Outstanding sound blogs: Meet Mark IJzerman from Everyday Listening

Hi Mark, please introduce yourself and Everyday Listening

Both Hugo and I studied Music Technology at HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Hugo originally started Everyday Listening back in 2009 but last year he moved to San Francisco to be a senior sound designer for Apple. And that’s when he asked me to take over the blog.

During my education, I was trained very broadly; everything from learning how to make sound and music for commercial purposes, to mixing bands, to making art installations with sound as a basis. This is where I first encountered sound art. I started to follow courses where I had to design and make my own interactive art installations. This idea of interactive sound and music fascinated me a lot.

The fact that you don’t have to make a piece of sound or music which plays from A to B (like a pop song, for example), but rather design a process which can output music based on different variables, I found very wonderful. From here on I went to learn some programming, got more into art history and aesthetics.

These days I teach at the Music Technology department at HKU where I graduated from four years ago, and do a lot of freelance work as a sound artist/composer, making music and sounds for both commercial- and non-commercial purposes.
I think the international collective I’m a part of, Soundlings, has helped me getting into, and understanding the field of sound art a lot. We’re all (mostly freelancing) artists working with sound, around the globe. Sound, and especially sound art, can be quite esoteric. Making a name in this world can be hard. Organizing yourself as a group of intelligent people who always deliver gives leverage to the individuals.
Everyday Listening is a “side project” to all of the above activities, but as it’s the field which I work in, it works both ways.
 

What’s the best way to experience sound art?

Sound is around us- always. We’re often not really aware of the different sounds around us in the way we are aware of the things we see, as sound is temporal, fleeting.
To really focus on sound, “active listening” if you will, takes time and concentration, maybe more than looking at a painting for example.

Sound installation art asks of the visitor that they really listen and focus on sound. This sound can be about anything, just as a painting can be. Also, sound installations can be presented in different ways. It can be a sculpture in which sound is a dominant factor, or a knitted sculpture which reacts with sound when you touch it. Just as fine arts, it comes in different shapes and sizes.

What’s been one of the best moments running the site?

I’ve only taken over from Hugo a year ago, and my time has been scarce, but I’ve had a lot of fun being in contact with artists I admire. Also hearing from them that a published post got them lots of attention is great!
The best pieces are often the ones where you just run into an exciting work when looking at artist’s websites. I get lots of mail from artists who want exposure of their work, and a lot of the times these are very interesting too. Such as John Wynne’s “300 Speakers, Pianola & Vacuum Cleaner”, which I found stunning!
Very often it’s a shame I don’t get to visit the artwork myself.
 

What particularly interests you in the field of sound at the moment?

Last week I had my first experience with the 4DSOUND system. I definitely believe it’ll change the way electroacoustic/tape-music/electronic-music concerts are experienced!

Furthermore, I’m myself very much interested in procedural sound and music design. I teach Max and Pd a lot, and it’d be great to get these tools involved in more and different industries. I’ve been asked to sound design a lot, from actual cars to novel music instruments, and this is what keeps me interested.

Lastly, the coming years I’d like to do a lot of research on how we experience sound. There’s a lot that has been written on how we experience music, not so much on how we experience sound. But I think this might be a life-long fascination :)
 

Anything readers can do to support Everyday Listening?

Send in works that interest you! Share your opinions! Of course, Everyday Listening is well curated, and I won’t be able to feature everything, but it’s always good to know what’s out there! And good to be in contact with the readers! They can also twitter me, or send me a message via the form on the Everyday Listening website.
 

Can you share anything about your future plans for the site?

Since I’ve taken over from Hugo, I’ve been wanting to do an overhaul of the website as the CMS it runs on is quite outdated. Transferring all the data from all the posts to another system will take some time, though! I hope to do that next year. For now, I’d mostly just like to post more, get in contact with more artists, and also SEE more works.

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