Acoustic poetry
musical landmarks are fragmentarly present and are blended with noise-sounds and media-splinters.
Suggestive sound compositions form in the context of image and language an open associative space.
Texts
Acoustical poem
An acoustical poem, which, due to its manifold suggestions, invites us to investigate imaginary spaces. Picture, text and sound are distant but related worlds. The aim of the acoustical poem is to focus all imaginable sensory perception, as if under a burning glass, thereby transforming it into the audible realm.
An acoustical poem is an autonom soundwork. Pictorial expression is essential, as well as brevity, density and economy of sound material.
Acoustical poems are suggestive sound-pictures, which investigate and define other aspects of reality. The sounds follow a clearly musical dramaturgy and their own associative grammar of narration. A musical fragment is vocalised, ornamented, compressed, imitated, multiplied, disguised, distorted..using digital and analog electronics.
Debate and discussion
Phonurgia Nova 2019: Hearing and discussion (fr)
CV
Bernadette Johnson lives in Basel (Switzerland). She is author of acoustical poems and audio pieces for Radio and other listening rooms. In her audio-visual work as well, Johnson leads us through extrasemantic areas. Auditory perseption is observed, questioned and „disturbed“. It’s a matter of tracing otherwise parallel and hidden experience spaces.
Prizes and honorable mentions: Several times prizewinner at Phonourgia Nova Arles, Radio Helsinki Graz, Honorable Mention by l’Institut International de la Musique Electroacoustique Bourges (IMEB), prize winner by the Soundscape Forum, Radio play contest at the St. Pölten Technical College, Karl Sczuka Promotion Prize 2007.
Performances of audio compositions: (among others) in the Sound Tower St. Pölten, Sound Theater of the House for Radio Culture Vienna, Festival for Electro-acoustical Music Bourges, Donaueschingen Music Days, Réattu Museum in Arles (listening balcony), IRCAM Paris, Winterthur Radio Play Marathon, Listen-Bar in Freiburg, Altes Magazin Hannover, VoxNovum, Soundlab VI, Nuit bleue Arc et Senans, Ohrenhoch Sound Galery Berlin, Aufbauhaus Berlin
Radio Broadcasts: Swiss Radio SRF, Austrian Radio Ö1, Radio France, German radio dradio.de, SWR2, Radio Campus Paris, Radio LoRa Zürich, Colaboradio Berlin
