This Mystery Box has been mixed by Ariana Martinez. It’s composed from sounds recorded by: Jess Shane, Miyuki Jokiranta, Anouk Hannan, Mike Williams, Ayesha Barmania, Adair Sheppard and Isaac Arnquist. To hear these sounds in their entirety, click here. *** Constellations is a community of listeners, investigating the world through sound. The mix e…

This episode of Constellations we speak with artist and writer jamilah malika abu-bakare about Aural Alterities, an online exhibition curated by abu-bakare. Aural Alterities is a collection of works by 8 sound artists, which suggest dimensions and possibilities for working in sound outside of formal or canonical of the medium. All of these artists …

Trick & treat. You know where we've been 😉 Constellations returns with some 🪄😈✨🧨 very soon.By Constellations

Lonely Artefacts is a podcast series about regional Australian museums by Sisters Akousmatica for Constellations. Lonely Artefact #2 takes you to the Waratah Museum in Waratah north west lutruwita-Tasmania. From Sisters Akousmatica: “I visited in 2010 and the museum experience stayed with me, as it was so obviously a labour of love and community se…

Energy usage and sound are two omnipresent components of our daily life. We're constantly trying to weigh our own wants and complications against individual sacrifices and the perceived "difference" our actions can make. And of course, as with much of existence, many things can be true at once. Featuring:"i don't think its my place" by Sophia Stein…

Language is inextricably linked to land. In this episode, we explore how the shifts in the landscape have impacted language across generations and cultures.Featuring:“Translation (a prayer)” by John Isaiah Edward Hill“During the drought the road is dry” by Bartosz PanekJohn Isaiah Edward Hill is writing a poem to the generations passed and the gene…

Ft. “American Ghosts” by Erica Huang and “Bob Hope No Hope” by Jenn Stanley.The act of recording has impacted how we perceive and understand time. Recording’s byproduct, whether by sound, video, photo etc, is an artifact of the past, a moment of space and time captured and archived.For this episode of Constellations, we asked two artists, Erica Hua…

Voicing was produced and composed by Mara SchwerdtfegerThe piece is an interweaving abstract conversation exploring the concept of voice through a series of four sound elements. The deconstructable nature of the piece allows for multiple forms of expression to be heard both as individual voices and together as an active cohesion of sound. We encour…

This episode of constellations we’re mapping ourselves, from the outside in. Relax your need to understand everything and listen to yourself, your body, loosen the need to analyze.Featuring:“Necropolis 2: Cruise Control” by Kamikaze Jones“A Sound Poem” by Axel Kacoutiéand“Necropolis 3: Planet of the Gapes” by Kamikaze Jones.Axel writes: “We are wro…

What do eyes sound like?Does a spider’s abdomen sound furry or crunchy? How much sameness do I share with a cardinal? A mouse? Or the mold in the corners of my bathroom?... I should clean my bathroom?In BASIC INGREDIENTS we’re into objects - both seemingly inanimate and living - to reconsider our relationship to the spaces that surround us.Featurin…

Do you ever feel like you’re not quite getting it? We live in a time of missed connections expressed through misunderstandings, dropped calls and glitches. In this episode of Constellations, sit with us in an attempt to express the inexpressible. Oh, and a duck sound or two."Echoing Quack" by Natalie Kestecher and Mike Williams"poor connection" by …

I want to talk about how the accumulation of things — books or bottles or whatever - is overwhelming on different scales. Overwhelming to the environment, overwhelming to the individual home, or overwhelming to the body. I wanted to make something that was claustrophobic but also could be exhumed and heard in parts like picking through the ruins of…

X Axis: The rationale of a body in pain--Think about each layer existing at the same time and bleeding together. Each layer is like a different perspective to a single thing that is too massive to perceive all at once.--Accumulation Over Time was written, produced, and edited by Adriene Lilly and features the voice of Tiana Tucker with additional h…

Y Axis: The hoarding habits of two manhattan heirs--imagine these pieces as parts of a whole.--Accumulation Over Time was written, produced, and edited by Adriene Lilly and features the voice of Tiana Tucker with additional help from Tiana Tucker, Olivia Bradley-Skill and Michelle Macklem. Readings from The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry and Hyperob…

5By Constellations

“There's something to me something about hoarding or accumulating or the need to own things and purchase things and have things in your life. I understand it on a lot of levels and obviously I have stuff and I have more plants than a person should have. But there's something about that impulse. It's the opposite of the impulse I have, which is to s…

BROOD was composed by RUTMEAT. RUTMEAT writes:This work was created by singing with feedback, using effects pedals, playing cymbals with beadwork and some field recordings. April 30th is when I pulled "the sun, it sets on the empire" through my body by using my voice in this way. The words are from a work by Dzawada'enuxw artist, Marianne Nicholson…

