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~ of many movements and thresholds ~

Sonic Diary

What are the ways in which a city shapes one’s own practices, perceptions, and preoccupations? The author reflects on this question through his composition that opens up portals into the many memories of his time spent in Delhi, India, through a mix of field recordings, conversations, voices, and sounds from his journal. The piece, for him, becomes a sonic trace of the city that stays on with him as he continues his movement across other locations and experiences.

In this sonic diary, inspired by «Doors of Perception» by Hildegard Westerkamp, I offer portals into the thresholds of my memory from the time I lived in Delhi from 2016 to 2021. During those six years, Delhi in many ways opened «doors of perception» for me, through the many experiences, mentors, and friends who helped me develop an interest and practice with sound and listening. Through this piece, I also want to pay homage to two of my special teachers and friends, Michael Northam and Damon Yaghoobi.

This piece is a record, an audio document of many movements, moving through the city with my field recorder, sometimes restless, sometimes performative, sometimes political, sometimes sublime, sometimes restful, sometimes playful, sometimes with company, sometimes without, but always listening.

continue and slowly lower the volume and pan to a side
while one door opens and the next voice appears

It’s next to impossible to nail down what the essence of a city such as Delhi is, but what is possible is to listen. As I shift continents to study sound professionally for the first time, this piece is a way for me to tie little Delhi knots onto a memory line, to listen to 20 years from now.

These are names that I have given to the audio files from my Delhi field recordings archive. I am sharing them here in the order that they have been used in the piece:

Park-next-to-home-in-vasant-kunj.wav
paper-collector-calls-vasant-kunj.wav
Aryya-hindustani-prodigy.wav
Aditya-nithin-improv at vasant kunj.wav
slicing_vegetables_mom_youtubecookingchannel.wav
improvisation _with_a_dry_branch@professor-aseem’s house.wav
Defence_Colony_Azan.wav
Michael_Northam_Ashoka_On_Sound_Art.wav
Janata_curfew-noise concert.wav
nizamuddin_curious_kids_playing_cricket.wav
Damoon Yaghoobi_playing_the_violin in Gurgaon.wav
thomas:does_it_feel_lonely?.wav

This sonic diary is part of the virtual exhibition «Norient City Sounds: Delhi», curated and edited by Suvani Suri.

Project Assistance: Geetanjali Kalta
Graphics/Visual Design: Upendra Vaddadi, Neelansh Mittra
Audio Production: Abhishek Mathur
Video Production: Ammar

Biography

Nithin Shams’ artistic practice is centered around opening sonic portals to facilitate listeners to enter an open, empathetic, and attentive state of mind. Guided by intuitive processes and practices of deep listening, Nithin composes and curates listening spaces aimed at blurring the boundaries between the self and the other, opening up a space for reflection as well as slowness. Nithin is currently engaged in an artistic research project where he is recording the call of the azan as it reverberates through the cities, towns, and villages of India.

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Delhi Sensate

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This is a collection of songs bringing together myriad voices from the city of Delhi, where multiple realities collide and co-exist.

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Published on September 29, 2023

Last updated on April 09, 2024

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Belonging

City

Perception

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Norient City Sounds: Delhi

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Worm illustration (photo: Dictionnaire Universel D’Histoire Naturelle).

Welcomed Earworms

Short Essay

by A. Goveas

What if an earworm is not an irritation, but a pleasant repetition? In their essay, our contributor reflects on the potential of a song as a safe haven to come back to.

It goes like this:
First, mangled guitar strings. Then. Percussion, two hard hits on the drum.
Years, days, makes no difference to me
The bridge, my favourite part –
This place smells like piss and beer –
Then –
In a tone of defeat –
Can you get me out?

This is difficult to admit. But the terrible person that I am, the bitterest of slobs, the most narcissistic of outfit repeaters; I am also privy to occasionally passing secret judgement on my friends’ questionable little quirks and thinking to myself, thank God for my mental stability. Me. The Sane One.

But let me divulge a moment of terrifying truth. One that has me questioning my title as The Sane One. The best of my worst quirks:

You know it, Ohrwurm – Earworm –?

– usually used to describe the horribly captive feeling of having the same part of a song stuck in your head. The bridge of a pop song, in a way both unpleasant and against your will. But what of the voluntary feeling? I am often too busy to expand on my musical palette, as I am stuck listening to the same song over and over again for weeks on end. Gleefully disassociated. To me, earworms are a safe haven.

What clicks in my brain that yearns for that repetition?

Skittish Honesty

Two weeks ago it was that song by MIA, you know the one that starts I fly like paper get high like planes etc. etc. Not interested in narrating the rest because it’s not The One, not anymore. This week,

The mangled guitar strings

Percussion

Two hard hits on the drum

Years, days, makes no difference to me –

Not even in this safe angelic space called Sonic Worlding could I possibly divulge how often I’ve listened to it. Over and over again

This place smells like –

My title as The Sane One, taken from me –

– piss and beer.

