Masafumi Komatsu

The way that creative sound space should be designed -Soundscape design in Kyoto-

I consider "Peaceful Space" a space that brings a sense of serenity to human beings from both physical and mental aspects. In particular, I focus on sound approach to create "Peaceful Space" as a sound environmental designer and researcher as well as a pianist. I think that the field of sound has a unique role to intermediate between physical and mental worlds. Sounds can directly influence our emotions and also it can easily spread in space, which enables us to physically measure them.

To explore this concept into actual spaces, I would like you to introduce two cases of my soundscape designs in Kyoto city. First, I surveyed the characteristics of soundscape in Kyoto city by collecting the sounds of traditional Japanese landscape gardens, temples, shrines, and everyday life of communities and interpreting the good qualities of the sound environment. Next, I conducted the specific soundscape designs at two spaces. One is Kyoto Tower observation deck where I introduced my ambient music to improve the sound environment. The other is Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Garden (greenhouse) where I am planning to introduce sound stimuli to create warmth and serenity in the space. In conclusion, I would say that to create "Peaceful Space" it is important to learn natural sounds and ancestral wisdom of soundscape designs.

Bio: associate professor of Kyoto Seika University, department of humanities . He has a Doctor of Engineering, Masters of Musicology and Agriculture, Bachelor of Agriculture. He is also a sound environmental designer and pianist

Sylvie Shaw

Finding home along the river

Sylvie Shaw arrived in Brisbane early in 2007. Among the first things she decided to do was to get to know her new place. She found a bush track along the Brisbane River and began to watch the seasons, the movement of birds, the wash of the tides and the changing colours, sights and sounds of a small sacred haven in the midst of this sprawling city. Getting to know place also meant, sadly, being witness to the disappearance of peaceful green as old trees, beautiful gardens and lovely heritage houses were torn down to make way for Brisbane's growth. Possums, bats, birds and other creatures lost their homes and sources of food in the rush. There seems little awareness of the need to preserve biodiversity as well as cultural heritage and limited care for the workings of the ecosystem, and significantly for drought-prone Brisbane, of the awesome ritual of the water cycle. Yet the small precious place along the river held a special quality that, despite the desecration, enabled her to find solace, friendship and bounty within the moving tidal flow, the arching eucalypts and the abundant life of the river, human and other than human.

Bio: Sylvie Shaw, lecturer in Religion and Spirituality Studies, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, The University of Queensland

Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox

Dancing with distance
Negotiating a world which is increasingly seen as both global and local [macro and micro] is the dilemma of contemporary life. The space between the macro and micro is a distance both close and far [even simultaneously]. The ability to ‘see’ multiple perspectives is imperative in order to negotiate ‘how to be’ in this permeable space. This space offers humanity the possibility of compassion and compassionate relationships with new perspectives which collapse barriers of difference. This shared compassion is the great hope of a globalised world perhaps providing clues to new pathways to peace.

The act of painting involves seeing with eye ball and pupil and also ‘seeing’ with the mind’s eye. As artists move back and forth from their work examining them as close and far distance they make decisions based on what their seeing eye thinks looks good and what their mind’s eye wants to achieve in respect of meaning, message, essence and/or aura. The physical act of moving back and forth simultaneously making decisions based on imaginative and intellectual capacities is a dance with spatial and temporal distance perhaps exemplifying the processes of negotiating the space between the macro and micro. The creative act provides clues for how to negotiate the dilemma of living this contemporary life.

Bio: Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox is a visual artist who explores perspective as a physical experience and as a metaphor for how people view themselves or others. Kathryn plays with perspective in her paintings which appear to be simultaneously vast and intimate. She has an extensive exhibition history in Australia and in recent years has exhibited overseas in the UAE, US, Korea and UK. Her experiences exhibiting in the UAE have been pivotal in her interest in cross cultural relationships and art’s potential have affective agency. She has won and been pre-selected for numerous awards. Kathryn has a B.A with a double major in Art History from the University of Queensland and has previously worked in curatorial capacities at the National Gallery in Canberra and various regional galleries.

http://www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com
http://kathrynbrimblecombeart.blogspot.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kathrynbrimblecombe

Polly Walker

Balance and Harmony in Place: Song, Place and All My Relations

In the phrase above, I have re-worded the title of this conference to reflect Cherokee understandings of how sound and peace are related. In our, and many Native ways of knowing, the earth is considered to be alive, in dialogue with humans, animals, plants and natural processes. However, the sounds of dialogue among these aspects of the cosmos have been disrupted by the dominant Western culture through direct and structural violence. It is our belief that restoration of the 'songs of place and all my relations' are critical aspects of creating peaceful space in colonized countries.

Bio: Polly Walker is of Cherokee and Settler descent and grew up in a wilderness area at the foot of the Mescalero Apache's sacred mountain. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Australian Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, and a passionate supporter of the reintroduction of the Mexican Grey Wolf into their homelands.

Lorraine Biggs

Home by the sea

The regular sound of the waves rolling by, coming upon the rocks and beach below the house gives comfort. It is a rhythm that I miss when staying elsewhere in silent places. Peaceful sound.

Waking up to see the inverted image of waves rolling by on the ceiling is endlessly mesmerizing. I hear the wave come in from the East then as the lit image squeezes through the horizontal blinds, my camera obscura, I watch it traverse the ceiling to the West Peaceful vision.

