{"id":9517,"date":"2013-02-15T10:47:43","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T10:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/?page_id=9517"},"modified":"2015-01-14T09:21:08","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T09:21:08","slug":"elegy-for-bangalore-budhaditya-chattopadhyay","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/?page_id=9517","title":{"rendered":"elegy for Bangalore | Budhaditya Chattopadhyay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"elegy<\/a><\/p>\n

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elegy for Bangalore\u00a0| Budhaditya Chattopadhyay<\/a>
\n<\/strong>
\nFrom EYE CONTACT WITH THE CITY
\nGruen 108\u00a0| Audio CD > [order<\/a>]
\nReviews<\/a><\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n

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The sound\/video installation-project \u2018Eye Contact with the City\u2019 (recipient of an Honorary Mention at PRIX Ars Electronica 2011) was the outcome of an artists\u2019 residency in Bangalore in the autumn of 2010. The primary materials used in the installation were the field recordings made and video footage shot at various locations in Bangalore. Materials also included retrieved audio from old reel-to-reel tapes found at the city\u2019s flea markets. The extensive repository of field recordings and other audio materials eventually took the form of this elegiac composition during a subsequent artists\u2019 residency at the School of Music, Bangor University, in the summer-autumn of 2011.<\/p>\n

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The composition accommodates the passage of time that affects detachment, decay and departures in the perception of transfiguring acoustic geography of a city. Stemming out of intense phenomenological experience in an emerging Indian city and its complex sound world, the work represents a sonic construct that investigates the multi-layered listening processes at the city undergoing dynamic metamorphosis. Working on the assumption that passing of time over an once-inhabited but rapidly-emergent locale can be captured by employing a contemplative-poetic mood of elegiac pace in listening-methodology, this work explores indolence to facilitate meditative and in-depth observation involving a keen sense of temporality and spatial historicity that reshapes memory associations disconnected and erased during the course of time.<\/p>\n

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The primary material for the work was gathered in six months of extensive fieldwork. The audio composition took two more years to slowly take a final shape. The sounds that were gathered during the extensive field recording embody the imagery of amorphous urban development, exemplified by the enormous metro-rail constructions. The disruption occurs in an anticipation of idleness quite typical of Bangalore and similar to that of other Indian cities. Sounds retrieved and restored from found reel-to-reel tapes provide insights into this endangered idleness embedded within the essential urban nature. Apart from being mere sound information extracted from industrial environment of the construction sites, the field recordings are the impressions, reflections, and musings of a nomadic listener. They are inclusive of the phenomenological experience of expanded listening recontextualised in the composition that augments the imaginary outlines of the city by framing the impermanence of sounding urban growth. The strategy of composing has been digital-acoustic mediation of recognisable environmental sounds into auditory contexts; the aim is to evoke listener\u2019s spatial association, cognition, and imagination of the city in the state of slow and gradual decomposition.<\/p>\n

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MP3<\/a><\/p>\n

1 Track (elegy for Bangalore, 55\u201949\u201d)
\nCD (500 copies)<\/p>\n

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Recorded and Produced by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay.
\nAll sounds and texts by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay \u00a9 2013<\/p>\n

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Recorded on Sound Devices 702 with MS rig (MKH 60\/30) between 2010-2011 at various locations in Bangalore city, India.<\/p>\n

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Mixed on AudioSculpt\/Pro Tools HD\/Cubase 6.5 in 2011-2013 respectively at Studio 4, School of Music, Bangor University, UK, and Listening LAB, Copenhagen, Denmark.<\/p>\n

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At various stages, this project has received financial and other support from Deutschlandradio, Berlin (broadcast); Charles Wallace India Trust, London (travel funds for production); India Foundation for the Arts, Bangalore (research & fieldwork).<\/p>\n

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Contact:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/budhaditya.org<\/a>
\nmail@budhaditya.org<\/a><\/p>\n

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Soundscape Series by Gruenrekorder
\nGermany \/ 2013 \/ Gruen 108 \/ LC 09488 \/ GEMA \/ EAN: 4050486084298<\/p>\n

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<\/a>Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Hal Harmon | Musique Machine<\/a><\/strong>
\nGruenrekorder presents Elegy For Bangalore, a full-length CD by Indian born (now Denmark-based) multi-media artist Budhaditya Chattopadhyay.<\/p>\n

