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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Extraction
“We're constantly trying to weigh our own wants and complicities against individual sacrifices and the perceived "difference" our actions can make. So what are we left with?”
Sophia Steinert-Evoy, Sarah Boothroyd
November 13, 2020
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Archive
“To re-encounter an archive changes it; we bring our present judgements, preconceptions, understandings, contexts to this artifact from the past, and therefore instantly shift its meaning.”
Erica Huang, Jenn Stanley
October 9, 2020
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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.
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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.
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And The Sea Gave Up the Dead Which Were In It
“I wanted to explore the idea of broken sounds. I certainly feel as if many of the clips I used sustained a good amount of abuse throughout the process of creating the piece.”
Bassel Al-Rahim
March 29, 2019
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Quiet Contemplations
“The relativity of quiet in relation to noise intrigued me and I wanted to explore the relativity of quiet in relation to other quiet moments.”
Ayesha Barmania
March 15, 2019
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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
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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.
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It Was Right There In Front Of You
“In this work, I was thinking about foreground, mid field and background. I love the sound of scraping metal and the way these sounds can merge up against each other.”
Camilla Hannan
September 27, 2018
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Snooze
“I wanted to explore that time in the morning when I’m half-awake and half-asleep... It’s a time where I feel without rationality or expectation or judgment.”
TK Matunda
May 4, 2018
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Birds of Maio
“Swallows are a symbol of spring, of hope, and of renewal. The Romans predicted their future by observing random flight paths of the swallows.”
Maile Colbert, Rui Costa
May 18, 2018
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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?
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Anatomy of the Road
“I was wondering if there was a way to spatially re-create the sounds of being in a car... and whether I could capture that mood and weirdness and giddiness and intensity that comes from being in such a small space with another person.”
Ellie Gordon-Moershel
November 3, 2017
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Is this an Exercise?
“Back in the 80's I sneak-watched a TV movie with highly disturbing content (about nuclear war) and it's been passively haunting me ever since.”
Julie Shapiro
October 20, 2017
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Broken English
“I wanted to express how difficult language can be; difficult to convey real and authentic meaning, and difficult when you are in a different territory and you don't speak the language of that territory.”
Janet Rogers
November 17, 2017
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