• An abstract black and white image of a river bed with reflections emerging from the water

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    Today’s episode brings together recordings collected at a rehearsal of the  Peckham Chamber Orchestra in October. Peckham Chamber Orchestra is a not-for-profit, non-hierarchical, mixed ability community orchestra based in Peckham in South London. This episode was composed and produced by Rob Shuttleworth.

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    Today’s episode brings together recordings from the 158th instalment of Skronk, which took place last week at Endeavor in Deptford, South London. Skronk is a regular open mic event for improvising performers. It encourages experimentation and blurs the boundary between audience and stage. Guests can sign up on the night and they are thrown together in makeshift ensembles. Many of these have gone on to work together as fully formed bands.This episode was composed and produced by Rob Shuttleworth.

  • A photograph of a crushed sheet of glass on a dirty pavement.

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    Today’s episode brings together recordings from the sixteenth instalment of SAOM, a monthly open mic event at Avalon Cafe in South Bermondsey which offers a space for artists and musicians to share their sonic experiments. The performers featured are Matthew Follis, Tony James Morton, JFS, Jung Latch, Technical Semantics, Henry Prince with Zeyn Mroueh and Kuro. The night was co-ordinated by Hannah Walton and Ariella Fisher with sound by Adrian Aldhini. This episode was composed and produced by Rob Shuttleworth.

  • A photograph of a Amazon distirbution centre

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    Today’s episode takes us to a parcel delivery depot in a series of field recordings collected by Olly Jennings. The episode celebrates the launch of a new publication documenting a workshop series run by FIELDNOTES along the Thames estuary, investigating the tensions between human and non-human systems and landscapes, exploring experimental methods of creative composition, from writing to performing.

  • A photo of a smashed back window of a car, the glass is blue and in fragments

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    Today’s episode celebrates the launch of our new print issue and features readings by the writer and artist Stephen Emmerson from his forthcoming book titled BIG SONG. BIG SONG is a prose poem, a hybrid text, a group of lyrical essays, a memoir, It is all of these things at once. BIG SONG is the beginning of an ever expanding documentary project. In describing this project Stephen says: I write about the past, but I do not write about events, I write about the shadows that those events cast. An extract from BIG SONG was published in the sixth print issue of FIELDNOTES which we launched last month.

  • A hand points at the mud, there is a hole made from a thrown pebble

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    Today’s episode documents a workshop run by FIELDNOTES on Two Tree Island in Essex with musician Rob Shuttleworth. The session was part of an ongoing workshop series titled FLOOD, which explores place-making poetics and sonic terrains across coastal and riverside spaces in the South East of England, investigating the tensions underlying shifting landscapes, intertidal zones, living systems and anonymised processes of de/composition. Participants in the workshop responded to prompts and the topography of the island by producing words, scores, instruments, compositions and performances.

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    The final episode of SONIC COMMONS created in collaboration with Cement Fields. This three-part series was produced whilst walking along the Thames estuary. We gathered field recordings and asked the people we met to voice texts written about the places we traveled through. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Today’s episode takes us to Warden Bay and the Leysdown Arcades on the Isle of Sheppey.

  • An abstract photo of an upturned pocket mirror against a black background

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    The second episode of new season of SONIC COMMONS created in collaboration with Cement Fields. This three-part series was produced whilst walking along the Thames estuary. We gathered field recordings and asked the people we met to voice texts written about the places we traveled through. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Today’s episode starts in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey.

  • A black and white photo of Shornemead Fort in Kent

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    A new season of SONIC COMMONS created in collaboration with Cement Fields. This three-part series was produced whilst walking along the Thames estuary. We gathered field recordings and asked the people we met to voice texts written about the places we traveled through. The resulting soundwork, composed by artist and musician Rob Shuttleworth, ranges across a sonic and textual landscape, producing unexpected encounters and resonances. Today’s episode takes us from Gravesend to Shornemead Fort. 

  • The tide is out leaving the ships on the mud

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    In the third episode of the series SONIC COMMONS, Fieldnotes’ James Hendrix Elsey is in conversation with artist and member of Shovel Dance Collective, Mataio Austin Dean. We hear about his research into folk songs ‘The Cutty Wren’ and ‘Bold Captain Avery’, plus a surprise accompaniment from Alasdair Roberts.

  • The light hits the water under a bridge

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    In the second session of our new series SONIC COMMONS, we are joined by Cecilia Morgan aka Cil aka afromerm. The South London born sound artist, composer, poet and producer takes us through a selected chronology of lesser known works from her archive, transporting us via field recordings from Tokyo to London, through bodies of water and auditory memories.

  • An image of a man submerged in the sea up to his waist, swimming nearby is a killer whale

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    The first in a new series of FIELDNOTES broadcasts titled SONIC COMMONS, exploring the phonic substance that exists between things, shared commotions and resonances, collective and collaborative ways of making. This session focuses on the experiments in interspecies communications conducted by composer, conceptual artist and environmental activist Jim Nollman.