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\u201cElegy for Bangalore\u201d is a single epic track, clocking in at nearly 56 minutes. Apparently, this track is an expansion of a much shorter multi-media installation called \u201cEye Contact With the City.\u201d As stated in the liner notes, this piece is a culmination of 6 months worth of extensive field recordings captured in Bangalore, India while Chattopadhyay was an artist in residency at the Bangor University School of Music in 2011. The primary focus of the piece is urban development, especially that surrounding the construction site(s) of a large scale metro-rail system. The sounds captured are further fleshed out by the addition of found reel-to-reel tapes purchased in local flea markets.<\/p>\n

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The sounds presented on this disc are what one might expect to find traversing a sprawling urban environment, though expertly captured and strewn together by Chattopadhyay. The track\u2019s main components are: atmospheric drones, the sounds of workers toiling, metal being hauled and banged, churning industrial machinery; hammers, chisels, and other tool sounds; metal pipes ringing hollow, indescript voices, and traffic sounds. Throughout the piece a repetitive whistle sound appears and reappears. A bird perhaps or some sounds manipulated to create an effect? Some longer passages of industrial drone get really thick and booming later in the piece. Some parts almost have a musical aspect to them; the beating of metal creating a percussive beat, the ring of metal resonance howls like a brass instrument. Certain passages almost sound like an orchestra or jazz band warming up. The source material certainly lends itself to many possibilities for the fertile mind to meditate upon.<\/p>\n

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I could try to intellectualize the whole production, but ultimately for me it\u2019s a snapshot in time, the highlighting of the mundane and unspectacular that I\u2019m particularly attracted to. I will likely never go to India or visit Bangalore, but Chattopadhyay has created quite the vivid canvas for my imaginative mind to draw from. Another fine release from the good folks at Gruenrekorder.
\nlink<\/a><\/p>\n

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NEHA MUJUMDAR | The Hindu<\/a><\/strong>
\nThe album \u2018Elegy To Bangalore\u2019 captures the contemporary clatter of the city<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a lot more to Bengaluru\u2019s Metro train route than breezy commuting; it could well be the perfect symbol of the city\u2019s irrevocable change, as the sounds of sparrows become scarcer and traffic gets louder.<\/p>\n

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In \u2018Elegy To Bangalore\u2019, a recently released album of experimental sound by artist Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, the seemingly banal, often annoying sounds of Metro rail construction are transformed into an hour-long exploration of the city.<\/p>\n

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Industrial drone
\nThe work, excerpts of which are available online, uses sounds from the changing landscape of Bangalore \u2014 primarily, the construction of the Metro rail at sites such as Byappanahalli and Old Madras Road \u2014 that leave you intrigued. Various other sounds of the city \u2014 traffic, the hum of mobiles, the chirp of crickets \u2014 did catch Chattopadhyay\u2019s attention, he said, but the focus seems to be on the sounds of the Metro, which he describes as an \u201cindustrial drone\u201d.<\/p>\n

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So what makes the work an \u2018elegy\u2019, which typically is a lament for death? Chattopadhyay clarifies that he is not responding to a perceived \u2018death\u2019 as such, but rather trying to capture absences and slow disappearances of sounds from the city. \u201cBangalore seems to belong to the group of cities that believes in slowness,\u201d he writes in an essay about his research process.<\/p>\n

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Chattopadhyay, born in Birbhum, West Bengal, went to Bangalore during his artist residency programmes. After two periods of research in 2010 and 2011, which Chattopadhyay spent exploring the city and searching for its characteristic sounds, he began to record.<\/p>\n

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Chattopadhyay, currently a research fellow at the University of Copenhagen, has other sound-based projects that have also focussed on the rapid changes occurring within both urban and rural India. For instance, Landscape In Metamorphoses tried to document the ongoing transformation of Tumbani from a village to one of the \u201cbusiest industrial belts of the Bengal-Bihar border\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Elegy To Bangalore\u2019, recently released on the German label Greunrekorder, is available as an audio CD. An excerpt from the album can be heard on gruenrekorder.de or at http:\/\/budhaditya.org<\/a>.
\nlink<\/a><\/p>\n

