Feb 17: Noise from Iceland

A cross posting from my Fieldnotes from Iceland blog.

I like this project very much.

It's beautifully put together, and provides a different dimension to the country.

The creator has interviewed people for the project.

Here's one exchange:

Kaśka Paluch:
What does Iceland sound like to you? If you had to choose just one sound that defines it?

Yrsa Sigurðardóttir:
Wind. Definitely wind. I live by the ocean, and wind is the constant background noise. And the sound of waves too, though that depends a lot on the wind. But those two things—wind and the ocean—define the soundscape here for me.

Kaśka Paluch is a musicologist, music journalist, sound artist, and educator, and the creator of Noise From Iceland—the first-ever sound map of Iceland. Originally from Zakopane, Poland, she studied musicology at Jagiellonian University and has published in Onet.pl, Tygodnik Powszechny, Noisey, LAIF, and Presto.

Click the blue circles to hear the recorded sounds e.g. Solheimajökull.

The sound was recorded at the glacier's face. The lake was just defrosting, and the crushed pieces of ice bumping against each other made a sound like wind chimes.

There's also a Spotify playlist...

Check out the album 'Ey' and the track 'Cryo'

Well worth exploring this... a separate blog post is coming...

I might try recording some of my own sounds on my next visit. This is a project which you could ask students to complete while in the country.

From the Bandcamp site of Kaśka.

After creating a first sound map of Iceland in history - www.noisefromiceland.com - the Noise From Iceland project has been released on an album basis. These are field recordings from the island with trance and techno music composed to them. In total, almost an hour of noise - volcano, lava, waterfalls, Icelandic animals and rivers - selected to engage the listener's ear as much as possible. - The sound does not have to be clear, but it has to be interesting - says the author, Kaśka Paluch - my guru of field recordings, Geir Jenssen once told me and this thought was my motto while working on this album.

Noise From Iceland has been created since January 2020. It is an attempt to answer the question: what does Iceland sound like? Proving that apart from beautiful pictures, this majestic land of fire and ice has a lot to offer also to other senses.  

The motive for starting work on the sound map of Iceland was a meeting with a blind tourist who was on my trip when I was working as a guide - explains Kaśka Paluch - It was she who told me how much there is to know in Iceland, even when you cannot see it.