By Constellations

For the first episode of Constellations’ 2020 season, we present FEEL THE SKY, a duo of sound works in conversation composed by JAYE KRANZ (Australia) and MYRA AL-RAHIM (USA). Both extend from the same starting point – a recording from 1992 made by a news reporter unfamiliar with field recording, but entranced by a chance encounter with trumpeter s…

For the first episode of Constellations’ 2020 season, we present FEEL THE SKY, a duo of sound works in conversation composed by JAYE KRANZ (Australia) and MYRA AL-RAHIM (USA). Both extend from the same starting point – a recording from 1992 made by a news reporter unfamiliar with field recording, but entranced by a chance encounter with trumpeter s…

Hello, Constellations is returning to your feeds with a delicious new season of audio oddities, soul-filled sounds and feed fucking. We can’t wait for you to hear what we’ve been up to.We’re throwing a (n online) party to celebrate our launch, THIS Friday, May 22 at 8:00pm EST / Saturday, May 23 at 10:00am AEST. It’s an intimate listening party and…

Step inside the world of Resonant Bodies with this special hour-long episode that takes you piece-by-piece through the exhibition. Follow your ears through the ambient sounds of the gallery and stop off at each piece. Read alongside with the piece descriptions below.[00:24-09:02] Aliya Pabani, Singing on the LineAliya Pabani goes to a vocal coach t…

Stepping inside Isn’t it lovely?, Phoebe Wang asks the audience to leave the known territory and comfort of the white-walled gallery space to become immersed in an isolated environment. Here, sights and sounds of walls, carpets, speech and din create a faux-warmth that is at once invasive and curious. The listener then must subject themselves to th…

In her critique of romantic love, bell hooks writes, “This illusion, perpetuated by so much romantic lore, stands in the way of our learning how to love. To sustain our fantasy, we substitute romance for love.” In Protect Me From My Protector, Chandra Melting Tallow pierces the fantasy of romance to reveal the sharp, tense and dark edges of harm wi…

Forests, rain, traffic — all seem to sound louder in the dark of night. For sighted people, hearing is the center point of attention only when visual input is absent or unclear. Cheldon Paterson’s Transport Station, composed as an audiovisual diptych (though is also released via podcast as audio-only) plays with this tendency through spatial isolat…

“Where is the Cloud located on Earth?” Reflecting on the disembodied lexicon of virtual space, Kaija Siirala’s Hamina, Finland situates listeners at an unexpected nexus between digital and physical gathering places: the Hamina sauna. A relic of a retrofitted paper mill, this sauna is an employee perk at the Hamina Google data center in Southern Fin…

In Thing-Like, Jon Tjhia has created a suite of 'exercises' – basically analogous to piano études, or studies, for edited sound works. Taking Walter Ong's preoccupations with the 'immersive' and vital nature of oral culture as a point of departure, these pieces tease and critique the heavy burden of speech and its value: as social currency, blunt i…

“This piece comes out of a desire that I've had for a long time to map out the damage to my vocal cords. As a kid, I used to scream a lot and throw a lot of tantrums and I think that might have caused stress to my vocal cords and that's why I have the voice that I have right now. And although I really like my voice, I can't actually sing very well.…

Constellations returns on October 25 to Dec 2 with Resonant Bodies – an online exhibition and short season about the interactions between bodies and their environments. It features original works by:Aliya PabaniChandra Melting TallowCheldon PatersonKaija SiiralaJon TjhiaPhoebe WangWe asked these artists to create works in response to this provocati…

“Whisper Study started out as an exercise in exploring basic tape techniques in the studio, using the whispered voice as sound material. It’s based on the sentence "When there is no sound, hearing is most alert", a quote from the Indian mystic Kirphal Singh in Naam or Word. The content of that sentence appealed to me. I thought a lot about it and t…

“What I create through sound design is a false representation of nature, but a constant reminder that it exists, because you're like ‘oh shit this room, no one's going to believe this room if there is no air and room tone.’ So you have to put all this stuff in to sell the room. You're always walking a fine line. While making this piece, I thought a…

“I explored holding and responding. I explored the possibilities of sound as a facilitator and communicator of memories, embodied and expressed. I explored themes of death, displacement, collective memory, and personal stories. These themes were informed by memories that were shared to an online portal – those stories of place and belonging were ga…

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection of escape and bearing witness. And I keep coming back to that saying, “wherever you go, there you are.” This piece began because I wanted to document my trip to Iceland with one of my close friends. We booked it on whim after a breakup. We spent 10 days driving the country during a wintery March in 2…

