into_the_breaks

Recovering Soundscape Soundwalk Big Marsh 11555 S. Stony Island Ave. Chicago, IL 60617 Saturday June 9 4pm-6pm Soundwalk Lead by and Site Specific Peformance by: Norman W. Long Sara Zalek What is a Soundwalk? A soundwalk is a guided exploration of a site using listening focused skills. We will listen to how the site sounds, as we are moving through it. I believe that through listening we have a tool to define communities and ourselves. We also can use those tools to shape who we are and where we live. We will be listening for changes, interactions, conditions, weather, traffic, animals, insects, people, vehicles and other factors in what makes a place what it is. How do you do it? We start by listening in our own silence. Being mindful of our own consciousness. Then we focus on how we sound as we move throughout the site. We then expand our listening to what is near to us, what just passed us and t...

Environmental Dialogues || performance by Norman Long and Sara Zalek || Saturday January 27 5:30pm Ignition Project Space 3839 W. Grand Ave. Chicago, Illinois Environmental Dialogues Inspired by Pauline Oliveros' Environmental Dialogue (1996 Revision) We offer an extension of this composition (2018 Revision Sara Zalek/Norman W. Long). Resonating the Ignition Project space with breath, rhythm and sublte sounds from little synths. We welcome the new year, reinforcing collective listening, preparing us for new paths and ideas, listening for the unknown and sharing our experience of time.

Norman W. Long Artist Talk Jeffery Manor Branch, Chicago Public Library 2401 E. 100th St, Chicago, IL 60617 Saturday January 20, 2018 3:30 - 4:30 pm You are invited to an artist talk with Norman W. Long, a local artist from the Jeffery Manor neighborhood. This is the first in a series of community engagements with the SouthEast side community as part of his Threewalls RaD Lab Fellowship. Norman W. Long is an artist who works with sound as his medium. His work involves recorded sounds from the Jeffery Manor neighborhood and the larger community of South Deering. Norman will explain how the neighborhood has inspired his work and discuss the many ways he produces his art, from organizing soundwalks, DJing, field recording, instrument making to composing with free software. Norman has received a 3Arts Award for Sound Art in 2012, BOLT Artist in Residence at the Chicago Artists Coalition in 2014-2015, 3Arts Fellowship at AS220 (Providenc...

Inferno’s Sound Re:Creation at Jackson Park [Garden of the Phoenix] November 25th, 2017 (1pm-3pm), hosted by Norman W Long: This SoundWalk and workshop will explore focused listening and sound mapping with mobile phones and iPads in Jackson Park. Meet at Garden of the Phoenix at 1pm. Soundwalk and sound mapping will also explore Wooded Island and (hopefully!) the Bobolink Meadow. 1pm: Soundwalk 2pm: Sound mapping

Angel Elmore – Clarinet Norman W. Long – Electronics, Field Recordings Recorded at Ignition Project Space, September 23, 2017 Performance was part of the closing reception for Van Vlissingen Prairie (Video Album) Installation Long/Elmore Duo improvised with soundscapes from Van Vlissingen Prairie, Jeffery Manor, Big Marsh and Humboldt Park. Performance explores ways of understanding, being and connecting to ecology and the unknown. Through breath, space, memory, time and machines. How time collapses and folds in on itself and triggers new realities and roads to travel. Is it OK to have an imagination in these times? This is a convergence of traditions, non-traditions, experiences and sound making to create other black music.   After listening we realize these convergences happen more than we think. Thanks to Ignition Project Space, Mia Capodilupo and Doug Dewitt

Memory + Imagination + Presence How to be in a place that is new and old? How do I understand this place? How do we understand this place? I. When we do a soundwalk we prepare by noticing our breath, we listen to the closest things around us. Then we walk and listen to changes however slight. Acknowledge how we change the soundscape with each step and how the soundscape changes within Big Marsh. I started listening and recording as Big Marsh changed from a superfund “brownfield” site that was once home to “Slag and Ballast Company”, part of a network of factories, plants and mills for much of the 20 th Century to a remediated natural area and bike park. I think the condition of the soundscape reflects the condition of the community. It was my goal to reintroduce people to a new soundscape that is of the south side of Chicago. Where industry, once the backbone of the economy is gone and the natural ecology being allowed to come back. There maybe...