bb_r_disquiet0441 by blackbody_radiation

Created from unusable wartime rubble taken from the area in Berlin where a Cold War intelligence-gathering installation still sits on the edge of the Grunewald. This building is both rare and one could say a unique piece of utilitarian architecture that was dedicated to electronic listening and intelligence gathering.
More on this 441st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0441: Three Stones — Make music that explores territory sonically — at:
disquiet.com/0441/
Disquiet0441 aka ‘Teufelsberg in 3 parts’, is constructed from field recordings in-situ around the area of the station, as well as recordings of 3 stones found in and around the location. The stones are both man made and natural as the area was built up with wartime rubble and transported from the City, to cover over what is said to have been a structure from the Germania project. Allegedly the underlying structure, was too large to destroy so it was covered over with the rubble and made into an artificial hill. Upon it, sits a now defunct Cold-War Listening post.

I selected the stones and applied some physical actions with them. Each stone has significant properties. One is a shard from a natural material with a man made red glaze. Perhaps this was a pot, or even a roof tile or perhaps from a damaged church. Another is a piece of masonry, from what could have been a dwelling that somebody lived in all those years ago. The final stone appears to be sandstone like and was very grainy. Each, in their own way have a history to post war Berlin, and then in recent times the Cold-War in Berlin.

Some tapping, rubbing, scraping treatments were applied. I made recordings of those actions in-situ around the Teufelsberg Listening station, at home (in the bathroom), and with a homemade instrument with all 3 stones suspended from a coat hangar. The area in which the Listening station sits, is now a beautiful area of natural beauty on the tip of the Grunewald Forest. In here people spend recreation time, walking, cycling and running. In this piece you will hear some of these things as well as the outstanding forest ambience. The longer drawn out 3rd part toward the end of the track is with emphasis on the 3 stones. This consists of an original recording of the 3 stones colliding together by chance, and this file then subjected to processing improvising between original and processed with a plug-in that recreates the acoustic environment of the listening station. Finally, the track ends with the original recording of those 3 colliding stones as an unprocessed and untreated element.

My practice as a sound artist is exploring the fine lines between the artificial and the authentic. I will let you decide what is artificial and what is authentic in the piece.

This is the first of three projects in collaboration with Musikfestival Bern 2020 which will take place in Bern, Switzerland, from September 2 to 6. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/ 1

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern/ 1

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/ 2

Subscribe to project announcements here:

https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/ 2

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co 4:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0441-three-stones/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.