ximena alarcon

This paper describes a multidisciplinary encounter with oral testimony archives and their incorporation in the artistic research project INTIMAL. It explores ways in which to creatively listen to stories which might be emotionally challenging, and to create and sustain empathy with these disembodied voices, which contain a shared history as fissures of sixty years of violence.

This paper describes a multidisciplinary encounter with oral testimony archives and their incorporation in the artistic research project INTIMAL. It explores ways in which to creatively listen to stories which might be emotionally challenging, and to create and sustain empathy with these disembodied voices, which contain a shared history as fissures of sixty years of violence.

INTIMAL is a physical virtual embodied system for relational listening that integrates body movement, oral archives, and voice expression through telematic improvisatory performance in migratory contexts. It has been informed by nine Colombian migrant women who express their migratory journeys through free body movement, voice and spoken word improvisation. These improvisations have been recorded using Motion Capture, in order to develop interfaces for co-located and telematic interactions for the sharing of narratives of migration. In this paper, using data from the Motion Capture experiments, we are exploring two specific movements from improvisers: displacements on space (walking, rotating), and breathing data. Here we envision how co-relations between walking and breathing, might be further studied to implement interfaces that help the making of connections between place, and the feeling of presence for people in-between distant locations.

This paper describes the preliminary design of INTIMAL: a physical-virtual embodied interactive system for relational listening in the context of human migration, within the artistic practice of improvisatory telematic sonic performance. Informed by the Deep Listening experiences of nine Colombian migrant women in Europe, INTIMAL departs from their sensorial experience in dreams, virtual and physical spaces, for a holistic understanding of the body as interface that keeps memory of place. In counterpart with an oral archive of other women’s testimonies from the Colombian civil war, body movements, voice and spoken words act as resonances opening paths for healing experiences of loss.

INTIMAL is an interactive system for relational listening, which integrates physical-virtual interfaces for people to sonically improvise between distant locations. The aim is to embrace two key aspects in the context of human migration: the sense of place and the sense of presence. This paper reflects on the use of INTIMAL in a long-distance improvisation between the cities of Oslo, Barcelona and London in May 2019. This improvisation was performed by nine Colombian migrant women, who had been involved in a research process using the Deep Listening® practice developed by Pauline Oliveros. Here we describe the performance setting and the implementation of the first two interfaces of the system: MEMENTO, an “embodied” navigator of an oral archive of Colombian women’s testimonies of conflict and migration; and RESPIRO, a sonification system that transmits and sonifies live, breathing signals between distant locations. We reflect on how the two interfaces facilitated and challenged the...

Sounding Underground is an online interactive sonic environment that links sound excerpts from the metros of London, Paris and Mexico City, as selected by commuters, as meaningful moments of sound from their commuting routine. Designed as a navigation structure, the environment draws on identifiable architectonic spaces such as entrances and corridors, but also incorporates more abstract ‘spaces’ based on memorable sounds that passengers had in common. The creation of the environment focused on the perception of social, political and symbolic experiences, and was derived from an iterative ethnographic and artistic practice which involved self-reflection, interviews, recordings of and listening to the journeys, and commuters' selections of sounds. This article describes the process of creation through the abstraction of a physical space, as well as the responses the work has evoked in the users and the academic community. It exemplifies the transdisciplinary nature of practice-based research involving the creative use of digital technologies.

The following paper has been published as part of Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 10 (2); a special issue based on a selection of papers and performances at Remote Encounters: Connecting bodies, collapsing spaces and temporal ubiquity in networked performance, a two-day international conference (11th-12th of April 2013) exploring the use of networks as a means to enhance or create a wide variety of performance arts. Abstract Two internet-based sonic performances, Letters and Bridges (between Leicester and Mexico City), and Migratory Dreams (between London and Bogotá), were developed by the artist with the leading question of what the 'in-between' space (Bhaba 1994; Ortega 2008) sounds like in the context of migration. Drawing on a Deep Listening (Oliveros 2005) practice, the artist undertook pre-performance workshops as a way to engage participants in the possibilities of travelling in time and space, and expressing through voice and other sounds feelings that...

This review aimed to inform the background literature and design of a prototype for a mobile app to expand the expressive and technical possibilities of improvisatory-telematic performances within the context of the project ‘Networked Migrations’, being developed since 2011. It focused on mobile apps that use sound and encourage listening, sounding (performing) and interconnecting within local and distant locations. In collaboration with the iOS developer Donal O’Brien, we reviewed forty (40) apps publicly available for iPhone and Android platforms, analysing how these invite the user to listen, to perform and to connect with others. Although a heuristic analysis was proposed — which usually relates to the visual interface, usability and some game interaction — we noticed the need of establishing some parameters to develop a qualitative analysis specifically for sound apps. This analysis involved listening experience, expression and performativity, embodiment and gesture, social eng...