But, of course, you! You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, even if we can’t admit to each other, you might be able to agree, in the safety of your own subconscious? This phenomenon: that music isn’t for listening, music is more a yearning for disassociation.1 Just check your friend’s Spotify Wrapped.2 Or your lover’s. Or your own.

Repetitive Stimulation

I itch for it when I’m trying to focus or when I’ve had a shit day, or when I try to stop myself from texting abominable ex-lovers. I want a sound’s familiar arms wrapped around me to get unfamiliar with myself; gently nudging me out of my own head, allowing me to separate from the worst of myself. To divorce from the most tangled garbage of my thoughts – I need the comfort of sound I already know. Zone in now. First, mangled guitar strings. Feel the feelings that have already been named. Then. Percussion, two hard hits on a drum. Lyrics that have been heard before.

Notes that I can memorize. Words, imprinted.

Can you get me out?

Music can stimulate a pleasure that centers in our brain. And when I find that song that clicks

Piss

I want to press that tender spot again and again

Beer

I want to engage that part that activates the dopamine. For me, earworms aren’t a nuisance. Earworms are my musical g-spot.

Can you get me out?

The first sound of percussion, the guitar that twirls again and again.

Years, days –

The drums.

Makes no difference to me –

And then my phone shuffles to the next song, and my sweet escape ends, the thoughts get frazzled again, the flood of anxiety pushes through. Angrily. << rewind.

– Piss and beer

(Relief.)

Can you get me out?

1. The feeling of dissociation can be described as disconnecting from yourself and the world around you, possibly detaching from your body while feeling that the reality around you is not real.
2. Spotify Wrapped is a viral marketing campaign by Spotify that allows its users to view a compilation of data about their activity on the platform over the past year.

«Sonic Worlding» is a monthly Norient column. It invites writers and artists from all over the world to to think and speculate with and not only about music. Where most music writing treats music as something that can be categorised and placed in pre-determined boxes (personality cults, end-of-year lists, genres, origins, styles), «Sonic Worlding» is interested in the vast potential of rhythms, ideas, and worlds that are still to be unlocked, attempting to spin new webs of thought spanning the globe. Edited & curated by Norient editor Philipp Rhensius.

Biography

A. Goveas is a writer born in Anishinaabe Algonquin territory. They mostly write sad and terrible fiction. Goveas came to Norient for an educational visit in June 2023.

Published on October 23, 2023

Last updated on April 09, 2024

Topic

Perception

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Sonic Worlding

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Hide, Don’t Show

Audio Essay

by Philipp Rhensius,

ENCOR

Challenging the perception of its listeners is at the core vision of the collective Encor Studio. Listen to an audio essay in which they discuss their site-specific installation «Adsum» which creates moments of pure presence.

Every absence is an ancestor: speak to it,
ignore it, feed it, turn it out of doors,
it will not matter – It knows where you live,
which side of the pillow you prefer in sleep,
where you buy eggs and milk and toilet
Paper. […]
(Igloria 2018)

List of References

Igloria, Luisa A. 2018. «Absence, Presence». In The Buddha Wonders If She Is Having a Mid-Life Crisis. Montreal: Phoenica.

This audio essay was created by the musician, writer, and Norient editor Philipp Rhensius aka Alienationist in autumn 2023 at Klang Moor Schopfe 2023. Each piece features conversations with (and sounds by) the artists and their installations, merged with Rhensius’ own compositions, field recordings, and poetry. To open a speculative realm, each piece is assigned to a poem.

Biography

Philipp Rhensius is an editor for Norient, writer, musician, sound artist, sociologist & musicologist, and curator from Berlin. His work investigates the connections between the micro- and macro-political and is driven by the idea that «feeling the chains» is the moment when emancipation begins. His music and sound art projects (Kl.ne, aphtc, Alienationst) merge sonic fiction with sardonic poetry and visceral sound. His texts are published in i.e. Taz, Spex, FAZ, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, WOZ and several book volumes. He runs the music label Arcane Patterns and hosts a monthly podcast on Noods Radio. Follow him on Instagram, his Website, or LinkedIn.

Biography

ENCOR is an art studio founded in 2016 by swiss artists Mirko Eremita, David Houncheringer, Valerio Spoletini & Manuel Oberholzer. They use light and acoustics as messenger and symbolic value to project themselves into a world which like the properties of light itself are still mainly mysterious and out of reach of our full understanding.

Published on August 31, 2023

Last updated on April 09, 2024

Topics

Soundscape

Perception

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Sonic Natureculture

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