“This piece is about the tension between experience and the impulse to record it. The two, I believe, are incompatible. What happens when the experience you want to record is another person? How does this interrupt the relationship, or improve it?”By Constellations

In a medium where the unfurling of an idea is often synthesised and made neatly linear, James T. Green’s piece offers a welcome unending. In perfect tense, “I’ve always felt this need for control”, is a musical refrain with a psychoanalytic spike. The ‘cut ins’ of conversation between James and another person who, from his explainer we learn is his…

“This piece sounds unheard and repressed voices in our society. Behind the laughter of children playing, we can hear the solemn chanting of a lost Roma woman walking the streets of Barcelona. Violet Witt’s sung poem “All I am is a woman" explores the incongruence of being read as a woman, when experiencing a far more complex relationship with gende…

“I started making this piece in the summer of 2017. That year marked 15 years since the US invasion of Iraq. From the piece’s conception, my plan was to create a sonic eulogy commemorating this anniversary; to construct an audioverse where I could reflect on the hubris of the United States and its acolytes. Propelled by ruthless arrogance, bolstere…

“I have been really inspired by Ad Reinhardt's 'Abstract Painting' from 1963 which depicts nine very subtle shades of black. At first glance, the viewer sees a flat black canvas. Over time, the viewer notices the subtle tone differences - one is more red, another blue, one slightly green. The viewer wonders: which is the true black? That concept ha…

“This piece expresses the ongoing search for home and meaning in a time of ecological collapse and the disintegration of old ideas about our place in the world. It’s an expression of conversations I’m having with friends, and of things I’m reading. It's an attempt to make something spiritual and honest in sound! There are no facts or environmental …

“DESPOJO is a sound work which only uses sounds from an old vinyl record — clips and claps. I cut the big sound loop into fragments, creating small samples. Then I limited myself to using few processes — 1 equalizer, 1 reverb, and 1 delay. Anything else I wanted, I had to manually build inside the digital audio workstation.”…

“In October, 2014, Atsumi Yoshikubo, a Japanese tourist, was seen walking down the highway outside of Yellowknife with a camera and a shoulder bag. It was the last time she was seen alive. The following summer, a friend of mine, Ryan Silke, discovered her belongings in the bush, not far from town. Rather than delving into how Atsumi died — her deat…

“Vein of Sky is a collection of pieces made from environmental elements such as air temperature, humidity, light, and the movements of wind. These phenomena were recorded using micro-sensors and translated into sound. The project explores a sonic space or ecology not entirely representational yet not entirely fictional. I think the sonic space of t…

“Being a mother is a huge change for me. Fán is 9 months old at the moment and sometimes we put her in her high chair and put her up to the piano, and she really enjoys playing and sometimes singing along. I had a recording of Fán playing the piano and singing. I also rediscovered a field recording of a lawn mower in the Botanical Gardens in Dublin…

“The uterus is a spatial experience that all human beings share but do not remember. Within it, we experience the rhythm of our mother’s heart and that of her breathing alongside the rhythm of our own heart. This first rhythm, so close in those 9 months of gestation, will shape how we will perceive the outside world and how our own sense of rhythm …

“I wanted to make a non-linear narrative of a ride ending in a crash. I mean, this is the story, but the "events" are presented differently, going back and forth and connected through acoustic and gestural similarities - composition. I was influenced by literature and films based on this kind of structure. I decided to create a work using car sound…

“As the title suggests, my aim was to compose a lyrical tribute to the unique beauty of this coastal region by capturing and recomposing the sounds and languages of the Salish Sea. I also wanted to explore the complexity of the relationship between the indigenous and non-indigenous cultures that call the Salish Sea home.”…

“It was my wish to fuse both my passions and professions, radio and composition into one composition. ‘iota mikro’ is Greek for small iota. Iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and ‘mikro’ just means small but could also refer to a microphone. And since my real paper birth certificate in Rwanda is actually missing, I created, with iot…

“In this piece, I was thinking about how things right in front of you can tell you stuff that for whatever reason you may be oblivious to. You may be distracted by other things or… you can’t or you don’t pay attention. That’s what it’s all about, paying attention.”By Constellations

“I made part of this piece two years ago, kind of as an experiment or a sketch. I recorded myself making sounds in the kitchen, so I made eggs - I turned on the stove, I cracked open the eggs, I fried em up. At the time I was also reading this piece by Zadie Smith, which had an audio component of her reading the piece, and I just needed sound mater…

“I really just want to know what love is, and why it treats me so poorly sometimes. Even though this is far less detailed in its autobiographical elements than some other work I've done and put out into the world, it is by far my most vulnerable piece. I translated this short soliloquy from Faust in November of 2017, with the primary goal of perver…