Project Description — The Project

This Media Arts grant application will be to produce a curated website, including several sonic portraits of Canadian communities, and an essay that situates this work within contemporary soundscape composition. Seven composers / sound artists will be commissioned. Each will select a small community - i.e. not a major city but a smaller town or village - and will travel there to do field recording with the assistance of at least one local inhabitant. Each will then produce a short - 5 minute - piece that is a sonic portrait of that community, based on the sounds recorded there. These pieces will be posted in mp3 format to this page, which will also include related imagery and a curatorial essay written by Andra McCartney. The CEC will also make connections with radio stations and other local and international venues to link with the website, as well as arranging other contacts between the sound artists and the local community, and between these sites and international sound arts communities.

This project will provide production funding for the participant artists in the form of artist fees as well as travel funding. We have already contacted seven artists, from different parts of the country and varied artistic backgrounds: Hildegard Westerkamp, Chris Brookes, Steve Heimbecker, Chantal Dumas, Katarina Soukup, Darren Copeland, Victoria Fenner). All have agreed enthusiastically to this proposal, and have sent descriptions of what they intend to do. These descriptions follow under the heading 'project descriptions'. The project also intends to increase the audibility and visibility of electroacoustic practice in the communities in question, through contact with local inhabitants who are familiar with the soundscape, as well as local radio stations and art galleries. Ian Chuprun will be the project manager: as a former president of the CEC he is familiar with all aspects of the electroacoustic community, and he is also skilled in web design and project management. The audio pieces will all be produced by August 2002, and the ensuing website and curatorial essay by December 2002.