that is unmeasurable. I also need to make a conscious decision to enjoy the exhibition – though I know that's going to be hard to do!

After the last long studio night session it snows, just a little, just a soft flutter of white between the dark tall buildings of AQB. Ana and I sit in the lane watching, wrapped in our warm coats and sipping hot whisky toddies and talking about this adventure we’ve shared. This journey into the rich, dark, vibrant soul of Hungary. I’m feeling ready and excited now to share this work, and to experience it with an audience.

 


 

11 – The show, reviews and responses

 
 

It is fascinating, watching how people react. There are 80-100 people in the room, and they are moving around much more than I’d expected. It’s perhaps too dynamic a piece to encourage sitting – though some do find a spot and stay, and afterwards a couple of people tell me they stayed in one area for most of the show, anchored to one voice. Another tells me how he chased the sounds around, chased the voices around, followed them to their source. I remember seeing him squatting over a speaker in the floor. His joy is lovely to receive. And the storytellers are elated, which is a huge relief.

What an experience, to wander with an audience, through this magical and dark story, wrapped in a literal fog. There is no way to capture this moment, no way to truly document this experience. The physicality of the sound, of the haze, at times very thick, very intense.

The theatre vs exhibition expectation is at play and my inner stage director’s nerves are frayed. At one point lights came up under the floor due to concerns about safety. It wasn’t for too long and probably didn’t break everyone’s attention, but the experiment of visual/aural information, the near-dark, dream-state, was disturbed; the spell was broken. The door opening and closing as people came and went, the lights coming up a little too quickly at the end of the show - big things in the context of theatre. Lessons learned about controlling the theatrical space.

As far as I’m able, I push aside the critical voice and focus on the soundscape. With the addition of a room full of warm bodies, the intensity of all sounds is dialled up. When the dancing feet stomp across the floor, when the whole room slowly spins, when the water of the lake rippling under our feet transforms into razor blades, when the crow flies from the centre away into the rafters, when a bell sounds up high in the centre ricocheting off the beams and I can’t remember having created this moment … when the iron door slams shut deep underground and the king’s keys rattle heavily in his fist … and then when the song, that incredible song thick with emotion, sung by 100 sentimental voices tired from dancing all night, comes swirling up through the floor and fills the room, fills our bodies with its oscillating waves, rises through the roof, fades away like a wind dissipating through treetops. How can anything I do now with sound match this physical, visceral sculpture?

An extended moment in time - about 60 minutes, and it’s over.

It is of course, not possible to replicate the experience outside of the 4DSOUND studio.

But – thanks again to Vlad, we have a binaural audio conversion. Ana and I have created a video that incorporates the six projections in the beginning, and the textural projections that were used throughout.

Using headphones, through this you can experience the (horizontal at least) omnidirectional sound field, and get a sense of this whirling, swirling dance of voices.

This is not negotiable by the way – binaural audio only works in headphones. The better the headphones, the better the spatial illusion you will have…

 

Reviews and responses

Paul Oomen, 4DSOUND

The project Sonority, realized at the Spatial Sound Institute in 2018, has been a unique project, in two different ways: first of all, it has highlighted new possibilities of storytelling that emerge from working with the medium of spatial sound, a way of approaching the medium that hasn’t been explored in this way before. Secondly, It introduces the notion of geographical space into the sonic experience. Geographical space, meaning the spatial and cultural dissemination and diversion by means of different dialects, different habits and therefore different ways of telling a story, has been made very explicit by telling that same story from the point of view of six different geographical locations. Since in Sonority we have six simultaneous geographical locations as our points-of-view (or rather: points-of-listening) - locations that are in fact culturally strongly connected yet diverse - , space becomes a way to make tangible the subtle personal and cultural diversions that occur within language. As such, Sonority does not just tell a story with the addition of spatial sound effects, but literally turns the auditory reality of spatial disposition and relations into its very central theme. Telling the story thus transcends the meaning of the actual story itself and becomes a vehicle for exploring the meaning of cultural and geographic relations, how and who we are, and where - our historical coming-about and potential pathways into the future.

Greenaway’s choice to build her work around a well-known fairytale, popular in the wider area of Central Europe, opens up yet another potential, which its inherent appeal to children. Through identifying with an accessible story which probably most of us have heard when we were a child, and translating that in the form of a new medium, makes this medium potentially accessible for young people, as well gives them the chance to identify with the story in unexpected ways and deeper levels that are resulting from spatial interaction. The piece becomes a potentially very powerful experience for children to identify with their cultural surrounding, highlights the necessity to embrace diversity and to experience increased empowerment of own creative role as listeners/ spectators.

We look forward to continue presenting Greenaway’s work in the future, especially to groups of children of different ages.

 

After the show, with Mónika, Nagy Enikő, Szabo Enikő and Csenge. Photo by Ana Amorós López.

Audience responses

“I really like how as an audience member, I felt like I was inside the stories. The nature sounds, the creaking of steps going down into the cellar, even though I couldn't understand what they were saying, I could really spatially feel like I was there … it was trance-like.”

James

“Your project brought forth many emotions in me. As a Hungarian I haven't heard the story before but many elements were familiar from other folktales what actually I listened or read such a long time ago therefore it was a bit of a time travel to my childhood and into a dreamy universe. Listening the sentences from different loudspeakers made me walk around in the space what gave a special dynamic to the whole performance. You needed to be curious to seek the new information to avoid missing any part. The visuals, sound effects and the rusty voice of the official storyteller women created a unique atmosphere in the space, I still have goosebumps from it.”

