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Name: Christina Kubisch
Nationality: German
Occupation: Sound artist, composer
Current release: Christina Kubisch's Plus is out via DUR.
Recommendations:
In the Field: The Art of Field Reordings, Uniformbooks 2013
Audio Culture: Readings in modern music edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Werner, continuum New York, 2005
Autumn leaves, Sound and the Environmnet in Artistic Practice, edited by Angus Carlyle, Crisap 2007

If you enjoyed this Christina Kubisch interview and would like to know more about her music, visit her official website.

PullProxy · Christina Kubisch (Sound Samples)


The opening seconds to the Wahnfried piece "Miditation" were the first time I consciously became aware of the intense effect sound could have (as opposed to melody or harmony). Can you talk a bit about your interest in or fascination for sound and what sparked it?

 
I always was attracted by sound, there was no special "start".

I wanted to become an artist or musician already as a child. When I was six I started to learn playing the accordeon but I liked to listen to the rain or the wind in the nordic landscape where I was born for long times.

Despite a life-long interest for the most diverse sonic colours, I am still to this day probably moved the most by the sound of the human voice or sounds that have obvious similarities to it. Are you, too, interested in voices and language, the rhythm of speech, the timbres – and do you think these qualities find their way into your sound work?

Yes. I have done many compositions with voice. Such as:

Silent exercizes, where people in more than 100 languages repeat the word silence in their native language.
Another piece and sound installation "Voices of memory" (2014) was based on ca. 42.000 names of irish soldiers fallen in first world war. The names were recorded with voluntaries in Dublin, the whole installation has the duration of two days. It was played in Dublin for four years between 2013 and 2017.

What are the types of sound that you find yourself most drawn to or sounds you strongly dislike – and do you have any explanation for your preferences?

I like almost every sound.

I love electromagnetic waves and to make magnetic field recordings with my self developed tools. I love as well all nature sounds, especially hidden sounds such as the ones under water.

What have been some of the most beautiful/intriguing sounds you've heard and some of the most beautifully/intriguingly sounding places you've been to?

All the 91 cities where I realized an Electrical Walk until now were intriguing by the fascinating electrical fields I discovered. A natural sound I was deeply impressed by was the choruses of frogs in the rundown swimming pool of an abandoned hotel in middle of a forest in Cameroun.

The fascination with recorded sounds is often linked to the live experience whie making a field redcording, the atmosphere in general, the climate, the surrounding, the danger sometimes. Listening to the sounds afterwards in the studio can be quite different.

There can be very deep/high/loud/quiet/grating/delicate sounds, just to name a few characteristics. Are there extremes in sound you are particularly interested in - and what response do they elicit in you?

I like all kind of sounds

In relation to sound, I often read words like “material”, “sculpting”, “design”, and “installation”. Do you feel these terms have a relationship to your own view of and approach towards sound? What are the “material” qualities of sound?

Well. I am considered a "sound artist". The basic freedom of moving in a sound installation with your own time, choice of movement and ways of listening is quite different from sitting in front of a stage with a performer. The freedom of listening to a soundscape as long and in the way you want is particularly connected to site specific sound installations, often outside, so the the "real" sounds can mix with it.

I did several installations with solarpanels which trigger different sounds depending on the amount of light, often in trees. After a while the birds imitated these sounds and started a dialogue with the "artificial" ones.

Deep listening, audiowalks, meditation, listening with both eyes closed, and the like can sharpen our sense of hearing – which techniques or experiences have worked for you to create a greater awareness of the sound aspects of music and our environment?

I do not need any special techniques to listen, it's just natural to me to listen to everything with full concentration. But this can become quite intense and tiring from time to time.

Where do you find the sounds you're working with? How do you collect, and organise them?

Tools and sources: Microphones, hydrophones, geophones, custom made induction headphones and other receivers. Instrumental sounds, performing musicians, voice, field recordings in different sound environments.

Generally I do not use computer generated sounds, but of course I work with programs such as pro tools or reaper.

From the interviews I've conducted with DJs, they tend to think of tracks foremost in terms of "energy". Do you think you have similar "mental images" for sounds – if so, what are they?

My pieces are mostly longer than DJ tracks. Timing and immersion into sound structures which open up the longer you listen to them, is important to me, though sometimes I like as well to produce "miniatures".

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools? What does your process with these tools look like and how do you think has working with them shaped your perspective on sound?

My first sound installations in the very early eighties were diffused by cassette recorders. A person had to sit next to a stack of several players and turn the cassettes at the end from side A to B. They all had different lenghts. There was no repeat buttom.

Nowadays I can play a 16 channel composition or installation just using to wave players. The development of affordable techniques has created great freedom for experimental music.

Some composers and songwriters labour over a piece of music for extended periods of time. Have there been sounds or field recordings you've worked on for very long times as well? If so, please tell me about them, and what you were specifically trying to achieve.

My next album, called Zenger station, has been on my mind for a year. I worked on it from time to time and then just waited before I listened again. It's like painting in a way, adding a new layer or changing the colour every time you work on it.

But if necessary I can be quick if I have a commission.

My last composition "Stromsänger" for 6 voices and electromagnetic sounds for a festival in Norway last year was finished in two months.

The longest period I am working on a special kind of sound material are the electromanetic sounds. I started to record waves since 2003 and have a really large archive of acoustic material,some of magnetic sounds do not exist any more today.

Harmonic progressions and melodic development has often been described as a play with tension and release, with repetition and variation. When working with sound, what guides your decisions?

Intuition, concentration and the joy of listening.

Acoustic ecology, the biophony, and even the acoustics of public places have drawn a lot of attention. How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

We live in a world which in most places is too noisy, because there is never silence. That's why I started a series of works called: "About Silence"

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold from your point of view?

We do not need to "surround" us with sound, there is noplace without sound. Just see the famous experiment of John Cage in a 1952 in an anechoic room. Later he said:

“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot… Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.”[7]
(1957)

We can listen to a pop song or open our window and simply take in the noises of the environment. In which way are these experiences different and / or connected, do you feel?

I like both. I need all different kinds of sounds and music.