MITCHELL AKIYAMA
The Rusty Toque | Sound | Issue 4 | February 15, 2013
Wind Almanac (For Joris Ivens)
Wind is the sound recordist's nemesis. It is excess and error, the noise that smothers the sounds the recordist had hoped to capture. Of course, hearing itself is not so pristine. We hear the wind rushing across our ear canals whenever a light breeze blows past. Such disturbances insinuate themselves into the background of experience and pass unnoticed. But microphones are not ears; recorded, the wind overtakes all other sound, masking it in sheets of white noise. Wind Almanac is an attempt to befriend it, to use error to tell a story about our relationship to recorded sound.
MITCHELL AKIYAMA is a Toronto-based composer, artist, and scholar. He has performed and exhibited his sound works and installations throughout North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Akiyama has received commissions from Akousma, Le Nouvel Orchestre D’aujourd’hui, and the Canada Council for the Arts, among many others. He holds an MFA from Concordia University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Communications at McGill University.
