http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Trans+Canada+ZKM+Karlsruhe/7629931

HILDEGARD WESTERKAMP

• Sound ecologist

• Adventurer

Since the world sound scape project- 1970’s-she’s enjoyed listening closely to her surroundings. Working for and with it The World Soundscape Project (WSP) was an educational and research group created by R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The work resulted in two small educational booklets, The New Soundscape and The Book of Noise

Born 1946 in Germany.

Emigrated to Canada in 1968. She Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia

She's a Composer- She likes to branch different sounds with there surroundings. She hates the sounds of mechcanical engines. She feels that this ruins her silence and the natural sounds that she records

She sees silence as the clearest ground out of which sound can rise in all its colours, as a canvas in which mood circumstance and imagination can come together to generate a whole range of inner meanings. In other words silence is an opportunity, an open field of possibilities rather than an oppression (the poetry of radio, the colour of sound, Sean street, 2012- silence: fear and possibility, 41)

Radio artist- Vancouver Co-operative Radio

Lecturer

COMPOSITIONS

Für Dich – For You

• based on the poem Liebes-Lied by Rainer Maria Rilke and its newest translation into English, Love Song, by Canadian poet and writer Norbert Ruebsaat.

• Speaks of love of one another

• On another level the composition explores a sense of place and belonging, of home and love.

• These sounds form the sonic/musical language of the piece together with the recorded voices (male and female) of people close to me, speaking the poem, both in German and English.

• To open oneself to one’s original language and culture again, after having lived as an immigrant in the country of one’s choice for a long time, is like opening oneself to an almost forgotten deep love and connection to that past place. At the same time, one has lived and functioned in the country of one’s choice for many years, one has established one’s very own home, one’s family, one feels at home here, it is the right place to be. It also is a place of belonging and love. Thus, the piece is an exploration of the heart, an exploration of where the heart is located in connection to culture, language and people. In a globalized world where millions of us are on the move, whether as refugees, immigrants or just as travelers, this has emerged as a wide-spread and relevant theme, as we are all in some way searching for home and connectedness.

LOVE SONG**Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Norbert Ruebsaat

How shall I hold my soul so that itdoes not touch yours? How shall I lift itup over you so it reaches other things?Oh, how I long to store my soulwith something dark and lostin a foreign becalmed place that does notvibrate when your depths vibrate.But all that touches you and

touches mecontracts us like a bowthat from two strings draws forth a single voice.Upon which instrument are we two strung?And who, pray, is the fiddler who holds us in his hand?Oh

sweetful song.

*Source:Rainer Maria Rilke

Moments of Laughter (1988)

• Moments of Laughteris dedicated to her daughter Sonja whose voice forms the basis for this piece.

• From the age of four on, she has made her own recordings of stories and songs. Moments of Laughter utilizes these for the tape portion of the piece

• http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/program_notes/laughter.html

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COMPOSED ENVIRONMENTS

SOUND INSTALLATIONS

TÜREN DER WAHRNEHMUNG-DOORS OF PERCEPTION (1996)

This piece was commissioned by the Östereichischer Rundfunk (ORF) for Ars Electronica '89 in Linz, Austria.

In its entire length it is 30 minutes long and was broadcast into public urban places in Linz during Ars Electronica.

Türen der Wahrnehmung: a door opens and we enter another sound world. A new sonic space surrounds us and we listen. More and more doors open and we do not know what will meet us.

Excerpts of Türen der Wahrnehmung have been used in Gus Van Sant's films Elephant and Last Days.

http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/installations/turen.html

Music from the Zone of Silence-1988• December/January of 1984/85, 15 artists from 4 cultures camped together in the so-called

Zone of Silence in north central Mexico to explore the desert environment through their respective desciplines and to make art.

2. Meditation

for improvising voices and tape, Length: 7:00

Everyone was lying, star-shaped and looking at the stars and doing sound/voice explorations.

http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/installations/cordillera1.html

The piece combines the voice with environmental sound from the landscape-the Western Canadian mountain wilderness

the poem describes an ascent and movement through the high country. It is composed of 17 shorter poems

Cordillerais is about landscape, about wilderness, about the human presence and voice in places that are still considered by many to be barren and silent

Poetry and Reading by Norbert Ruebsaat

Cordillerais