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Holger Adam | testcard<\/a> #23<\/strong>
\nDrei\u00a0Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen vom Frankfurter Gruenrekorder-Label, jede versehen mit h\u00f6heren akademischen Weihen und ebenso konzeptuell aufgeladen. Kopf-H\u00f6rer-Musik. An begleitenden Texten zu den Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen mangelt es folglich nicht, und es ist in der Tat gut zu wissen, was sich jeweils hinter dem, was man zu h\u00f6ren glaubt, verbirgt. Dabei sind, zumindest im Falle von David Rothenberg und Budhaditya Chattopa dhyay, bereits die Titel sehr sprechend: Rothenberg hat buchst\u00e4blich live im Feld mit allerlei Insekten Musik gemacht. Begleitend zur CD ist auch ein Buch erschienen: \u00bbHow Insects Gave Us Rhythm And Noise\u00ab \u2013 und die Erfahrung einer beeindruckend mikrotonalen Klangumgebung hat vielleicht der eine oder die andere selbst schon gemacht: in der Wiese liegend, Grillen lauschend. Rothenberg hat die Kl\u00e4nge dieser und anderer Insekten eingefangen, sie als Musik h\u00f6rbar kontextualisiert und um eigene T\u00f6ne dazu erg\u00e4nzt. Das Zusammenspiel der entomologischen Orchester mit den menschlichen Gastmusikern klingt zumeist abwechslungsreich und beein druckend, an der einen oder an deren Stelle spielen die Menschen etwas zu gef\u00e4llig zum feingliedrigen Noise der Insekten \u2013 an den Tieren liegt es nicht! Budhaditya Chattopadhyays Eye Contact With The City ist das Pendant zu einer Video-\/Klanginstallation, die Bilder und Sounds aus den Stra\u00dfen Bangalores ausstellt. Nachbearbeitet erinnern die sph\u00e4risch verwehten Kl\u00e4nge allerdings nur noch entfernt, wie durch Fensterglas wahrgenommen, an die Ger\u00e4usche einer Zehn-Millionen-Metropole. Ich nehme an, dass die Bilder zu den Kl\u00e4ngen der Installation hier und da nicht zueinander passend pr\u00e4sentiert wurden, was den Verfremdungsefekt verst\u00e4rken w\u00fcrde. Die Recordings auf Eye Contact With The City lassen zumindest keine eindeutige Zuordnung der Ger\u00e4uschquellen mehr zu. Die Stadt als Klangk\u00f6rper verschmilzt zu einer Industrial-Noise-Klangfl\u00e4che, die dazu einl\u00e4dt mit den Ohren erkundet zu werden. Wenn die Ohren nach den Insekten und der Stadt noch nicht m\u00fcde sind, dann gibt es mit Mark Lorenz Kyse las Eins+ u. a. noch zu h\u00f6ren, wie der Musiker klingt, wenn er Musik macht. Mikrofone r\u00fccken Kysela, der auf diese Weise ein kompositorisches Konzept des Komponisten Christoph Ogiermann realisiert, so sehr auf die Pelle, dass nicht nur das Instrument und die Kl\u00e4nge die es erzeugt, geh\u00f6rt werden k\u00f6nnen, sondern auch der sich mit dem Instrument bewegende K\u00f6rper des Musikers. Insgesamt steht der physische Akt des Musikmachens im Zentrum, nicht so sehr das damit einhergehende klang liche Ergebnis. Dieser Logik, nach Kl\u00e4ngen diszipliniert unter verschiedenen Bedingungen und nach Ma\u00dfgabe aller vorhandenen M\u00f6glichkeiten der Instrumente zu forschen, ohne ein Klangerlebnis im Sinne einer \u00bbsch\u00f6nen Musik\u00ab zu beabsichtigen, folgt Eins+ \u00fcber 70 Minuten lang, in denen Kysela noch f\u00fcnf weitere Kompositionen von Alvin Lucier, Uwe Rasch und drei weiteren Vertretern Neuer Musik realisiert. Eine Herausforderung, Meta-Musik zu der man das beiliegende Textbuch studieren muss, um eine erweiterte Vorstellung davon zu erhalten, was es jeweils zu h\u00f6ren gibt. Keine Musik f\u00fcr jeden Tag, aber das ist auch sicher mit keiner der drei\u00a0Ver\u00f6ffentlichungen beabsichtigt.
\nlink<\/a><\/p>\n

