Further Dispatches from the Zone

[Derek Holzer <derek@xxxxxxx>]

Dear [microsounders],

This is the final batch, for now, of field recordings collected over the months 
of December 2002 and January 2003 in the former Soviet military zone of 
Karosta, Latvia. Because this remains a work in progress, reinterpretations 
from myself are forthcoming, and reinterpretations and feedback from others are 
welcome. 

--derek

http://karosta.edworks.net/

ice.sheet.1.edit, ice.sheet.2.edit

Each day by the Baltic Sea presented such a different environment, with changes 
even from minute to minute. The harbor of Karosta is surrounded by piers, and 
completely froze into jagged, vertical shards of ice during the -25*C weather. 
These two improvisations, for binaural contact mikes and these ice sheets, were 
made on different days, using only materials on hand to create cold and 
clicking textures...

baltic.ice.flow.edit.1, baltic.ice.flow.edit.2

Tide, wind and temperature in a certain balance, creating small and complex 
interactions of air, ice and water...some strange creature sleeping just below 
the surface, bubbling lava fields, mineral waters flowing deep inside the 
earth... This rare event proved to be the single most frustrating recording 
experience of my stay in Karosta, as it exposed all the limitations of my 
consumer-grade minidisc/microphone combo. 

windy.metal.roof.edit.1

One of the buildings still standing in what we called "The Zone" was once a 
Soviet army cultural center. The rooms inside held many acoustic treasures: 
loose piles of unravelled reel-to-reel tape, old military songbooks and 
records, kilometers of 16 and 35mm film, manuals for old microphones and 
mixers, broken glass lamps, small medicine bottles...the list goes on... In the 
attic, I spotted a dangling metal panel where the roof had burned out. My 
companion Max proved braver than I and climbed the charred beams with the 
contact mikes to obtain this sample, a beautiful and microscopic journey 
through the structure of the steel.

binaural.tunnel.study.1

An excerpted acoustic study of an abandoned Soviet aircraft bunker. Max Borisov 
wears ear-mount binaural microphones, and I test the space with bricks and 
stones. Max and I found this technique very interesting, as it allows one 
person to literally "become" a human microphone, and the other to perform for 
that audience/recorder [many thanks to Aaron Ximm for inspiration in this and 
other matters]. A clever soul might use these acoustic signatures to place 
other sounds in the same space virtually...

karosta.bridge.edit

Max suggested a contact mike recording of the Karosta Channel Bridge because of 
its symbolic nature. During Soviet times, this bridge provided the only access 
to the military restricted area of Karosta. When the bridge is open for ships 
entering or leaving the harbour, the entire community still remains isolated 
from the outside world for up to an hour. A good set of geophones or seismic 
sensors might have done the job better, but the resonances of wood and metal 
are still quite clear as cars and people pass overhead.

orthodox.mass.edit

According to the Russian Orthodox calender, January 7 is Christmas. We were 
lucky enough to have one of the largest Orthodox cathedrals in Latvia, dating 
back to the turn of the century, standing 100 meters from our door, so we 
braved the cold for a midnight mass. This ear-mount binaural recording captures 
three conceptual spaces within this church: the performance space, where priest 
and choir carry out their mysterious rituals; the social space, where common 
people come together to whisper, shuffle their feet, sniffle from the cold and 
even forget to turn off their mobile phones; and finally the acoustic space, 
where the architectural reverberations create characters of their own. 

boiler.room.mix

When I discovered that a crew of three, working 24 hours a day to chop wood, 
were required to heat the house we stayed in, I felt more than a little bit 
aristocratic. In Latvia, however, it is often that the shortage is not of work, 
but of desire to work. If woodcutting is the thing that seperates these three 
people from the lazy vodka-drunks who visit the soup kitchen in the same wing 
of the house, then all the better. This piece is a stereo mix-down of a 6-
channel recording using contact and stereo condensor mikes to capture the 
various ambient and concrete sounds of the boiler room, and is dedicated to 
Astra, Gints and Viktors--for keeping us warm. 

http://karosta.edworks.net/

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