Last month I was an artist in residence at Cabin Studioi in Pěčice, a rural hamlet in Czechia. This former game lodge has been converted into an arts space. 3 artists are invited to create a sound-art work inspired by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana who lived in this lodge in the 1880s. Given his mental health problems and onset of deafness, I imagined what he would have heard. Hence I set out to create soundscape compositions based on field recordings of the surrounding nature and manipulate those sounds using several effects and editing to create a phantasmagoric, hallucinatory soundscape. The result is Smetana’s Solitude, a 4-part soundscape composition (which I am finishing up at the moment at home in Belgium), and it will be presented in the form of a soundwalk. At 4 places, people will scan a QR code and listen to the 4 chapters, each one centred around a main sound: water, birds, frogs, and human activity. The piece will be premiered during the Sanatorium Sonorum festival on 24th of August. The Cabin Studio is under patronage of Prague-based theatre Studio Hrdinů Below are some pictures of the place and its surroundings. You can also check out photos and videos on my Instagram account
Here is a snippet of frogs at night during the mating season.