This short essay describes fieldwork developed at Mexico City Metro, during the research "Linking Urban soundscapes via commuters' memories", which led to the creation of the online sonic environment Sounding Underground. Mexico metro is the first metro of the Latin American modernity, and my reflection resonates with contradictory hybrid cultures (Canclini, 1989,1985) and with Latin America multiple modernity (Marin & Morales, 2010). I suggest that listening underground offers a porous, expansive, mobile and transcendent perspective of Latin American modernities: what people live, what people are, what it is amplified, in spite of and thanks to its contradictions.

Abstract: This paper re-visits my creative and research experiences with the creation of sound-driven interfaces for navigation and performance, as part of a personal quest for space and identity. Involving geographical migration, its sonic experience and the connections mediated with internet technologies, the experience of listening and performing within dislocation refers not only to the development of technological systems, but also to the exploration of new forms of interacting with the self and others through listening and sounding in distant locations, inviting participants to the discovery of ‘in-between’ sonic spaces for being. Derived from the need for a shared conceptual and technical framework, the project ‘Sound Matters Framework’ has explored, with other sound artists and researchers, practices of interrogation and relational playback for the creative interplay of field recordings and speech. The framework has evolved into the idea of creating interfaces for relational...

After four years developing telematic sonic performances via the Internet, listening to the ‘in-between’ space in the context of human migration (Alarcon, 2014; 2015; 2016), I argue that questions derived from technical challenges and accessibility suggest the exploration of mobile phones for such performances. I suggest key components to develop an app turning around the concept of ‘in-betweeness’ (Ortega, 2008), which finds resonances with the concept ‘net-locality’ (de Souza e Silva, 2013), emerging from people’s interaction in a mobile space. Focusing on a qualitative review of apps, I propose a taxonomy of listening and performing to facilitate and widen the exploration of ‘in-betweeness’.

This chapter situates my creative process as provoking expressions that make audible the individual and collective negotiations and connections between distant locations within urban mobility contexts and geographical migrations. It highlights my interest in creating technological mediated frameworks that aid individual and collective expressions for the emergence of narratives of interstitial spaces. In the book, the chapter contributes to a dialogue within the international environmental sound art movement. About this book: Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words is an incisive and imaginative look at the international environmental sound art movement, which emerged in the late 1960s. The term environmental sound art is generally applied to the work of sound artists who incorporate processes in which the artist actively engages with the environment. While the field of environmental sound art is diverse and includes a variety of approaches, the art form diverges from tradit...

During one month eight migrant women, residing in Mexico, the United Kingdom, Austria and the United States explored ideas of migration, belonging and place. By practicing Deep Listening to their voices, dreams, memories, body and the outer environment, they recognised the vast territories that they inhabit and how these connect with their inner self, transcending identities and the sense of belonging to a specific ‘place’; listening to the rich complexity that is generated through space, time and memory in the migratory experience. Suelo Fertil ended with a public live telematic improvisation between the eight women, taking place simultaneously in London, Mexico and Linz: a conversation with words, and sounds that nourishes a fertile soil to inhabit migratory contexts. Using binaural sound and bi-directional audio, the processes of listening, connection and performance focused on questioning what are the conditions that each requires for that soil to breathe as fertile. They were j...

In this audio essay, presented on March 5th, in FOOT2017 Festival in the Panel ‘Cultures and Listening’, in Toronto, the listener is invited to immerse on the migrant women’s reflections on the space that has been shared, and the connections that they have established. Two telematic performances created in May and July 2016 are treated as sound archives interwoven with women’s creative process, their reflections and my commentaries. In-between bilingual voices, the listener is invited to perform a reflective listening exercise extracting the essence of the project beyond complete linguistic understanding. Suelo Fertil is envisioned as a sustainable artistic platform: embracing virtual connections as a sonic architecture that connects physical spaces, to support the grounding and expansion of migrant women, so as to flourish in any soil.

Two internet-based sonic performances, Letters and Bridges (between Leicester and Mexico City), and Migratory Dreams (between London and Bogota), were developed by the artist with the leading question of what the 'in-between' space (Bhaba 1994; Ortega 2008) sounds like in the context of migration. Drawing on a Deep Listening (Oliveros 2005) practice, the artist undertook pre-performance workshops as a way to engage participants in the possibilities of travelling in time and space, and expressing through voice and other sounds feelings that arise when they migrate. The sharing of these sounds through the Internet in real time opened the idea of territory and allowed participants to express feelings towards place, identity and belonging, and to create mixed-reality narratives, within a supportive sound space free from geographical and cultural constraints. High quality bi-directional streaming audio software such as SoundJack and Tube Plug were used, adapted to the performance...

"Listening and Remembering - Improvisation" is a networked improvisation for commuters, focusing on voice expression while listening to soundscape. It can be seen as both an electroacoustic music performance in real-time and also as a networked collaborative experience. This performance is part of the practice-led research project "Linking urban soundscapes via commuters' memories". Please visit "Sounding Underground" for further information about the project.

