Community Sound[e]Scapes - Northern Ontario - Online exhibition
Scroll down this page to get to the artworks.
Here you can listen to or see the sound and video artworks made by high school students in North Spirit Lake First Nations at the Keewaytinook Internet High School as part of the “Sounds of North Spirit Lake” project.
You can also hear and see new sound and video artworks made by visiting artists Nicholas Loess, Rosa Loess and Rebecca Caines about their trip to North Spirit Lake in March 2013.
Well-known Canadian sound artist Michael Waterman (who sadly could not make the trip) has also created a new commission with recordings from the project to demonstrate the amazing things you can do with sound as a creative tool.
Don’t forget to check out the other outcomes of the project by clicking the tabs at the top of this page.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts in supporting the work of Canadian artists, and in making new collaborations between artists and communities possible. We thank Keewaytinook Okimakanak for the opportunity to partner on this project.
We are delighted to showcase the work of the extremely talented community of North Spirit Lake.
Students at the KiHS created soundscape compositions based on the collection of sounds they recorded. Some students also worked with Nicholas Loess to build new film works based on these audio pieces. The collection ranges from Unknown Rae’s beautiful haunting audio, to KPAC's stunning video piece, to brand new raps, processed plane sounds, improvisations on the iPad, mashups of existing songs, and other great experiments and audio adventures by the class.
Student work - walking spirits by kota
Student work - Airplane landing mixed Cody
Student work - AVENGED by kaiandra
Student work - CLAIRVOYANT DISEASE by kaiandra
Student work - destiny thing
Student work - destiny thing2
Student work - hahah by kota
Student work - kota by kota
Student work - KPAC by Kaiandra phased
Student work - Philliprap (Advisory: Language may offend)
Student work - Walking to the car echo Cody
Student work - KPAC
Student work - WalkingSpirits
Nicholas Loess
Nicholas Loess has created a new short film using new footage from the trip, and audio recordings from the sound collection. Nicholas Loess is a Canadian filmmaker whose award-winning work works in the interval between image and sound. His film and installation work has featured at numerous galleries and festivals including the Macdonald Stewart Art Gallery, Ed Video Media Arts Centre, Gales Gallery at York, Somewhere There, Performance Studies international (Utrecht), and Nuit Blanche; and he was the 2012 winner of the Toronto Urban Film Festival for his film “24Progressive”. His recent live film performances with improvising musicians such as Joe Sobara, Ben Grossman and Germaine Liu in the Guelph/Toronto area have been described as “redefining the relationship of film to sound and music”. He is currently completing a PhD with the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice research project at the University of Guelph.
Artist work by Nicholas Loess - 238
Rosa Loess
Rosa Loess has created a new narrative based soundscape composition for this online exhibition, working with recordings in the sound collection. Hover over the image to see a screenshot of the Audacity software screen that gives you a sense of how she put it together. Rosa Loess is a singer/songwriter and sound artist whose work has been featured in concert series, and festivals including Nuit Blanche and the Chatham Black Box Series, and on music label Hot Milk Records. She joined Community Sound [e]Scapes in 2009 working on projects for the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium and Ed Video, and taking workshops at the University of Guelph, and the Ontario Reformatory. Loess also works professionally as a Bioacoustic Research Practitioner using sound in alternative healing practices.
Artist work by Rosa Loess - Rosa's take on 238 (Advisory: Language may offend)
See how she made the piece
Rebecca Caines
Rebecca Caines has created a new soundscape composition based on interviews and stories from the trip. The interviews you can hear in the composition are with: Matthew Brown (KiHS teacher), and Brandon Rae and Destiny Meekis (students). Miranda Kakegamic also read out one of the legends that are on the North Spirit Lake website (http://nsl.firstnation.ca/?q=node/3) for the project, and there are some samples of this reading used. The legend is called “The Marten (James Linklater)”. Other recordings feature the voices of the class and are taken from the collection. Caines is an award winning community-based artist. Her work draws on performance, visual art, sound art and moving image. She has created large-scale community art projects in Australia, Northern Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands. From 2006-2009 she worked as Community Arts Development Officer supporting the community of Castlereagh in South East Belfast. The initial Community Sound[e]Scapes project was devised as part of her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Guelph. Caines is currently a professor in the new Creative Technologies program at the University of Regina where she teaches sound art, community-engaged art and interactive media.
Artist work by Rebecca Caines - Things Change, Everything Changes: Stories of North Spirit Lake
Michael Waterman
Michael Waterman contributed a new work to this online exhibition to demonstrate the kinds of creative and improvisatory things you can do with a collection of field recordings/found sounds. Waterman is an internationally renowned, St. John’s based visual and audio artist whose work focuses on sound installation, improvisational performance, and radio art. His unique, quirky and, at times, haunting sound installations have been presented extensively in galleries and festivals throughout Canada and in the United States. He is also a founding member of the audio collage ensemble Männlicher Carcano, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. And in 1997, Waterman created the Männlicher Carcano Radio Hour, which is carried on CHMR in St. John’s. The show links performers from across the continent in improvisations.
Artist work by Michael Waterman - North Spirit Lake (Advisory: Language may offend)
John Campbell
John Campbell is a software developer, network engineer and web technology expert. In the past five years he has been collaborating with artists on a number of new media projects. Recent works have included “Virtual Memory Boxes” (with Rebecca Caines, Nicholas Loess and Bree Hadley), “Parallel Worlds, Intersecting Moments” (with Rachelle Viader Knowles and Judy Anderson),the “Romeo+Juliet Smartphone App” (with the Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare research project); “poetic Displacements” (with Rebecca Caines), and interactive video piece “Fade to Black” with the University of Regina Theatre Department at the Mackenzie Gallery. Campbell was the co-developer of the initial Community Sound[e]Scapes project, and has made the Community Sound [e]Scapes: Northern Ontario project possible through his work with the artists and community in North Spirit Lake; and his work with K-Net in developing this website and the collection of audio and media on it.
Joey Kakegamic
It was fantastic to meet local audio artist Joey Kakgamic during the trip. Check out the interview with Joey (and his gorgeous stepdaughter Robin) on the Interviews tab. Joey has been working in North Spirit Lake as a recreation worker, and hopes to expand his practice to include workshops and training with young people in electronic music production.
You can check out his work at these links:
http://joeykakegamic.myknet.org/
http://www.soundclick.com/members/default.cfm?member=Joey%20Kakegamic
https://soundcloud.com/joeykakegamic
You can download the media below.
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Download Airplane landing mixed Cody
Download CLAIRVOYANT DISEASE by kaiandra
Download KPAC by Kaiandra phased
Download walking spirits by kota
Download Walking to the car echo Cody
Download Rosa's take on 238 by Rosa
Download Things Change, Everything Changes- Stories of North Spirit Lake by Rebecca