Cool Hunting

Beginning in May, experimental composers Marie-Claire Brycztwa and Sudhu Tewari will host a seven-month "audio play" called Radio Village Nomade. Broadcast daily from a makeshift village in La Corbière, Switzerland, the 214-day project will feature live performances, as well as audio submissions from sound manipulators the world over. The concept is to let people define for themselves what constitutes a moment in time and how that might be captured as audio. They invite contributers to create "windows of sound," glimpses into other realities heard from different perspectives.

They intend to impose as few restrictions possible. Invited artists and musicians include Misa Shimomura, Theresa Wong, Fred Frith, Kristoff.K.Roll, Balts Nill and Young Gods, but will rely heavily on outside submissions as well, which can be of any length with no guidelines for genre or instrumentation.

"In terms of themes, we'll see how that develops based on the submissions we receive," says Tewari. "I would like to do a few days at a time following a theme, such as a week of traffic recordings, a week of nature, a week of children, etc."

Both curators are based in Oakland, California and graduates of the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music. They each use varied instrumentation and tend toward improvisational compositions. Tewari spent four months of 2006 as the Artist in Residence at the San Francisco Dump, crafting instruments out of peoples trash (example at left). They plan to post daily Village Nomade MP3s on their website, and eventually build an FM transmitter for live broadcasts to the area surrounding La Corbière. At the end of the project, they'll weave the daily compositions into a 24-hour sound collage. They are currently accepting pieces here.