Over the years I have had the pleasure of of collaborating with and contributing to the Art and Science international summer school conducted by Cultivamos Cultural in São Luís, Portugal.
The summer school is hosted in an old farm house in a sleepy village, and whilst the creative research is focussed and serious the general atmosphere is relaxed and convivial We of course spend a good deal of time squinting down microscopes and innoculating petri dishes with anything (and everything) we can find.
However aside from the bio-cookery, my focus is usually upon sound. Sound and site, sound and memory, sound as a means to travel through, and think through, landscape. My last workshop at Cultivamos Cultura was a very simple form of sonic-cartography, a way of creating maps with sound and a way of understanding the Genius Loci of a place through sound. Here is a micro-doc that outlines the process.
And so the village was inscribed with its own soundscape, fixed at geographical points, but also some more abstract material that allowed listeners to travel to an abstract location, The Pythagoras Archipelago and wrapped them in dreams of geometry and poetry.