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Dmitry Vasilyev | The Sound Projector<\/a><\/strong>
\nOh yes, the Gruenrekorder label turns 10 this year, and through this decade it gains the deserved reputation as one of the finest European labels dealing with field recordings and electronic music utilising field recordings. Operated by German sound-artists Lasse-Marc Riek and Roland Etzin, Gruenrekorder has released over 130 albums up to this moment, and most of them are highly interesting for all of you phonography lovers. All these releases are on digital format (CD, CDr or downloads), so you can expect outstanding recording quality with each new release, but also very special aesthetics of listening to the world surrounding us, and wonder how musical these ordinary sounds from everyday life can be. One of the most recent outings is the new album by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay \u2013 sound artist, audiovisual media practitioner and researcher from India who currently based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Based on the field recordings made in Bangalore (the capital city of the Indian state of Karnataka), it became a sound\/video installation-project involving the audio from old reel-to-reel tapes found at the city\u2019s flea markets. What really differentiates this work from other published field recordings is the narrative quality of music, which flows continuously for about one hour, forming the massive soundwalk without any certain direction, guiding us only by some strange crash\/squeak-like sounds and distorted voices. There\u2019s also a bit of processing over there, but not in a soundscape manner, just to sustain certain sounds and create a sort of hypnotic alignment. If you have heard the Buildings New York album by Francisco L\u00f3pez, you will feel some similarity in structure. At times the soundflow receives a very ambient-like sonority, ending again with strange Eastern harmonisation and a definitive musique concrete quality. So you see, the music here is something that\u2019s always changing but with no overall progress, just like a state of mind. Interesting album, not to miss out if you like to travel in your armchair.<\/p>\n

link<\/a><\/p>\n

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Ian Holloway | Wonderful Wooden Reasons<\/a><\/strong>
\nOne track of 56 minutes entitled ‚Elegy for Bangalore‘ makes up this here album from Gruenrekorder and it’s another, in a very long line of, absolute corker.
\nAt it’s core is a piece made for a sound \/ video installation of the same name which has subsequently been expanded from it’s 10 minute runtime into this much longer and more detailed version.
\nThe recordings are, at their core, a phonology of the city of Bangalore with particular interest in those areas currently being redeveloped.\u00a0 To this has been added sounds from salvaged reel-to-reel tapes.
\nThe end result is an intriguing, if often slightly lethargic soundscape that evokes an almost palpable sense of post-industrial ennui amidst it’s desolate crashes, thumps and constant background babble.
\nI get sent a lot of processed field recordings here at WWR.\u00a0 They’ve been kinda de rigeur for the last little while particularly those of the stream and bird variety.\u00a0 I don’t get anywhere near as many that have the urban sprawl at their genesis and that’s a shame because they are usually very interesting and this is no exception.<\/p>\n

link<\/a><\/p>\n

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Maria Papadalomanaki | The Field Reporter<\/a><\/strong>
\nBirthed out of an art residency in Bangalore in the autumn of 2010, Elegy for Bangalore is another incarnation of Budhaditya Chattopadhyay\u2019 s engagement with emerging urban environments in India. Departing from a sound\/video installation entitled Eye Contact With The City (2011, Honorable Mention, Prix Ars Electronica), the 55:49 minutes of the work dwell on the concept of a meditative and in-depth observation \u2026 that reshapes memory associations disconnected and erased during the course of time as Chattopadhyay explains. A vast and extensive pool of materials was built in a period of six months while the piece took its final form during a subsequent artists\u2019 residency at the School of Music, Bangor University, in the summer-autumn of 2011. A constituent element for accessing this particular work is \u201cexpanded\u201d listening. Not only because of its durational nature but also due to the artist\u2019s deliberate stratification and framing of the piece. In Elegy for Bangalore the theme of a construction site permutates endlessly in a contemplative-poetic mood of elegiac pace. And that is according to Budhaditya Chattopadhyay more than a compositional strategy, it is in fact a multi-layered listening methodology, necessary to accomplish the in-depth perception of the spatiotemporal implications of the city in metamorphosis.<\/p>\n

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And is indeed this notion of change manifested in terms of presence and absence, distance and proximity that can be also found in other works of Budhaditya. It is by no means an accident that the artist makes use of the words meditative, poetic and elegiac when referring to the sincere intentions of this work. With a background in film-sound studies and a keen interest in the textural properties sound and the detailed framing of a locale, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay manages to create an immersive experience that to him does not limit itself in what could perhaps be called a field-recording composition. In an interview for the publication entitled In the Field, Budhaditya sites that his involvement with sound is more informed by works of Tarkovsky, Lygeti or Bach than the obvious references to Francisco L\u00f3pez or Chris Watson. The sounds in Elegy for Bangalore explore the memory of a place, the interplay between \u201cfrozen history zones\u201d captured in discarded spools of tape and sites of urban growth, audibility and inaudibility, musicality and spatial historicity.<\/p>\n