Dorottya

 

Review – Datson Hughes

Sonority I: Magyar – Dancing on Blades – Spatial Sound installation by Lisa Greenaway with video by Ana Amorós López
Premiere performance at 4DSOUND Experimental studio - Art Quarter Budapest.
30 November 2018

During our residency at the Art Quarter Budapest (AQB) we had the privilege of being present at the premier performance of sound artist and linguist Lisa Greenaway’s Sonority 1 project. During her six-month residency at the 4DSOUND Spatial Sound Institute which is attached to the AQB, she collaborated with the place and its people, stories and sounds, using the voice, the story and the storyteller as compositional and philosophical elements to create a remarkable spatial sound experience.

The piece begins the moment one steps into the ethereal space of the 4D studio which occupies three stories of a warehouse building on the Buda side of the Danube. We stand on a mesh floor in the midst of a grid of individual speakers hung in layers: high above, at ear level, at floor level and the bass way down on the ground on the floor below.

Cocooned, as if in a cloud we wander through the space. Gradually the sound of a forest after rain takes up all aural attention - of water dripping from deep green fronds, of birdlife and a ‘thousand magnified insecta’. We wait, watch and wonder what will unfold.

Six beams of light, three each side, project images of six different female faces speaking. These are the storytellers, all highly regarded experts in their spoken word /linguistics field. Close up and animated in frames about the size of a laptop screen, they introduce themselves. The relative size of the image has the effect of making the storytellers seem visually distant, ‘at the wrong end of a telescope’.

Soon the light fades and the visual images of the faces dissipate and dissolve into loose, indeterminate shifting shadows, giving the impression of heavy eyelids coming down like curtains as the storytellers voices rise and begin their polyphonic tale. Greenaway collaborated with filmmaker Ana Amorós López on the film aspect of the work. As the eye relaxes into perception of her sparse, abstracted use of light without any narrative information, the mind focuses on the voices.

Six female voices from six points in space around the room speak in six different dialects of magyar (Hungarian) from Hungary’s six regions. All tell the same old Hungarian folktale - The Dancing Princesses. The seventh storyteller is Greenaway’s sound design comprising field recordings of environment, dance, music from the region along with effects and electronic musical elements to invite audiences into the story world.

Flashback to childhood anticipation of story time, all flushed from bathing and expectant of the warm mother-tongue that will lick and nudge us off the precipice of wakefulness into the world of dreaming.

Folk tales follow the logic of dreams and are deeply encoded with the social substrate of how the culture works, encouraging us to listen deeply, to close our eyes and conjure imagery out of vibrational patterns. Folk tales fortify our emergent sense of self and interiority. The fortunate preliterate child hears bed-time stories delivered lip-to-ear, to heart, in their parent’s voice. Enveloped in its reassuring vibrational embrace, they take the imaginary monsters of the waking world with them into the unconsciousness of sleep, prepared for whatever dreams may come.

The unfortunate child only receives standardised and sanitised Disney versions of the old tales, narrated in an American-accented chipmunk vocal range, and serially lacking any idiosyncratic nuance.

The Dancing Princesses has many variants, but all have the similar root narrative of a group of princesses who nightly descend to the underworld from whence they emerge each morning with their slippers slashed to pieces. The king/ father/ patriarch is troubled, or angry because they will not divulge their secret. He is prepared to marry off his daughters and offer up half/all his kingdom to a stranger who comes from outside the realm to find out where the wayward daughters go at night. Their deceit is discovered by a suitor who follows them, gathers various proofs of their guilt, informs their father and wins one of the princesses, usually the youngest, for himself. Is the damage to their soles synonymous with their endangered souls?

The effect is mesmerising.

We begin to perceive the beautiful sonic illusion that Greenaway has created in which to cradle the story, becoming conscious of what is audible beyond the voices. In the beginning, the space of the room felt bright, with the sounds of the forest up close, but as the story unfolds, we find ourselves in a sonic web of suspended disbelief where mimesis shifts to diegesis and back again.

Using the immersive, omnidirectional 4DSOUND studio system, the artist can create the illusion of moving the various elements of her sound collage through the omnidirectional grid of speakers, mimicking the spatial reality of sound that emanates from all around us in nature. The ear and the body receive fronts of pressure from different sources in the grid within the 4D ‘speaker box’, as it does in the real world. The extraordinary experience of hearing recorded sound in this way can only really be fully appreciated in the environment of the 4DSOUND studio.

This highly experimental work takes full advantage of the capacity of the system to shape space with sound. In the limited time available during her residency, the artist understood the system’s possibilities and mastered the technical complexity of its application to the extent that her manipulation of the sound field somehow dissolves the inside/outside illusion of our porous horizon of self.

We perceive our finite body and think that is where we end. The feeling of containment and isolation is further reinforced by our becoming so visually oriented. These days, our attention is more often attracted by the flicker of a screen and we focus our hearing on one, perhaps two directional speakers. All the sound mixing is done for us, contained and set in density and intensity before it reaches our own inner ‘mixing console’.

4DSOUND manipulation adds a whole new dimension to listening to recorded sound. It is little like being turned inside out. Greenaway’s delicate and subtle creation of the magical realm of the tale transforms one’s inner ear into a king’s audience chamber, an underground secret passage. She transports our awareness through space on a boat ride across a nocturnal lake, through forests of diamond, silver and gold to an enchanted island, and a magical ballroom. We hear the princesses abandon themselves to the music underpinned by the swirling dancing rhythm of the vocal narrative.

It must have been such a pleasurable experience for the local audience to hear Greenaway’s treatment of one of Hungary’s best loved tales, but as non-magyar speakers we are forced to dig deeper for comprehension and meaning, to mine the unfolding work for the underlying music of speech and reveal the patterns of emotion that all humans recognise. It is not what the story is about, but how it is heard that is the point.

Geoffey DATSON HUGHES Annnette
AQB Artists in residence November 2018