Francisco López: HIMAVANTA

Navel-Gazers #64 is an interview with Francisco López who is going to talk to us about HIMAVANTA. I’m sure that this is the most preparation I’ve ever done for an interview, as we’re going to be discussing a work which is nearly 11 hours long. These recordings, which are all from rainforests in various parts of Thailand, have certainly gotten under my skin over the last few days, as one can imagine. In terms of formulating the right questions it’s an essay of Francisco’s called Sonic Creatures which he mentioned to me - accessible on his website - that’s guiding me in the right direction, towards a line of thinking which is non-intuitive but most illuminating. You may know of a thought experiment where if you repeat a word enough times over, it may seem to lose its usual associations… that’s a peculiar consequence of extended listening, and after 11 hours of ‘HIMAVANTA’ I’m in a similar frame of mind. There’s a rational awareness of course, that these sounds are tethered to specific physical environments but this is also “sound matter” in its own right. It possesses a composition of its own, which reveals itself to us when we concentrate. As for Francisco, who’s been on this path for over 40 years, it’s certainly inspiring to meet someone who’s been so focused, on so much, for so long. Let’s see what he has to say!

AC: Thanks for joining me on Navel-Gazers! You’re an artist whose name would be familiar to many of our readers, in fact your name has come up in some of the previous interviews. However please tell us who you are, we are always considering readers who are not so plugged in to experimental music!

Francisco López: Depending on who’s asking (;-)), I’d perhaps describe myself as a composer, a sound artist, an experimental musician, or a sonic ontologist. I work in the realms that most people would classify as experimental music, noise, sound art, field recordings, immersive/ambient, etc. My personal take on this is based almost exclusively on my own environmental sound materials (recordings), with a particular emphasis on wilderness environments (I’m also a PhD ecosystems biologist), as well as a long-standing keen interest in industrial / machine environments. Crucially, thought, I’m not interested in representation or simulation, so my work aims at what I consider to be a deeper (phenomenological / ontological) level of engagement with so-called (sonic) reality.

AC: Having read your essay - which we’ll get to later - I’m almost reluctant to ask about the sources of these sounds! Still I’m curious to know about your time in Thailand, what were you doing there and what was it like?

Francisco López: The sources of all sounds in the work / album HIMAVANTA are the creatures and the natural environments of different rainforests in wilderness areas of Thailand. There is no processing or transformation of this original sounds / recordings, and no instrumental or electronic-generated additions of any kind. Just huge amounts of both field and studio work for selection, editing and non-transformative composition; that is, the most direct version of what I call “sonogenic composition” (a type of creative take on recorded sound, where sound itself directs the compositional process).

I’ve been immersing in rainforests all over the world for decades now, both for biological / ecological research and for environmental recordings and what I call (with intended pun) “field listening” (a post-media non-representational practice of profound listening in the field). Rainforest ecosystems are naturally acousmatic environments: sonically dense, rich, diverse, intricate, relentless... and yet virtually all the sources of those sounds remain marvellously hidden and invisible in the dense multi-layered vegetation.

AC: What’s the idea behind the “short version” on the Bandcamp? At first I assumed it was a sort of super edit, and indeed I hear relatively few sharp cuts in the following track (part 1), so that seemed more like the start of the unedited recordings. Later though, I wasn’t sure. On part 4 for example I noted no fewer than four deliberate-sounding sharp cuts (1:50, 11:50, 54:45, 58:15). Later still, on part 8, there are loads of them.

Generally speaking how do you picture listeners approaching this work? How much did you intervene in the short version versus the main sections?

Francisco López: I’d argue that sudden edits (“cuts”) in a composition are as “deliberate” as the classic fade-ins and fade-outs, which are assumed to be more “natural”, when nothing like that happens in reality. In a way, I’d argue that they’re more honest ;-) Since my approach is not simulative, I work with compositional freedom (naturally, with my personal taste and subjective perspective), aiming at inducing a deeper interaction with sonic reality / materiality, for myself and for any interested listener. In my view, a non-representational (non-documentative, non-literal, non-descriptive) approach is indeed closer to reality; it doesn’t treat sound as a semantic vehicle but rather as an ontological category in its own right.