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Amidst the surrounding surgical frequencies of the machinery, the urban skin and bones being repurposed and the resampled tapes found in flea markets, one can find the intent to meditate on and to investigate the amorphous urban development that certifies uniformity and grading of roots and memories. Beyond the conventions of the listening \u201cI\u201d tied to sound art, this work offers a cinematic walk through the different alleys, neighbourhoods, voices and lives of Bangalore at the moment of being crushed by machines, vehicles, grinding saws, workers at enormous metro-rail construction sites. At times through a ground-level mise-en-sc\u00e8ne and at times from a solar position, the work observes, detached from what\u2019s taking place. Slowness and indolence are key points for listening to this work. We gradually immerse in our journey through the city, we focus on its echoing details in long exposure, experiencing its heavy breathing, layer after layer, in a state of slow and gradual decomposition. The field recordings, one of the three layers composing the work, are, to Chattopadhyay\u2019 s words, intensive and inclusive of the phenomenological experience of listening and recording at various locations in the city. The industrial drones form the quintessential continuo and the repurposed tapes provide insight to the city\u2019s auditory legacy and endangered idleness. If anything, Elegy for Bangalore offers a beautiful reflection on a city that can only be imagined. More than an elegy, the work evokes a watchful solar eye (and ear), looking (and listening) over the bigger scheme where urban growth supersedes the natural and the collective. Yet, although the sun can be easily hidden it can hardly be drilled or cemented.
\n* from installation \u2018Eye contact with the city\u2019<\/p>\n

link<\/a><\/p>\n

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Glen Hall | Exclaim!<\/a><\/strong>
\nFinding sounds in the underground construction sites of a metro rail line in Bangalore, India, and in old reel-to-reel tapes in the city’s flea market, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay constructs a sonic meditation on the transformation of a city. He listens for those moments when the sounds that surround become those that transport to enhanced awareness. Metal being dropped in a tunnel has an eerie delay and decay; construction machinery vibrates, grinds, growls and fades; while Hammer and chisel hit concrete, indistinct voices call out, car horns beep, diesel engines thrum and rhythmic patterns coalesce and dissolve. The stuff of „sound life“ is given a stage upon which they can act on the mind\/quiet of the attentive listener. The construction sounds are now, but the reel-to-reel materials are the city’s past reappearing and being re-integrated, akin to how a photographer can incorporate an old photo into a present-day scene. Eye Contact With The City is a soundscape composition that explores urban growth and history with a cinematic sensibility and an architectural feeling for space and duration.<\/p>\n

link<\/a><\/p>\n

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Guillaume Belhomme | Le son du grisli<\/a><\/strong>
\nAvec un entrain comparable \u00e0 celui d\u2019Akio Suzuki lorsqu\u2019il nous entretenait jadis de l\u2019\u00e9tat du trafic du New Taiza Tunnel, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay composa Eye Contact with The City, installation audiovisuelle jouant des rumeurs \u2013 celle des transports du sud de l\u2019Inde, premi\u00e8re de toutes sur Elegy for Bangalore.<\/p>\n

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C\u2019est un embouteillage monstre que Chattopadhyay organise : collages, boucles et superpositions, de field recordings (chahut de la foule ou tapage d\u2019ouvriers sur chantier, toutes sonorit\u00e9s modifi\u00e9es souvent mais reconnaissables encore) subtilement appliqu\u00e9s aux codes de la musique indienne. La trame de l\u2019enregistrement accueille en cons\u00e9quence des\u00a0 couleurs multiples que perce et explore en tous sens un fil rouge : bourdon provoqu\u00e9 par l\u2019\u00e9tirement d\u2019une musique tent\u00e9e sans cesse par la disparition. S\u2019il est fait d\u2019instants saisissants et de longueurs aussi, c\u2019est qu\u2019Eye Contact with The City respecte l\u2019imp\u00e9ratif d\u2019un quotidien fabuleux.<\/p>\n

