"Drawing the ear from one fascination to the next, everything in his sonic frame gleams with pristinely arranged dramatic purpose" (The New York Times)

"The most intense and elementary ambient work I've ever heard" (Scientifica Intercosmo, Germany)

"After listening to this man Lopez I don't know what's going on in the world anymore" (The Sound Projector, UK)

Experimental musicians, adventurous composers, noise artists, sound designers, and generally audacious audio and visual artists with a keen - and unorthodox - interest in sound and nature might be particularly attracted to this course - as similar creators were by Lopez's previous residencies in wilderness areas worldwide.

The course involves both field work and presentations / discussion sessions, and focuses on creative approaches to the work with environmental sound recordings and dedicated active listening (Lopez's field listening as a post-media practice to inspire, reveal, and transform our creative capacities). This is not a prototypical technical "field recording" workshop, but rather one for people with creative instincts who either already know how to press the "REC" button, or never did and might never do. It is conceived and directed with a critical questioning of assumed categories and canonical views of today, such as "field recordings", "soundscape", "virtual reality" or generic sound representational and documentative paradigms.

In a flexible and adaptable manner - depending on participants' interests - this course offers to cover aspects of all possible realms of creative audio, from listening/recording to studio/composition to performance/installation and beyond, drawing from Lopez's extensive experience in all these areas, at both conceptual and practical levels. Additionally, it also provides crucial insights into the historical, philosophical and cultural/social contexts of environmental/experimental aural practices - not simply as a theoretical background but rather as frameworks with very tangible potential consequences in the actual practical work created (including Lopez's realms of Social Experimental Audio, Sonogenic Composition and Sonic Creatures).

Besides multiple workshops for organizations and institutions worldwide, this course draws from previous extensive experience of the residencies/workshops conceived and directed by Lopez in the Amazon rainforest ("Mamori Sound Project", 2005-2011) and the South African savanna ("Sonic Mmabolela", 2013-2019), which were attended by more than one hundred international artists, who have produced to date a myriad of releases, sound installations, exhibitions, films, publications and public presentations worldwide, based on those experiences.

Activities will include (flexible and adaptable):



Francisco Lopez is internationally recognized as one of the main figures in the realm of experimental music and audio art. He is also a Ph.D. Ecosystem Biologist, with extensive teaching and research experience as professor in several universities in Spain, Africa and Latin America. His experience in the field of sound creation and work with environmental recordings covers a period of more than forty years, during which he has developed an impressive sound universe that is completely personal and iconoclastic and based on a profound listening to the world. His extensive catalogue of sound pieces -with live and studio collaborations, as well as projects curated and directed, with more than a thousand artists- has been released by over 450 recording labels / publishers all over the world. Among other prizes, Lopez has been awarded five times with honorary mentions at the prestigious Ars Electronica Festival (Austria) and is the recipient of a Qwartz Award (France) for best sound anthology. He has realized hundreds of environmental recording projects, commissions, live performances, sound installations and workshops, as well as research in entomology and ecosystem dynamics, in over seventy countries of the six continents.

https://franciscolopez.bandcamp.com



WHERE AND WHEN?

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HOW TO BOOK

To book your place on the course, click the button in the green section above. You won't pay anything right now - we'll send you a booking confirmation email with everything you need to know next. Your place is reserved without payment for three days.

You'll find a payment link in the booking confirmation email - follow the link to make a payment (either in full, or the first payment of a month payment plan). In the latter case, a monthly payment plan will be put in place, so your card will be charged 1/ of the fee today, and 1/ each month (on the same day) for an additional -1 months. All card payments are handled by Stripe, and are extremely secure. We don't store any card data ourselves - all of this is handled securely off-site by Stripe. If you have a discount or grant code, you will be able to add it when you follow the payment link in your confirmation email.

Once you've made a payment, you'll receive another email containing your receipt, links to resources, contact information and access to our group chat to discuss the workshop with other participants.