The birds of Nilo How can sound narrate a territory otherwise? How do ‘liminal’ or ‘marginal’ spaces ‘sound like’? How do sound and silence interact with each other in ‘liminal’ contexts? How do sound and vision (and/or invisibility) interact with each other? All these questions emerge while listening to David Velez’s intimate sound analysis on “The Birds of Nilo”, a tiny and deep reflection on the nature of XXI century soundscape seen from a “narrow creek close to the Pagüey River where many birds gathered early in the morning and sang their tunes”, as the author writes in the complement notes of this release.
These recordings remind us that it’s important to question the macro-concept of the soundscape as a “masterpiece of nature”, interpreting it as a sonic environment but and not as something that is perceivable in terms of an aesthetic unity within a sonic context.
Velez writes: “The crowded vegetation around the creek, the low air density caused by the high temperatures and the multitude of singing birds produced an immersive experience where I perceived the birds as vortexes of a room while the reverberating trees worked as walls.”
We can listen to this polyphonic and complex soundscape as a series of sonic events that are hybrid, blurred and fluid and not considering them as a simple orchestra or an harmonic picture of reality.
Velez pushes our perception over the limits of a stereotypical categorization of soundscape, building a sonic space where we can interrogate ourselves about intricacy, spatial depth, architecture and geometry of a place.
‘When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city… but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty’. A sense of beauty that is also a possibility of a critical engagement with acoustic space and the proposition of a possible different approach to the soundscape.
Notes from the artist 'The birds of Nilo' is a sequence of six recordings captured in the small municipality of Nilo in the department of Cundinamarca (Colombia) whose average temperature of 27º C (81º F), ranks among the highest in the country. The material was captured in a narrow creek close to the Pagüey River where many birds gathered early in the morning and sang their tunes.
The crowded vegetation around the creek, the low air density caused by the high temperatures and the multitude of singing birds produced an immersive experience where I perceived the birds as vertexes of a room while the reverberating trees worked as walls. This aesthetic approximation to acoustic spatial depth where architectural and geometric patterns are used to read a natural place is what I wanted to develop and articulate on this release.
"When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city… but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty." – Renzo Piano
Thanks to Enrico Coniglio and Leandro Pisano.
Photo cover: Lina Velandia
www.linamariavelandia.com
Dedicated to my dad Alvaro Vélez who introduced me to sound and architecture.
The birds of Nilo by David Velez is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.galaverna.org.