For a number of years, Mirra has been walking in different parts of the world as a means of generating works. Often the materialized aspect has been a kind of paced printmaking or terse field notes made at intervals over the course of the day, and in some cases, in collaboration with Karel, hourly location recordings. These works are nestled into a cycle of exhibitions that perpetuates the ongoing project.
For Hourly directional sound recording, Mata Atlântica, Brazil, Mirra and Karel stopped once each hour, using a compass to locate magnetic north. With microphones held at the ends of outstretched arms, they made two sequential one-minute two-channel recordings, the first with arms out to north and south, and the second towards east and west. At a distance from the microphones that increases each hour, the sound of a triangle, rung with a wooden mallet, indicates the direction of the path at that moment. The triangle sounds for one second in the first hour, two seconds in the second hour, three in the third, and so on, and at the start of the minute in the first hour, after seven seconds in the second hour, after fourteen in the third, and so on. These two-channel recordings were then paired for quadraphonic playback.
http://listart.mit.edu/node/1077#.Ut01pPYwe2y
Swiss Mountain Transport Systems
Swiss Mountain Transport Systems was released on CD by Gruenrekorder on 1 September 2011. The album consists of location recordings made during the summer and fall of 2008 of the various transport systems which are specific to mountainous terrain -- gondolas (aerial cable cars), funiculars, and chairlifts -- of different types, of different vintages, and accessing different elevations, in different parts of Switzerland. In this way the album is a sonic investigation of the integration of such technology into the Swiss social-geographical landscape. Recorded from within mostly enclosed mobile environments, this emergent music includes quasi-harmonic mechanical drones, intermittent irregular percussiveness, and transient acoustic glimpses of a vast surrounding landscape inhabited by humans and other animals.
Video, short doc:
http://www.silenceopensdoors.com/2010/04/21/new-england-phonographers-union-micd-3/
Ernst Karel's multidimensional audio work includes electroacoustic improvisation and composition, location recording, sound for nonfiction vilm, and solo and collaborative sound installations. Using analog electronics and location recordings, either separately or in combination, Karel creates audio pieces that move between the abstract and the documentary. Previous work has involved fieldwork-based research in the anthropology of sound, live engineering for Chicago Public Radio, other audio engineering, CD mastering, etc.
Interview by Max Goldberg in Moving Image Source, February 2013
Interview by Mark Peter Wright in Ear Room: Exploring sound in artistic practice, February 2013
Feature in The Wire #344, October 2012
Material world: Ernst Karel sorts through the sounds of recycling
Feature in Pitchfork's The Out Door, October 2011
Turning the World Into Art: The world of field recordings with Chris Watson, Ernst Karel, and Art Rosenbaum