The 53-minute “short version” of HIMAVANTA is intended to provide a summarized entry point for those less prone to such extended multiple-hour sonic works, as well as a live performance version of this work (which I perform myself in a multi-channel version with a surround-immersive set up) for the usually feasible duration of a typical live show (of course, longer performance and installation versions of this piece are possible).

AC: Thanks for sharing the Sonic Creatures essay, that really got me thinking and I recommend our readers check it out.

What you’re saying there brought earlier discussions to mind. Going out on a limb - never done this before - I wonder if I could ask you to comment on a couple of quotes by previous Navel-Gazers.

In Navel-Gazers #19, Beatriz Ferreyra talked to me about the perspective of her colleague, Pierre Schaeffer:

“...he had an idea and a discovery about the sound apart from its source... the sound material, where it's not a car or a voice or a violin, it's a complex sound. … In all his books that he wrote at this time, he wanted to point this out and say that we can do music in another way, hearing differently”.

You use the word “Shaferian” in your essay, I assume this refers to Mr Schaeffer, could you explain how your conception might relate to his? Are you reaffirming that approach in a way?

Francisco López: I’ve always expressed my admiration for the work of Pierre Schaeffer, which I consider to be one of the most important conceptual / philosophical contributions in the entire history of music. My position, however, is not sound being apart from its source, but rather sound along with its source; that is, sound as an ontologically-equal entity in the world. While I think Pierre Schaeffer was essentially a phenomenologist in the studio, I’m more of an ontologist in the field.

AC: Later in Navel-Gazers #58, Hildegard Westerkamp articulated a view on source recordings which sounds almost like the exact inverse to yours:

“...it has also to do with an ecological sensitivity of relationships, in that when you’re working with environmental sounds you’re in relationship with those sounds that you recorded. So then you want to be mindful of how you treat those sounds. Some care has to be taken, whether they are natural or urban sounds. Although with some of the urban sounds I was much more ruthless because they were ruthlessly noisy human-made sounds, so I felt I could use them more aggressively possibly. Whereas when you work with natural sounds, especially animal sounds, I feel that one wants to be rather careful.”

That’s a notion of recordings which is so inextricably linked to the source that the artist is inclined to treat them as she’d treat the source. What do you make of that? I could personally go either way on this to be honest, just really interesting!

Francisco López: I know Hildegard and respect her work but I’m clearly on the complete opposite perspective on this. In my view, this is a confusion (or conflation) of sources and sounds; and, by the way, this is indeed the overwhelmingly predominant understanding of sound for the average person, to the point of not even conceiving of being aware of anything different. Again, this happens as a consequence of the totalitarian predominance of the representational paradigm for any perceptive extractions of reality (like a sound recording or a photograph). This is additionally reinforced today, as –through expanded atomised telecommunication– we have entered an age of mega-representation, like never before in our cultural history. Great for communication and simulation; a disaster for our deeper connection to the world. As I like to say, what we need today is not virtual reality but real virtuality! ;-).

AC: I’ve got to ask, what in holy hell is the sound at 6:30 of part 7?

Francisco López: That sound is what it is. The source of the sound is a couple of hornbills flying overhead.

AC: As described in your liner notes, there are intentional silences such as at the end of part 5, and partway through part 9. Why?

Francisco López: Contra Cage, silence is an integral part of music (there is indeed such a thing as silence in music) and definitely one of my most appreciated compositional resources. Among many other things, it changes the way we hear what’s before and after it, in many interesting and fruitful ways.

AC: What are you up to next that you’d like us to be aware of?

Francisco López: Currently a myriad projects in the making, including new sound pieces / albums with environmental recordings I’ve done over the years in Borneo, Australia, Bolivia, Iceland, South Africa, the Brazilian Amazon, the Himalayas, the Philippines… life is too short! ;-)

AC: I'll let you get back to it! Thanks for talking to me.

Francisco can be found at https://www.franciscolopez.net/ and on Bandcamp.

Images

0) 'HIMAVANTA' cover image. (image by F. López)

1) Thailand rainforest (photo: F. López)

2) Thailand rainforest (photo: F. López)

3) Thailand rainforest (photo: F. López)

4) Thailand rainforest (photo: F. López)

5) Francisco Lopez, Tanzania 2016 (photo: Barbara Ellison)