Bizalom (The Weather Inside)
A sound/dream/memory meditation; a work in progress
“Bizalom” was initially conceptualised with the 4DSOUND system at the Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest (2018), during a period of early experimentation. I was playing with field recordings I’d made of the sea in Greece, exploring the capability of 4DSOUND to create a moving, sounding ocean beneath my feet. I introduced other field recordings from travels, creating different weather environments to see if the omnidirectional studio could fully re-immerse me in those memories (it could), and experimenting with electronic pulses and suggestions of melody inspired by the Seikilos epitaph. Poetic story prompts were inspired by meditations on the word “trust” (which I had received as an answer to a question I took to the Delphi oracle a couple of years before).
The work became a sound meditation that I used as a practice of deep listening for myself and whomever came into the studio to listen. It inspired me to think and write about how sound triggers memories of place, which then triggers more emotionally charged memories, the stories we tell ourselves. It also made me think about the physical and emotional effects of weather, the fear and anxiety triggers of extreme weather events especially in the context of climate change – if the weather outside is becoming more unpredictable and wild, is the weather inside, too?
I developed this work for different live sound systems over the following two years in Athens and Melbourne. In residence at Arteles Creative Centre in Finland in 2024, inspired by a very different weather environment to any I’d yet experienced, I returned to this idea, now becoming a progressively complex spatial sound work about “the weather inside.”
Listen
This is a 28 minute headphone mix created during my 2024 residence at Arteles, for a listening session for all residency artists.
Instructions for listening: This is mixed for binaural audio, which approximates an omnidirectional sound field, the way we experience sound in daily life. Binaural spatial sound only works in headphones - any will do, but over-ear headphones are best. Before you listen, make your body comfortable in whatever way you like, and put up a “do not disturb” sign on your door and your device, so you won’t be interrupted.
“The Weather Inside”, Finland, 2024
In March 2024, in residence at the Arteles Creative Center in Finland, I returned to “Bizalom”, inspired by the landscape and sounds of the Finnish winter/spring (the freeze/thaw), and its correlation with ideas of resistance to and surrender to trust. I was also reading the “Kalevala”, the amazing epic poem, and various books about Finnish folklore, nature and ancestor spirits. The animistic foundations of Finnish mythology resonated with me deeply, especially with my belief that as part of the earth, we feel the shifts in climate balance internally.
At Arteles I was out day and night recording with various microphones and hydrophone, practicing walking meditation and deep listening. An important aspect of my residency in the icy forest was developing optimal techniques of recording, and working with, spatial sounds for both installation and solo, binaural listening experiences. As I worked and walked, I thought about ‘trust’. Not only an internal process, of trusting and believing in oneself or another, the word came to have meaning for the process of developing this work over a long period – or any personal work of creation. This particular work, “Bizalom”, develops only as I’m able to trust the value of it.
I invited other artists in residence to record the word ‘trust’ for me, in five languages (English, Hungarian, Greek, Catalan, and Finnish), and to add the word in their own language if they wished. This continued what I’d done with fellow artists during the 4DSOUND Budapest residency (Petko Ognyanov, Ana Amorós, Kate de Lorme, and Vladimir Razhev spoke the word for trust in English, Greek, and Hungarian). Adding the new voices to theirs, I realised I now had twelve voices. A Greek chorus.
I returned to the Seikilos epitaph reading more about the origins of the lyric poem inscribed along with the music. I read that the poem may be calling on the muse Euterpe, one of nine muses of Greek myth – the giver of pleasure, represented by a flute. I mapped out nine scenes, for each of the nine muses, each calling in a particular place, weather, emotion. Each of the muses represents a different aspect of art and science. I recorded more story fragments, expanding on the memories used in earlier versions, adding those in response to the Finland environment. Resident artist Raissa Bailey recorded a calling on each of the muses, to open each scene.
In the last week of the residency I roughly mixed five scenes, in binaural format, to share with the other artists in residence in solo headphone listening sessions:
1/ the Delphi mountain, the oracle, and the summer storm (Euterpe)
2/ Király bathhouse and its chorus of reverberating low frequency voices and water (Melpomene)
3/ rain on the streets of Budapest at 3am, and the echoes of ghosts in the synagogue (Polymnia)
4/ the winter freeze in the forests of Finland and its correlating memory of a frozen moment years ago (Thalia)
5/ the thaw, the experience of the release of water from the ice in the spring, and how the act of trusting is itself a kind of thaw (Urania)
Listening at Arteles
The listening sessions were designed for complete relaxation, and surrender, in the attic meditation room of Arteles. Over the course of a whole day and night, on a schedule, the artists were invited up, given time to settle themselves in comfort with cushions and blankets, and given good headphones. I then left them in complete privacy to experience the work, inviting them to write their responses in a book at the end of the session.
The feedback from these 12 artists from different backgrounds, cultures, countries and practices, was invaluable and helped me to see the potential power of this work - primarily, it’s simplicity and value as a ‘soundbath’ or sound meditation as much as a work of art.
Earlier versions
Live in Athens
In 2018 I performed a sound, video and DJ set at Chimeres Space in Athens.
This set begins with a live mix of the first version of “Bizalom” (created at 4DSOUND) along with a video mix of my own films and images. The second half DJ set mixes global music and poetry.
Live in Melbourne
The second live version of “Bizalom”, part of a performance for the Space and Sometimes Movement show at MPavilion, February 2019, working with a Yamaha wave-field synthesis sound system.
The Seikilos epitaph
I’ve long been intrigued by the Seikilos epitaph, the oldest surviving complete musical notation. It’s a timeless poetic message of love, and a request for inspiration. A calling on the gods, possibly, a calling on love, also possibly. I had a MIDI file of the tune, that inspired another dimension to “Bizalom” as it took shape in the 4DSOUND studio in 2018. Petko Ognyanov read the translation of the inscription 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.
In the first two iterations of this sound work, this melody floats in, out, follows, and leads. Both the melody and the poem seemed to ground the work in a kind of continuity, of (weather) patterns of human emotion and search for inspiration across time.