link<\/a><\/p>\n

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freiStil \u2013 Magazin f\u00fcr Musik und Umgebung<\/a><\/strong>
\nMit der zehnmin\u00fctigen Sound\/Video-Installation Eye Contact with the City errang Budhaditya Chattopadhyay eine lobende Erw\u00e4hnung beim Linzer Ars Electronica-Festival. Auf fast eine Stunde erstreckt sich die Elegy for Bangalore, ein auf field recordings basierendes, elektronisch verarbeitetes St\u00fcck, das auch als Ged\u00e4chtnis einer Stadt bzw. der Region um sie herum verstanden werden kann. Also auch als Archiv der Ger\u00e4uschkulisse der drittgr\u00f6\u00dften Stadt Indiens. Mit Fortdauer der CD erschlie\u00dft sich einerseits, warum Chattopadhyay mit der verknappten, pr\u00e4zisierten Version am ober\u00f6sterreichischen Wettbewerb teilnahm, und andererseits der Vorzug der epischen Qualit\u00e4t dieser Arbeit, mit der man freilich bei eher sportlich angelegten Festivals keinen Blumentopf gewinnen kann. Eine akustische Fernreise wie diese erfordert vielmehr Geduld und Hingabe. (felix)<\/p>\n

link <\/a><\/p>\n

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Budhaditya Chattopadhyay | elegy for Bangalore @ Neue Zeitschrift f\u00fcr Musik 03\/2013<\/a><\/strong>
\nAsymmetrie<\/p>\n

Sabine Breitsameter: Die Globalisierung der urbanen Klanglandschaft. Zur Aktualit\u00e4t von R. Murray Schafers Akustischer \u00d6kologie<\/p>\n

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Guillermo Escudero | Loop<\/a><\/strong>
\nBudhaditya Chattopadhyay was born in Birbhum, India where he studied cinema specializing in audiography. In addition to film he workes on field recordings and experimental music.
\n‚Eye Contact with the City‘ is an audiovisual installation which won in 2011 the Honorable Mention at Prix Ars Electronica which is held every year in Austria. This work was the result of a residence in Bangalore, India in the fall of 2010.
\n‚Elegy for Bangalore‘ is a set of sounds that come from buolding work, traffic sounds, drills, workers talking loud, classical Indian, some of which are found in its pure state while others are processed.
\nIt’s interesting to hear the sounds that have reverb and echoes, transforming and displaying their original sound to different textures and timbres, delivering new shades to new soundscapes.<\/p>\n

link<\/a><\/p>\n

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Interview\u00a0| By Guillermo Escudero | Loop<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay was born in Birbhum, India, where he studied cinema specializing in Audiography at the National Film School-SRFTI and then studied Master of Arts in New Media with a dissertation in Sound-Art from Aarhus University in Denmark. Chattopadhyay works in the fields of film, digital media and sound art in which he incorporates audio, video and text generating a wide range of sound-based artworks for exhibition, publication, installation and live performance‘. […<\/a>]<\/p>\n

link<\/a><\/p>\n

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Idwal Fisher | IDWAL FISHER<\/a><\/strong>
\n[…] Budhaditya Chattopadhyay\u2019s \u2018elegy to Bangalore\u2019 is a single 55 minute composition thats a monotonous ride mixing the dull roar of building work, city traffic, pneumatic drills [them again] the agitated chatter of site foremen, grinders at work, traditional Indian classical music, [that\u2019ll be the sounds culled from reel-to-reel tapes found in the city\u2019s flea market]\u00a0 \u2026 you get the idea \u2026 in an attempt to convey the rapid urban growth of Bangalore. In one huge solid lump that I found difficult to digest.<\/p>\n

The entire composition appears as if through a cotton wool filter, car horns appear out of audible fog like dying sea mammals stranded on the Arabian seashore, scaffolding clangs to ground in a muffled thud, clarity there is none. Things finally get interesting around the 40 minute mark when pneumatic drills [them again] get phased through some kind of filter making for a slightly woozy I\u2019ve-had-five-pints-too-many feel. An unintentional drug type trip maybe but I\u2019m glad it was there all the same.<\/p>\n

Maybe my listening facilities are out of whack here. Maybe I\u2019ve been listening to to many pneumatic drills of late? Eye Contact With The City was the recipient of an honorable mention at the 2011 PRIX\u00a0 Ars Electronica fest so what the fuck do I know?<\/p>\n