This paper articulates the design for the first stage of INTIMAL: a physical/virtual embodied interactive system for relational listening in the context of human migration, set within the artistic practice of improvisatory telematic sonic performance. Informed by the Deep Listening experiences of nine Colombian migrant women in Europe and integrating Embodied Music Cognition Methods, INTIMAL draws upon sensorial experience in dreams, virtual spaces, and physical spaces to develop a holistic understanding of the body as an interface that keeps one's memory of place. Technologies are intended to be used as mediations aiding the co-relations in listening for the sensing, processing and retrieval of an oral archive of other women's testimonies from the Colombian civil war, while improvisers' body movements, voices, and spoken words resonate with these voices. The author suggests how INTIMAL system could act as catalyst for creating new layers in the reconstruction and transf...

In 1997 the creation of a virtual underground was somehow a bizarre idea that the author attempted to realize. First, the representation of metaphors of a metro in a multimedia format opened ideas of what could be possible to achieve on the Internet, e.g. how sound fragments uploaded by different people could run on the same navigational interface and what this mixture is telling us about our urban culture. How does it sound? Listening was the practice selected to perceive the whole of space and time relationships within a journey, and how these resonate with each individual. First in London, and later interconnecting the experience with Mexico and Paris, the author followed a mixed ethnographic method with commuters in each city, involving them in reflective and performative listening practices. Sounding Underground is the resulting interface that links the three cities’ metros, along with their cultures, evoking social, symbolic and political perceptions for each listener. The process followed by participants, and the interaction with the environment by users on the Internet, have opened paths for the acknowledgement and transformation of this experience, as each underground sonic journey becomes potentially a metaphor of a commuter’s life.

Letters and Bridges is a telematic sonic performance between migrants located in the cities of Leicester and Mexico City. It invites to listen and support the in-between space created by their migrations. This is a space full of questioning, affirmations and feelings involved in our expansion as human beings in distant places and times. Following the Deep Listening practice, and through meetings via the Internet, the performers (who are mostly with non-performance backgrounds) have followed a process of sounding creatively letters sent by their loved ones, establishing bridges of access and contact with them. In the same manner, the performers have exchanged letters expressing feelings towards the place where they currently live. They created sound bridges derived from their migrations. Coming from six different countries (Croatia, France, Mexico, Portugal, England and United States), and mixing their native languages with languages learnt in their life path, they met in real-time from the migratory nodes of Mexico City and Leicester (England). From a migratory perspective, the active audience (who have met in pre-performance workshops in both locations) offers the sonic context of these two cities that are hosting permanently or transitorily the migrants. This performance is part of the ongoing project "Networked Migrations: listening to and performing the in-between space".

Migratory Dreams is a sonic exploration of dreams made by a group of four Colombians who have migrated to London, and a group of four Colombians residing in Bogota who have migrated through dreams, families, friends, and technology to many other spaces, and some of whom have migrated geographically and returned to their country. Dreamers have looked at the spaces where their dreams take place and the feelings associated with these in relation to their migrations. They have engaged in Deep Listening exercises, traveling in time and space through listening, and explored their sonic experience in dreams. When sharing their dreams they have amplified them in the waking reality with the help of the other dreamers, by listening and sounding, and have woven a collective dream in each city. In the Internet-based performance, Colombians from these distant locations meet to weave, in real-time, another dream, transcending even more the geographical spaces where the dreamers are, and where their dreams take place. This performance is part of the project "Networked migrations: listening to and performing the in-between space".

Sounding Underground is an online interactive sonic environment that links sound excerpts from the metros of London, Paris and Mexico City, as selected by commuters, as meaningful moments of sound from their commuting routine. Designed as a navigation structure, the environment draws on identifiable architectonic spaces such as entrances and corridors, but also incorporates more abstract ‘spaces’ based on memorable sounds that passengers had in common. The creation of the environment focused on the perception of social, political and symbolic experiences, and was derived from an iterative ethnographic and artistic practice which involved self-reflection, interviews, recordings of and listening to the journeys, and commuters' selections of sounds. This article describes the process of creation through the abstraction of a physical space, as well as the responses the work has evoked in the users and the academic community. It exemplifies the transdisciplinary nature of practice-b...

INTIMAL is a physical-virtual system for relational listening, exploring the role of the body as interface that keeps memory of place in migratory contexts. The system is developed to integrate the body movements of performers (and their voices) with an oral archive. The system has been informed and tested by nine Colombian migrant women in Europe in a telematic performance between the cities of Oslo, Barcelona and London. In the performance a “complex narrative” emerged, for both the improvisers and the audiences. In this paper, we describe the conditions of the narrative environment, and the embodied expressions that emerged. We reflect on how this distributed embodied expression—through technological mediated sound and movement interactions—might further aid processes of collective remembering and catharsis, in a context of conflict and gendered migration.