Prix Phonurgia Nova 2005

„Europas Wahn“ (Europe's Craze) is translating the European continent’s founding myth into the sounds of present-day life. The Rape of Europe – the ancient story of Zeus transforming into a bull in order to capture the Phoenician princess – is retold with the voices of European women who work with bulls: peasants from southern Germany, a French bull breeder, and a German butcher. Their statements are interwoven with the ancient calls and hollers that have always accompanied the encounter of (wo)men and animals. The only male voice of the piece is reciting the myth’s earliest existing version, written by Moschos in the 2^nd century BC.

The forbidding barrenness and beauty of Arctic deserts are the starting point for the sound composition "Frost Pattern". Sounds produced only by ice are the focus of an acoustic journey. It leads from Greenland's enormous glaciers to the barely audible tinkling of ice-covered trees in native climes. A permanently frozen world is acoustically described, beneath the surface of which enormous tensile forces are acting. In fascinating original recordings, the action of these forces can be imagined: with glaciers calving, icebergs rolling and bursting and cracks forming in the icy surfaces of frozen lakes. This extremely loud explosive sounds are contrasted with the microscopic sounds made during the formation of frost structures.

This acoustical poem confronts us with the fragility and mortality of the body, with the subtle signs which it radiates, as
well as with hidden beauties, which appear unexpectedly.
Audio point of departure is the Theme of the E-flat major Variations by Robert Schumann.  The singer heard the melody through headphones and improvised upon it.
Speaker: David Johnson
Singing voice: Carla Johnson

Engines rattle, pile drivers thunder, electric beepsaccompany mechanic, hydraulic and pneumatic sounds. Karl-Heinz's Mauermann's fragments of text mix themselves into Frank Niehusmann's symphonically compacted sound space. Grim machine haters have their say as do emphatic future optimists. The reports are of loud machinery from an almost bygone age, but also of new and different equipment. All of the sounds are original 20th century. Although some are already extinct, the last generation machines scrapped, the spirits of "our" machines continue to haunt us.

Nord Rute, is the first of four ambisonic projects, inspired by the literary works, drawings and soundscapes of the Sámi multi-artist Nils Aslak Valkeapää. "Nord Rute" takes the Norwegian Sámi as its central thème. They are the only ethnic group in the European Union classified as an indigenous people. They are a minority that inhabit four countries – Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia and have their own language and culture in which music and art have emerged as influential tools in the process of maintaining community and identity.

Part docu-poem, part music score, part folk tale and part sound montage, Nord Rute captures the events of a reindeer migration to their spring birthing pastures on the shores of Porsangerfjord, northern Norway. Ross travelled 450 kilometres across vast plateaus, through valleys and over frozen lakes with Klemet Amund Eira and his ‘siida’ – a collective of Sámi herding families – and their reindeer. Klemet’s family have been travelling with the reindeer from time immemorial. Ross recorded the age-old journey together with mountain recordings of Ingor Antte Ailu Gaup Joiking – an improvisational expression of self and nature intended to translate the ‘essence’ of a person or place into song – and his contemplations on the Noaide (Sámi Shaman).

Incorporated into the narrative is an interpretation of Valkeapää’s poem ‘No.272’, from his book ‘The Sun, My Father’, with spoken word by Synnøve Persen and processed Mbira performed by Ross. Synnøve was recorded in woods near her homeplace in Porsanger. Poem No.272 is about a reindeer herd on the move examining the Sámis’ complex terms for describing reindeer and sounds of the arctic tundra.

Amidst the dense, gritty field recordings and sound design, poet Ánde Somby travels between city soundscapes, tundra and underworld offering thoughts on his connection to the tundra, dreamtime, the gift of the reindeer from the ‘underground people’ and what the hunted animal has to say to the hunter, whilst echoing Valkeapää’s message on the importance of traditions, the bringing together of cultures and what people and industrialisation can learn from indigenous, ancient knowledge systems.

Nord Rute was performed live through a 12 speaker ambisonic array at the Barents Spektakel Festival in Norway from the centre of a giant ice maze beneath the northern lights. A stereo version was adapted for radio on Deutschlandradio Kultur.

Point of departure for this sailboat trip is Opus 72 by Franz Schubert. By the use of analog and digital electronics we sail
on a sea of fantasy and distance ourselves step by step from the original.  The landing is uncertain..
Speaker: David Johnson
Text: Friedrich Leopold, Count of Stolberg-Stolberg

Fragments of classical music are not always the point of departure of a composition. In "Some funny stuff" I blend a Bouzouki melodic fragment together with sentences from a pocket novel. Together they sound like a "yearning loop".