Christophe Piette

During his stay in Jeju-do, South Korea in the summer of 2017, Christophe Piette (R.O.T., Gangalai & Gourabai) made field recordings which were later on edited by Lieven Martens. It resulted in a release on Edicoes Cn.

Why did you travel to South Korea? How long did you stay?

I was invited to South Korea to film the works of painter Myonghi in the summer of 2017 and stayed there for a few weeks.

Why did you decide to make a field recordings during your stay in South Korea?

When travelling far abroad, I always take some recording device with me to keep a trace of beautiful sounds I could hear far from home. I recorded quite a lot but cannot tell you precisely.

Was it difficult to make a selection of what ended up on CD?

What I really wanted is giving the raw material to Lieven, so he could do the selection for his series, I liked a lot the work he did with the recording, that Spencer Clark provided, and which became The Stimulated Australia album. Lieven sent me his selection, which then was reorganised in the 6 separate tracks that ended up composing the CD.

Is the recording and editing done analog or digital?

I did all the recording with a digital Olympus ls 10 recorder, that I really like. It’s light, easy to use and I like the quality of it.

What’s the role of the person who records a field recording? Should he be present or absent?

Depends on the case on what you are recording… it’s the same for filming actually.

Do you feel like you’re a musician when you make a field recording?

I have always been interested in the musicality of sounds and use them, sometimes record them.

Stanley Kubrick said that a film is not made with a camera, but in the editing room. Does this count for a field recording album as well?

In the case of Lieven’s series it definitely counts. I mostly do the editing live while recording/filming, “inside” the machine.

Should a (field recording) record have a narrative?

It shouldn’t, but it can.

If you listen to these recordings now, do you hear things differently than at the time?

No.

Is a field recording album ‘like pictures of a travel’, but with audio? Or is that too anecdotic?

In prolongation to your thought Alexandre Galand in a recent article talks about ‘phonographie’ in analogy to ‘photographie’. I recorded these sounds there because I liked them a lot and liked the idea of recording them, I made myself open to record them. I was travelling, exploring, in that sense it’s an aural picture of the travel, where one explores with ones own ears. When you start thinking about the material you use in collecting things from the world you leave the anecdotic or the picturesque, you make something.

– Joeri Bruyninckx