2010: Jana Winderen

First of all the vinyl release of Black Sea by Christian Fennesz reached me this year, and became my favourite on the record player in 2010, even if it was released in 2009. I love to listen to it to get my heart beat down in what had been quite a hectic year with loads of travelling, releases, performances and exhibitions.

My musical year 2010 started with recording a tawny owl in -28º C next to where I grew up by my mother's house the 1st of January. It is such a beautiful call, and it followed me all through 2010's installations and concerts.

From the ice cold Hedemarken in January I went in early February to Warkworth and Amble in Northumberland for my second field trip to make recordings of the river Coquet from source to mouth. At 0400 I approached the mouth of the river in pitch darkness, just guided by the roar of the North Sea meeting the river. As the light was dawning over the horizon in the distance it was great to hear the mix of the dawn chorus in the forests approaching the dunes mixed with roar of the incoming tide. Later in March I performed this commissioned piece “Spawning ground from the Coquet Head to The North Sea” at the AV festival in the Sage Gateshead in Newcastle.

During 2010 I have worked with a permanent sound installation for the Knut Hamsun centre in Hamarøy, where I have been recording sea urchins, cod, sea snail and other creatures in the lagun Glimma for 8 different pieces, which is played according to the tide and time of year as you go out on the balcony on this Steven Holl building. On one of my field trips for these pieces I met a mysterious raven which seems to communicate something to me; it reminded me of the raven I had recorded in Greenland last year for the release Energy Field. It spoke like dogs - very strange! I think it had figured out that if he spoke in dog language he would be fed by the humans..

In April 2010 Touch (UK) released Energy Field, which is my debut full length solo CD. It has been fantastic to collaborate with the very experienced director of Touch, Mike Harding. To see the distribution network and reactions to the CD from all over the world during this year has been very exciting. Another release which sold out and was reissued in a 2nd edition in the spring 2010 was the audiocassette The Noisiest Guys on the Planet on Ash International.

Later the year I have made various live performances and installations with the material from Energy Field, like in the Norwegian Opera House during the Ultima festival, Artelecu in St. Sebastian and the Unsound Festival in Krakow to mention a couple. More and more I have worked with more than two channels, like quad or a 9 -12 speaker setup and feel this is working much better for how I want to communicate the sounds in a live setting. It is exciting that Touch is now starting the possibility to download multichannel compositions.

Russell Haswell commissioned Peter Zinovieff, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Yasunao Tone and me to conceive new acoustic works for the installation "The Morning Line" by Matthew Ritchie for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. It was a 50 speaker outdoor installation in Istanbul. It was fantastic to make such a large piece and see that it worked really well in the public space. The composition “Between Dry Land” was made specially for this 50 speaker setup. It is rare you can work in this way, and it was a fantastic experience. The programming for this and other installations I have done this year was done by Tony Myatt and his team at the Music Research Centre, University of York, UK. It has been very inspiring working with them.

Another quite mind-blowing experience for me this year was the trip to Seoul in South Korea where Mike Harding and I made a workshop, presentations and concerts. To experience the day and night rain and thunder, to walk in water up to the knees to record the flooding of the roads and making the film, Nightwater later released as a download on Touch, was quite special.

I ended the years travels with a concert in Milan after just escaping from 2 days at the airport in Frankfurt. Over Christmas I am working towards a solo exhibition at Gallery B-312 in Montreal to start 2011. 2011 is already starting to fill up with travels, new field trips and exhibitions. I am also looking forward to dive further into the subject of echo-location and furthering my understanding and knowledge of sound communication under water and to work on communicating my findings to an audience.