Perhaps Dave Wallace will be more digestible?<\/p>\n

link<\/a><\/p>\n

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textura<\/strong><\/a>
\nA ten-minute sound\/video installation-project that was the recipient of an Honourary Mention at PRIX Ars Electronica 2011, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s Eye Contact with the City is newly represented by the much longer piece that evolved out of it called \u201cElegy for Bangalore.\u201d For the fifty-six-minute work, Chattopadhyay gathered source material during six months of extensive fieldwork in 2010 and 2011 at various locations in Bangalore, India as well as from old reel-to-reel tapes found at the city’s flea markets. The result, two years in the making, is no bucolic portrait, but rather a piece that largely concentrates on the industrial sounds of urban development\u2014the myriad noises generated by machines, vehicles, grinding saws, workers, and the like at enormous metro-rail construction sites\u2014resulting in a sound portrait of a \u201ccity undergoing dynamic metamorphosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Musical elements do sometimes work their way into the piece but do so almost subliminally, such that the presence of a bowed string instrument, for example, becomes merely one element within a large, complex mosaic\u2014the point being, presumably, to emphasize how fragile such natural, humanizing sounds are when urban development gets underway with such inexorable force. As Chattopadhyay himself states, \u201cThe construction sites ceaselessly upset the city, disturbing not only its natural urban landscape but also the city’s collective memory, which is intruded on by sounds from the rapid and amorphous urban development.\u201d His notes also help clarify the work’s multi-layered structure: its primary layer is the industrial drone, the second is the flea market content that symbolizes the locale’s vulnerable history, and the third is the city of Bangalore itself as captured in the rumble of traffic and vibrations of buildings.<\/p>\n

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To Chattopadhyay’s credit, the work isn’t one-dimensional, even if its sound elements remain largely unchanging from start to finish, as modulations in dynamics do occur, with the sound mass in some sections amplified in intensity and in others more subdued, almost as if the work site is receding into the distance as one drives away from it. Some degree of subtle sound manipulation also seems to be in play, with hammering noises, for instance, resounding at times in a stutter-like manner (though, admittedly, the effect could simply be the result of natural echo). Regardless, the work proves to be an engaging exercise in site-specific phonography, and the relentlessness with which its industrial elements sound clearly conveys the work’s theme.<\/p>\n

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Jack Chuter | ATTN:Magazine<\/a><\/strong>
\nThe result of an artist\u2019s residency in Bangalore, and an accompaniment piece to the audio-visual installation work, Eye Contact With The City.<\/p>\n

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While Elegy For Bangalore centres on an unmistakable drone of petrol combustion, bustling people and building site whirr, Chattopadhyay\u2019s sonic representation of India\u2019s emerging urban developments sounds warped. Somehow the environment is both distant and enveloping, manifesting a both a 360-degree immersion and an intangible snow globe of sound; claustrophobia jeers from the horizon, as buildings and vehicles refract into disorientating overlaps of past and present tense, folding over themselves as shadows of reverb and delay. Much of the source material will be familiar to those regularly engaged with urban life: fracturing jackhammers, blurs of simultaneous flea market conversation, tannoy system slap-back, the throbbing chorus of traffic noise.<\/p>\n

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Yet the treatment of these events projects them onto the borders of the surreal, tapping into both rhythms and melodic content that feels too deliberate and calculated to spawn entirely from urban life\u2019s collision of chance and accident. Musicality haunts the piece like a ghost, thickening into explicit tonal hums that lurk beneath the city\u2019s churn like bass frequency sewer works, or dripping over the din as whining drones that could be gigantic birds or dying aeroplanes. Little clangs of metal and car horns are twisted into communicative rhythmic patterns, while a ping-pong delay picks up protrusive sonic debris and ricochets it off the invisible stereo walls.<\/p>\n

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Far from an objective document of Bangalore\u2019s urban uprising, Elegy For Bangalore is a shadow cast in the wake of the city\u2019s formerly idle persona; a lens converged by past experience and present belief. A notable fact is that much of the field recording took six months to compile and a further two years to materialise as a composition. Yet for all its unrealism, the soundscape feels nonetheless fluid and eternally present \u2013 rather than alluding to its previous existence as several scattered fragments of audio, Elegy For Bangalore is like the immortal capital city of a parallel realm, beautifully convincing even in its contorted form.<\/p>\n

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Julien H\u00e9raud |\u00a0 improv sphere<\/a><\/strong>
\nAvec Eye contact with the city, le label Gruenrekorder revient \u00e0 une forme musicale plus habituelle, le field-recordings et les installations sonores et\/ou musicales qui s’en revendiquent. C’est le deuxi\u00e8me album que Budhaditya Chattapadhyay publie pour ce label, un album tir\u00e9 d’une d’une installation sonore et vid\u00e9o.<\/p>\n