This house we have built from stone on a cape facing North over the bay. The wide glass expanse opens the house to much sunlight and a passing parade of birds and animals. Sea eagles and hawks hover in front of us, riding the northern thermals, seals laze around while dolphins catch the waves, and the echidnas wander by after their long hibernation Peaceful nature.

We have drawn inspiration from the philosophical underpinning of Christopher Alexander’s books about architecture, A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building. Many of the patterns are archetypal. Considering sound, I compare learning about music with building, where you must master a language and then pass beyond the language. It must be part of your own being. You must start with nothing in your mind. Peaceful space.

Peaceful Space

(visual/sound presentation by Lorraine Biggs) Peacefulspace focuses on the location of the East coast of Tasmania where Lorraine & her partner built their home based on Christopher Alexander’s work principles from, The Pattern Language (1977) which he wrote along with fellow authors Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel over an eight year period. Many age old, patterns about living to create comfort zone or peaceful place are incorporated in their home by the sea.

Lorraine Biggs is a visual artist originally from Western Australia but moved to Tasmania to take up post graduate Fine Art studies at the University in Hobart and continues to live on the island. Her work is widely exhibited across Australia and internationally and is generally based on the natural environment in some way. She spoke at the first Creative Conservation forum about a collaborative work she created with composer Lila Melesiea based in the Blue Tier rainforests of North East Tasmania.

Jan Baker-Finch

I have before me the image of a woman in Afghanistan standing shrouded in a rich red burqua, her face invisible behind the mesh, the pleated fabric loosely outlining her form, a small wood and wire cage balanced on her head. In the cage are two song birds, one with its beak protruding through the wires, the other at rest. In my mind I have another image of a young woman holding a jar of her own blood. Into this she rhythmically dips a paint brush with which she writes 'thoughts on war' onto large canvases. As she writes she moves through a sea of spent rifle cartridges which make an oddly musical clatter in response. The cartridges are cheerfully coloured red, blue, green.... Peaceful Space: To achieve it we can carefully design, shape and construct, shut out and include, restore and improve... But the heart can find it even in the contemplation of a chance juxtaposition of incongruous and unsettling elements.

Bio: An experienced proponent of the movement art of eurythmy, performer and teacher Jan Baker-Finch has long been fascinated with the relationship between movement and sound in the natural environment, and the movement underlying those most human of attributes- the capacity to speak and to create music. As a teacher she works with kindergarten, primary and secondary students in a Rudolf Steiner school, and tertiary level music students at QCGU. As a performer she moves between the interpretation of classical and contemporary music and poetry, and the exploration of space-sound-movement as a continuum.

Ros Bandt

What is a peaceful space?

Peaceful Spaces are harmonious non threatening places to be, where there is opportunity for reflection with no confrontation. A peaceful space is a place where the mind and the body have time to catch up and connect with the surroundings in an intimate way. It is a places where all the senses are satisfied and non threatened so the mind is encouraged to be in a state of contemplation about the relationships the person has or may develop with that space. Listening, looking, sharing, moving, touching, smelling, in a holistic way. It is a safe and desirable place to be, one which encourages you to spend time”being in place” savouring these connections. Peaceful spaces are easily disrupted, a cross word, a loud sound, a bad smell, the movement of the sun, or the entrance by a threatening person or insect can disturb the equilibrium of a peaceful space in a moment. Peaceful spaces eventuate when they are a tuned habitat, capable of inducing reverie, repose, utopic human relationships. Most of all they are enriching to the person who has chosen their peaceful space for their own personal reasons. Sometimes this can be collective. They cannot be static as they are experienced through time, by life itself. Peaceful spaces I have known and experienced will be shared along with peaceful spaces I have created in public space including the collaborative The White Room Poland, Aeolian Harps Lake Mungo,The

Benalla Mural, the Listening Place, St Kilda, and Isonagaki,Sydney.

Peaceful spaces can also be virtual and imaginary. Sonic works can provide invisible peaceful spaces through their temporal design of sound space, such as Soft and Fragile Music in Glass and Clay, or the interpreted carpark cylinder of Stagazer, or the mountain and underwater sea soundscapes of the Ama women in the recent double CD Isobue

Biography

Ros Bandt is an Australian sound artist internationally acclaimed for her sensitive soundings of spaces, public and private, urban, natural and virtual. She is at once a composer, performer, installation artist, instrument maker, sound researcher and author. She has pioneered many forms of sound art including sounding industrial chambers, original glass music, building sound playgrounds, and interactive mixed media installations and sound sculptures. She is a founding member of ensembles, LIME, Back to Back Zithers, La Romanesca, Carte Blanche and the Free Music Ensemble. She was awarded the Don Banks Composers Award for her original work and many national and international innovation awards including the Benjamin Cohen Peace Prize. She is published by Sonic Gallery, Move, Wergo, EMI, New Albion Records, Fine Arts Press, and Cambridge Scholars Press. As well as her artistic practice she directs the award winning on line gallery and data base, the Australian Sound Design Project at the Australian Centre, the University of Melbourne, funded on her third ARC grant. Her books and writings on sound are well known. Her most recent book is Hearing Places, Sound Place Time Culture co-edited with Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon(Cambridge Scholars Publising,U.K), and her double CD Isobue on the endangered Japanese sea whistle with Kumi Kato has just been released on Sonic Gallery. www.rosbandt.com, www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au.