  • A duotone image in black and orange show a machine with an inky funnnel

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    This session connects to the latest print issue of FIELDNOTES, titled ‘high variance’. Sound-pieces by Bear Kenchington and Lauren De Sá Naylor judder us into machining-oneiric states, we want to know: are you feeding the machine or is the machine feeding you?

  • An abstract black and white image with shapes and lines traced over a granular surface

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    In our eleventh session we are joined by multidisciplinary artist Trevor Mathison. Trevor was a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective and works across sound, composition and installation. We listen through his new release From Signal to Decay Vol. 5 and Trevor talks us through this iterative and ongoing project.

  • A film still showing a row of terraced houses in the background with a green expanse in the foreground with a dog

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    In our tenth session we are in conversation with the legendary artist filmmaker John Smith. In this interview he discusses some formative experiences and the ideas underpinning his singular body work.

  • A scratched 16mm frame of the sea, overpainted and dicoloured with green blotches

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    In our ninth session we bring you a collection of reel to reel tape recordings by the filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait collaged from her archive by the artist Luke Fowler into a single spatial sound composition titled ‘Pomona’.

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    In our eight session we bring together sonic experiences and material resonances from interstitial spaces. We travel between an underpass in South London to the 25 de Abril Bridge in Portugal. Including work by artists Rob Shuttleworth and Hannah Walton.

  • a light leak into an analogue photo, almost the entire frame is yellow and orange, a textured area of sand can be seen in one third of the image

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    In our seventh session we are joined by the poet and musician Yan Jun presenting a dispatch from the experimental noise scene in Beijing. This movement against categorisation Yan describes as ‘Non Music’. Recordings include musicians Ake, Zhao Cong, Zhu Wenbo, Sun Yizhou, Kevin Corcoran, Zhao Ziyi and Yan Jun himself.

  • A room with rows of chairs set out, behind a projection of water plays on a wall

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    In this month’s broadcast we are in conversation with the poet and multidisciplinary artist Caroline Bergvall whose writings and projects explore material traces, literary documents, historical languages and hidden or forgotten knowledge. Caroline talks us through a few of her recordings including RefugioConference of the Birds and Nattsong.

  • the silhouette of a cello player in a dark room with a slide projector shining a light on a screen

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    In the first broadcast of a new season we are partnering with the venue Cafe Oto to bring you a recording from a live performance earlier this month. This listening session presents an open composition titled Blue Monday performed by the poet Zara Joan Miller and the musician Ute Kanngiesser. This dialogue between voice and cello responds to Zara’s poetry collection of the same name which maps four years of Blue Mondays, extracts from this series were published in Issue 1 of FIELDNOTES.

  • A black and white image of a bubbling swamp

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    In our fourth session we visit darkness and annihilation with a collection of recordings from contributors to the FIELDNOTES print publication. Including readings by the poet Peter Gizzi from his album Speech Acts For A Dying World; tracks from Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House an album composed by the writer, artist and musician Johanna Hedva; and a recording of CAConrad performing their poem ‘I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead’ from the collection ECODEVIANCE.

  • An abstract composite image of figures imposed upon a landscape of yellow fields

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    This session brings together a collection of works exploring embodied sounds. Including a live improvisation created by Jaka Škapin and Pavel Radu which provides a narrative of ‘compassionate listening’; a piece by Sohyun Han and Alvarx del Fresno titled ‘Saturated Touch’ which evolves around the idea of sound as touch; a recording by Funto Omojola presenting their medical records translated into Yoruba and performed on a Dundun drum; an extract of the project Estou sendo by Maíra Botelho which imagines the body as pre-verbal and indefinable; and ‘a remedy for the blues’, a collaborative work by Ruari Paterson-Achenbach and Sophie Marie Niang exploring an articulation of queer love and the act of being with each other.

  • An almost abstract image of a tree reflected on the surface of water

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    In this session we present a collection of field recordings. These include the artist and film maker Frances Young, whose recordings form a soundtrack for a non-existent or imaginary film; the artist David Leal who draws from lived experiences of working in sex-shops, gay saunas and cruising parties to produce works that explore the porous nature of queer masculinities; and an improvised field recording of the song ‘La réalité’ by the musician and artist Thomas Dunoyer de Segonzac, part of a solo project titled ‘La banque de jeu de pharaon’, which Thomas describes as ‘half-way between sound poetry and noise’.

  • Green yellow algaic bloom photographed on the surface of stagnant water

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    The pilot episode of a new series of radio broadcasts on Resonance 104.4FM. This session presents three artists working between translations and transitions, including the poet and artist Lucía Hinojosa Gaxiola, whose album REZO focuses on the sound of insect stridulation; a recording from the artist and writer Mónica Rivas Velásquez exploring ways of learning through encounters with Colombian plants belonging to the ecosystem el páramo; and an excerpt from the artist and musician Billy Steiger’s ongoing research into audio compression codecs for the transmission of sound over early internet connections.

  • A woman leans against a mirror reading a script behind her is reflected a large man in bright swimming trunks

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    In our first broadcast FIELDNOTES editor-at-large Joachim Hamou is in conversation with the artist Hanne Lippard, discussing her work between genres: the third space between text and images; performances and installations; poetry and biography.