FRANCISCO LOPEZ

Artist self-released 2xCDR with full colour sleeve.

Francisco Lopez wirtes:
Between 2005 and 2019 I have been directing two consecutive incarnations of
an annual residency/workshop at Mamori Lake in the Brazilian Amazon (‘Mamori
Sound Project’, 2005-­‐2011) and Mmabolela Reserve in the South African savanna
(‘Sonic Mmabolela’, 2013-­‐2019), for composers, audio artists, sound designers
and other creative individuals from all over the world.
Its focus has been on creative approaches to the work with environmental sound
matter, through both recordings and profound listening, by means of an extensive
and iconoclastic exploration of natural sound environments in those contrasting locations
of rainforest and savanna, as well as a vigorous questioning of canonical conceptions
of so-­‐called ‘field recordings’
At a personal level, these ‘sonic years’ in the Amazon rainforest and the African savanna
have had a very profound effect on my experience and conception of sound as both
a prodigious phenomenological conduit and an ontological entity in its own right,
along with –not subservient to– the other creatures of the rainforest and the savanna.
This transcendental transformation has had fundamental outcomes for me, such as what I call
‘field listening’ (a post-­‐media non representational practice of profound listening
in the field) and ‘sonogenic composition’ (a creative approach in
which sound itself suggests and leads the compositional decisions,
structure and nature).
This double CD compilation presents the on-­‐site composition pieces I created with
my portable minimal ‘wilderness studio’ during all the past years of this residency/workshop in
the Brazilian Amazon and the South African savanna.