Ojkamine: Listening for Voices

Drawing on Pauline Oliveros’s practice of Deep Listening, we view "hearing" as a passive, automatic process of receiving sound, whereas "listening" is the conscious directing of attention toward what we hear.

We will regard the space of the head as a kind of an “echo chamber" (Katerina Maniou) - a place where sound is simultaneously created and heard. Within this space, external stimuli, inner experiences, feelings, and memories constantly refract and intertwine. The voice we speak or sing bears the trace of what we have heard; listening creates an inner resonance. The ear and the voice are not separate; rather, they form a circuit: ear–voice–world. Listening holds the possibility of a response, and the spoken voice always carries a trace of what has been heard.

This interrelationship is not abstract but physically tangible: merely imagining or listening to familiar music silently activates the larynx and other muscles involved in speech and vocal articulation, while the eardrum (tympanic membrane) vibrates in response to sounds in dreams, imagined sounds, and remembered sounds (Richard Hayman, “Listening to Dreams: A project for Middle Ear Muscle Activity Audio Level Telemetry”). Sound can thus be present as an inner gesture, a memory, or an imagined event. Using selected scores by Pauline Oliveros and our own – alongside external tools that amplify or deprive the senses – we will draw closer to our own ears and voices, as well as the voices and ears of others, through breath, the body, the acoustics of the space, and attention to sounds already present.

The goal of the workshop is not to master the voice, but to expand one's own field of listening.

Applications with a short text about yourself, motivation for participating and contact information should be sent to ojkamine@gmail.com by the end of the day on September 4th. Participants will be informed of all important information on September 5th.

The number of places is limited, and participation in the workshop is free.