OBORO invites you to the launch of Songs of Place, which consists of a bookwork and two DVDs. The DVDs represent video and surround sound portraits of four places: Halifax N.S., Montréal, QC, Vancouver, BC, and Springwater, SK. In production since 2000, this series was re-mastered for pubication in OBORO’s New Media Lab, while Heimbecker was in residence in 2004. In the bookwork, five contributors were invited to reflect on the “portraits”: Vincent Bonin, Anna Friz, Christof Migone, F. Scott Taylor, and Barry Truax. The artist himself contributes a text, which analyzes his last ten years of research.
"The Songs of Place series is as difficult to categorize as Heimbecker himself. These are works of visual and auditory art that fully engage the senses and sensibilities of the audience. Here Heimbecker operates at the juncture of electro-acoustic composition, soundscape and acoustic ecology, video montage, and sonic sculpture. Over his lengthy career as a sound artist specializing in quad- and octaphonic surround systems, Heimbecker has developed unique framing and editing techniques that enable these intense portraits.”– A. Friz excerpt from the publication Songs of Place
Steve Heimbecker uses strategies that echo the road maps of the places he has recorded. “Communities are grown, albeit within a design structure. Maps of places are like a tree, from the roots, to the trunk, to the leaves. By using layered surround recording techniques, I create intense spatial compositions full of design, chance, and ambience.” – S. Heimbecker