Over a decade working within many modes of listening, Visible Cloaks have developed a practice that makes use of an ever-evolving set of creative strategies for working outside of the standard confines of composing, improvising or "generating" music. Through both collaboration and curation, a number of projects have drawn them into the orbit of a constellation of musicians from Japan who arose in the fertile "bubble" era of the 1980s, striking up a friendship and correspondence with Yoshio Ojima (who they recorded the album serenitatem, along with Satsuki Shibano).

With Spencer and Ryan on-site, and Yoshio Ojima joining us from Japan via videocall, this workshop will feature a number of these creative strategies for composing "beyond the self" and approaching the creation of sound as emergence, with a presentation of both their historical underpinnings and possibilities as vectors toward the future. This will include discussion of the history of these conceptual ideas as well as specific technical work for "non-deterministic" audio systems within the workspaces like TidalCycles, Wotja and Ableton Live (although prior experience with these systems is by no means a prerequisite).

There will be a specific focus on kankyo ongaku (environmental music) — not just a deep historical overview (based on long running research and direct collaboration with some of the genres key practitioners), but also an exploration into its contemporary resonance as a tool for working around the entrapments of overworn "ambient" background listening modes and standard dynamics of artist-to-audience engagement, seen from both the composer and listener perspective. The Pyrenees landscape of CAMP's locale will be used as a jumping off point for discussion of "environmental" listening and how soundscape research in western academia echoed eastward and helped to form kankyo ongaku as a framework for both sound art and corporate acoustic design in bubble-era Tokyo.

The manipulation of recordings made within this landscape will also be used as a jumping off point to work with a long running theme in their practice - the imaginary boundary between the real and virtual, through an investigation into post-production techniques using binaural and spatial audio for construction of hyper-real space in multitude of listening environments.

Visible Cloaks are two musicians working in the space between composition and sound design, arrangement and environment, place and non-place. Their music has taken many forms: site-specific multi-channel pieces, live A/V performances, compositions for aleatoric chamber ensembles, albums, EPs, film scores, VGM composing, corporate sound design, collaborations with musicians like Miyako Koda, Motion Graphics, Seungmin Cha, Yoshio Ojima and Satsuki Shibano, and music for installations by artists like Brenna Murphy, Mike Tyka and Nile Koetting. Both live and in the studio, their work focuses on the artifice of digital representation, utopian flashes seen in cultural exchange, the cartography of virtual worlds and the extension of abandoned vectors of futurism into the present.

Spencer Doran is a composer, sound designer and researcher working across the disparate-but-adjacent fields of abstract electronic music, game audio design and environmental music studies. As half of Visible Cloaks, the "humanely futuristic" duo with Ryan Carlile, Doran co-helmed albums such as Reassemblage (2017), Lex (2017) and, in collaboration with Yoshio Ojima and Satsuki Shibano, serenitatem (2019), developing a form of amorphous, omni-directional digital composition intended to be appreciated in both active and passive listening space. As a researcher, he co-runs the Empire of Signs imprint with Maxwell August Croy (known for reigniting global interest in environmental music pioneers like Hiroshi Yoshimura) and compiled/annotated the compilation Kankyo Ongaku for Light in the Attic Records. 2023 saw the arrival of his audio direction and interactive score for the Playstation 5 title SEASON: A letter to the future. His work as both composer and researcher deals with concepts like human/digital hybridity, environmental sound design, east/west feedback loops of artistic influence and the glistening sheen of the hyperreal.

Composer and sound designer Yoshio Ojima has been in pursuit of creating his own distinctive style of ambient music and environmental sounds since the 1980s. As a composer, he is responsible for some of the most celebrated works of the kankyo ongaku movement - his albums Une Collection Des Chainons I & II remain classics of that era, and his collaborations with Satsuki Shibano ("Belle de nuit", "Caresse" and "Music for Element") continue to develop the form. He is also a sound designer who has participated in the development of sound systems of many renowned public facilities in Japan such as Spiral (Wacoal Art Center), Living Design Center Ozone, Tokyo Opera City Galleria, etc.



WHERE AND WHEN?

The course takes place at our residential centre in Aulus les Bains. It's two hours south of Toulouse, high in the French Pyrenees, very near the border with Spain. For detailed travel information, see the transport section. The course starts on Wednesday, October 25, 2023. We advise that you arrive the evening before (24/10/2023) - dinner and accommodation that night is included. The course runs for five days, ending on Sunday night. Accommodation on Sunday night is included, then we leave on Monday morning (30/10/2023). If you decide to take the minibus with us, you will be picked- up in Toulouse at 6pm on 24/10/2023, and will be back in Toulouse at 11am on 30/10/2023.

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.