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L’artiste sonore indien propose ici une version longue d’une pi\u00e8ce bas\u00e9e sur des enregistrements effectu\u00e9s sur des sites de construction en milieu m\u00e9tropolitain (\u00e0 Bangalore, dans le sud de l’Inde), \u00e0 l’int\u00e9rieur d’une ligne de m\u00e9tro en travaux, ainsi que sur des cassettes trouv\u00e9es sur les march\u00e9s attenants. Il s’agit d’une seule pi\u00e8ce intitul\u00e9e „elegy for bangalore“, une longue pi\u00e8ce divis\u00e9e en deux parties d’une vingtaine de minutes chacune. Une premi\u00e8re partie proche du drone et de l’ambient, o\u00f9 les enregistrements semblent \u00e9tir\u00e9s et ralentis pour former une ambiance fantomatique, spectrale, aux r\u00e9sonances \u00e9tranges et plut\u00f4t sombres. Une ambiance abstraite form\u00e9e par les r\u00e9sonances du trafic routier dans la ligne de m\u00e9tro, pour des musiques d\u00e9form\u00e9es, et par l’atmosph\u00e8re souterraine du lieu d’enregistrement. Puis dans la seconde partie, tout prend une tournure plus concr\u00e8te. Les sources deviennent facilement identifiables, des sonorit\u00e9s industrielles apparaissent (bruits de t\u00f4le, marteaux, engins de gros \u0153uvre, etc.), des boucles et des apparitions de musique populaire et carnatiques surgissent, les voitures et leurs klaxons se font entendre, ainsi que diff\u00e9rentes voix. Toute la m\u00e9tropole surgit des profondeurs sombres et infernales du souterrain, une m\u00e9tropole grouillante, o\u00f9 se c\u00f4toient une modernit\u00e9 en construction et un folklore en d\u00e9construction.<\/p>\n

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Une pi\u00e8ce construite avec sensibilit\u00e9 et intelligence qui propose une immersion dans le son puis dans le r\u00e9el. Des enregistrements panoramiques qui reproduisent un environnement tr\u00e8s vaste envers et contre l’aspect claustrophobe de la source sonore. Tr\u00e8s bon travail.
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Frans de Waard | VITAL WEEKLY<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

If I understood things correctly, then this fifty-five minute audio work is some sort of off-shoot of a ten minute sound\/video installation of the same name. Budhaditya Chattopadhyay uses recordings from ‚various underground construction sites‘ in Bangalore (India) in that piece, but also ‚retrieved audio from old reel-to-reel tapes found at the city’s flea market‘. These sounds are now also extended to a fifty-five minute sound piece which is to be found on this CD. Apparently there is a lot of building going on in Bangalore, a new quite extended metro rail construction, which changes the city. Chattopadhyay seems to be taken a political standpoint: ‚this disruption occurs in anticipation of idleness quite typical of Bangalore and similar to that of other Indian cities‘ – any big, modern city probably, I’d like to add, and maybe of the reasons I’d like to stay away from big, modern cities? I haven’t been to India, so I am not sure if what I hear is indeed an ‚accurate‘ sound picture of the city and wether the tapes really give an idea of the ‚old‘ Bangalore. Or, actually, which is which here. It’s now separated in time and space from the subject of Bangalore and may very well be regarded as a piece of music by itself. I must say I quite enjoyed this as a piece of music by itself.\u00a0 It’s a curious but interesting combination of industrial sounds, the actual construction sites, people talking, and blending all of that with some sort of strange drone like sounds, street sounds and more human activities. A fascinating journey if you will trough the life in a big city. Maybe Chattopadhyay uses a bit of sound processing, but it’s not a lot (or so it seems to me). If you like say Justin Bennett’s work, dealing with city sounds in a more conceptual way, then this is surely something to check out. (FdW)<\/p>\n

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  elegy for Bangalore\u00a0| Budhaditya Chattopadhyay From EYE CONTACT WITH THE CITY Gruen 108\u00a0| Audio CD > [order] Reviews   The sound\/video installation-project \u2018Eye Contact with the City\u2019 (recipient of an Honorary Mention at PRIX Ars Electronica 2011) was the outcome of an artists\u2019 residency in Bangalore in the autumn of 2010. The primary materials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9517","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9517"}],"version-history":[{"count":75,"href":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13444,"href":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9517\/revisions\/13444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gruenrekorder.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}