Sounds
Feel the Sky
May – June 2020
Feel the Sky is a duo of sound works in conversation produced by Jaye Kranz (Australia) and Myra Al-Rahim (USA). Both extend from the same starting point – a recording from 1992 made by a news reporter unfamiliar with field recording, but entranced by a chance encounter with trumpeter swans on an icy lake.
Listen
Are We There Yet?
““Are We There Yet?” is a strange, recurring road-trip towards home. A home we can never really find or retrieve; while at the same time, being a home we have already found: the one that is already ours.”
Jaye Kranz
May 29, 2020
Listen →
The Burdened Land
“I wanted the work to have a distinct feeling of space and scale. I sought to explore the thematic interconnectedness between the migratory paths of birds and the sprawling supply chains of capital.”
Bassel Al-Rahim
May 29, 2020
Listen →
2020 Season
2020 was Constellations’ most ambitious season to date, and featured work from over twenty artists, mostly made for our podcast feed. The predominant new element of this season was gathering multiple works together in single episodes. In episodes like Missed Connections and Inner Geographies, and Extraction, the pieces trip over each other, harmonize, and build upon each other, either or both thematically and structurally.
Listen
Inner Geographies
“We are wrong to look for uniformity and objectivity. We have all mapped associations to what our subjective experience is like.”
Axel Kacoutié, Kamikaze Jones
September 11, 2020
Listen →
Accumulation Over Time
“I want to understand … what is this accumulation? Like, why is why is this? How is this? What is this?”
Adriene Lilly
August 7, 2020
Listen →
Basic Ingredients
“What do eyes sound like? Does a spider’s abdomen sound furry or crunchy? How much sameness do I share with a cardinal? A mouse? Or the mold in the corners of my bathroom?... I should clean my bathroom?”
Clare Dolan, Nishant Singh, Kim Hiorthøy
August 28, 2020
Listen →
Listen to more sounds from the 2020 podcast season here →
Resonant Bodies
August – December 2020
Resonant Bodies is an online exhibition about the sonic reflections between bodies and their environments, and an extension of a physical exhibition which took place at the Toronto Media Arts Centre from August 11-17th, 2019. The online exhibition consists of 6 new Constellations episodes, featuring new works by participating artists Aliya Pabani, Chandra Melting Tallow, Cheldon Paterson, Kaija Siirala, Jon Tjhia, and Phoebe Wang.
Listen
2019 Season
By 2019, Constellations had established itself in a weird little corner of the audio world, leading to more artists and producers making original works for us. Our third season is comprised primarily of new works made especially for Constellations. Working alongside these artists in a curatorial capacity, we continued to craft our in-between space: not quite narrative audio, not quite sound art, but solidly somewhere that people wanted to be with us.
Listen
Point Pelee
“While making this piece, I thought a lot about where my urge to recreate this moment at Point Pelee really came from. What evolutionary need does it serve?”
Ayaz Kamani
June 21, 2019
Listen →
The Space Between Stories
“I'm reading about the idea that personal traumas and feelings of disconnectedness might well be very much tied to the dominant civilization’s wider sense of separateness from, and superiority over, nature.”
Phil Smith
February 20, 2019
Listen →
Naka Naka Oka Aina
“This piece sounds unheard and repressed voices in our society. Behind the laughter of children playing, we can hear the solemn chanting of a lost Roma woman walking the streets of Barcelona.”
Tamara Montenegro
April 19, 2019
Listen →
Listen to more sounds from the 2019 podcast season here →
2018 Season
Our second year of Constellations contains some of our most inspired original pieces, alongside an excellent back catalogue of established sound artists’ works. We started reaching out to artists around the world to gain insights into sound and audio works outside of North America, and to cultivate a community of artists listening to each other across borders and sonic traditions.
Listen
Air Can Break Your Heart
“The piece is about exploring the element of air and thinking about how communication and connection are longed for but sometimes missed or sometimes impossible.”
Anna Friz
March 23, 2018
Listen →
Dream Tapes
“While participants are waking up, they flip on a tape recorder and say everything they can remember from their sleep.”
Jeff Emtman
February 23, 2018
Listen →
Prairie Wind
“This piece was a rumination on what’s important in life and what is just noise.”
Rignam Wangkhang
January 26, 2018
Listen →
Listen to more sounds from the 2018 podcast season here →
2017 Season
Constellations began as a small collaboration between us, Michelle Macklem and Jess Shane, in the first half of 2017. We were working at a public broadcaster at the time, surrounded by tight deadlines and fast paced workflows. There was intense pressure to keep up with podcasting and radio culture in our industry, and even though we loved working with sound, we were left wondering, were we really listening?
Listen
No Event
“No Event is a plastic moment in a waiting room.”
Miyuki Jokiranta
October 6, 2017
Listen →
Ode to my Last 10 Years of Dating
“What can be found by listening to – and sitting with – our internal landscapes?”
Michelle Macklem
September 22, 2017
Listen →
Migraines & Tsunamis
“I think anyone who experiences some kind of internal, invisible but frequently, reoccurring pain ends up using some kind of external imagery or analogy in order to both explain to others, but also to yourself, what exactly the pain is.”
Adriene Lilly
September 8, 2017
Listen →