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BROOD X: ’04 ’21

The above image was taken, May 16, 2021, underneath a magnolia tree, BROOD X 17-year (Great Eastern Brood) cicada in the final stage of molting prior to hardening of the new exoskeleton. My immersive experience these past six weeks with the BROOD X, 17-cicada 2021 phenomena resonate deeply with my molecules, imprinting them sonically. For two of the six weeks of the above ground cicada presence, my wife and I rented a cabin not far from where we live to fully experience the BROOD with minimal human noise, and wooded park traffic. The experience constructs a metaphor for COVID reemergence from 17+ months of quarantine and isolation. The only signs of the BROOD X are located high among the tops of trees – copper-colored leaves attached to evenly spaced out “tree flags” hang down waiting for the vast drop to earth. Another 17-years life cycle has begun; a bio-rain of […]

Bio-Buggy: Ear to the Harbor (B-Beh)

B-BEH) a multi-disciplined collaborative project, expands upon an existing biodiversity study of the urban Chesapeake Bay. A group of scientists from the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, National Aquarium, and civic-scientists and artists from Baltimore Underground Science Space contributes to this biodiversity study. B-BEH focuses on the role of sound that surrounds the study, while adapting the cross-disciplinary science of bio-acoustics to identify healthy acoustic environments. B-BEH will raise awareness of the effect of human noise on delicate urban estuaries. “The aquatic environment is increasingly bombarded by a wide variety of noise pollutants whose range and intensity are increasing with each passing decade. Yet, little is known about how aquatic noise affects marine communities.”

100120 – 120320

The works here are experiments from the past few months in quarantine that include drawings, field recordings, zoom, and audio performances. The final works are from two different collaborations that have become an important part of my artistic routine during the 2020 pandemic. The second to last work is called ZOOM gestures series experimentation with multi-perspective using every device I have to log into zoom. The final work is a trans-national artist collective made up of anywhere from two to ten artists involved in sound/image tele-performances. The following are excerpts from my most recent sketchbook that I began October 1, 2020. These are experiments with depictions of memories from the day of sound, such as zoom conversations, meetings, radio, television, traffic and other ambient sounds in the background mashed up together into one or two images. Listen to the recording here. uni.Sol_38soundtracks, unisol.bandcamp.com/album/hall00w sound artists: Ludovic Medery (Belgium)Stephen Bradley, video (USA)experiMENTALien […]

Bells, Bugs, Whispers & Plinks

Bradley & Ruchalski broadcast quarterly at WGXC 90.7 FM. Learn more about Wave Farm’s efforts to support artists interested in the contemporary role or radio. The above image is a cable that is connected to a hydrophone that we are using to record the sound of a small lake not far from Ringing Rock, PA – approximately 10 west. BBWP Broadcast 3. Here is March 31st, 2-3 PM EST, 2020 broadcast where we focus on hidden sounds, difficult to hear due to physics, out of human hearing range or just too quiet or it is masked due to human-machine noise. For the hard of hearing. We deeply investigate sound vibrations, natural, unnatural, bioacoustics, sonification, that involves acoustic interventions at specific sites.

BIOME TELLS

The new work, Oh, Murky Waters Chorus is inspired by a biodiversity study by a diverse group of civic scientists, local ecologists, and artists/designers from the Baltimore Underground Science Space (BUGSS) and scientists from Institue of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET). Not shown in this photograph will be a biodisc that will be installed in the aquarium in the very near future along with 19 gallons of Harbor water. What is a biodisc? It is a system for collecting bioorganisms from the water. Organisms attach to the biodisc and make it their home. The biodisc is pulled up once a month to be documented, scrapped and biomaterial sequenced as a DNA to identify all the organisms in the water. The sound component is generated from electrical currents in the water agitated by the organisms’ activities that general a sonic ambiance that floats above the head of the viewers. Next to […]

uni.Sol sound project

united artists for well being of solar system Experimental music/sound project by Slavek Kwi located in Ireland. Invited artists perform at a particular time selected by Kwi in Ireland time — that matches their time zone. This is the latest performance, uni.Sol X by the artists, Stephen Bradley, Darius Ciuta, experiMENTALien, Jan Kruml, Roy Adams, and Slavek Kwi Telepathic:.:tune up:::no.5:.:Friday 21th June 2019 from 9 pm to 10pm(timezone: Irish Summer Time). A music exploration via telepathic channels, unexplored and alternative ways of inter-connecting around the globe, creating a feeling of connection. Each artist participated by performing anytime between 9-10 PM, Irish Summer Time. I performed for most of the hour, Friday, June 21, 4-5 PM EST. Here is what the final project sounded like. I recommend that you listen to the “subjective” version as it allows space for each artist who performed. Here is a list of the artists, multiverse: […]

Spider+Cricket

Front end image – Spider + Cricket installation as of July 16, 2019. Bradley & Ruchalski were recently awarded the Wave Farm artist-residency to realize SpiderCricket (Sp+Cr). Residency takes place July 12-21, 2019. We will broadcast several times on Wave Farm’s radio station WGXC 90.7 FM, Radio for Open Ears. Stephen Bradley and Edward Ruchalski’s SpiderCricket (Sp+Cr) is a multi-phonic ecological radio installation informed by Wave Farm’s biophonic and radiophonic soundscape. The core of Sp+Cruses a “spider web” wind-harp structure, which also functions as an antenna for low-power FM transmitters that broadcast on the property. Using DIY micro-mixers, numerous solar-powered FM radio receivers are tuned to one of the broadcast channels. Each wire’s unique length is tuned to a particular frequency that mixes with other sonic algorithms. Field recordings made during the dawn and dusk cycles are incorporated into Sp+Cr sculpture and into the final, live WGXC radio broadcast. Here is an […]

SPEED-Future

SPEED Future is an ongoing project having to do with our (my) relationship to the speed at which we are traveling, from work to home, vacation, shopping, entertainment or just the joy of travel. Regardless, the automobile has changed our relationship to place due to the displacement of our bodies from the land which we inhabit. Photographing from the window of the automobile at high speeds is a direct analysis of using photography as a way of understanding the place I transverse post travel. This project was inspired by my early experience while living in South Korea, for two years from 1968-69. In the ninth grade, I had to travel back and forth from each week from Daegu to Busan and back because there was no higher level of school available on the military base that we lived. Every Sunday evening around 7PM my classmates and I would jump onto […]

SHINE

“There is in natural things a certain truth which cannot be seen with the outward eye/ear, but perceived by the mind alone… In this [truth] lies the whole art of freeing the spirit from its fetters…” Carol Jung Video artwork: Stephen Bradley, Performance, Lisa Cella, Publisher: Chen Li Music, Album: SHINE @2017 Lisa Cella performs the flute works of six contemporary composers and provides a sonic framework for Stephen Bradley’s time-lapse video work that explores a meditative perspective of quotidian events. By slicing time into precise visual moments, the video presents the listener/viewer with an illuminated focus on the familiar. Interweaving Bradley’s visual “curiosity of motion” with Cella’s musical interpretations, this collaboration engages our capacity for deep listening and seeing. It opens the “doors of perception” and reveals a pattern language comprised of fractals and synesthesia, leading us to apprehend the ineffable. https://vimeo.com/showcase/3854572 The music on this DVD represents a joyful […]

Tuning Fork

Central themes coalesce around the acoustic and spiritual act of tuning, of finding elements of alignment or harmonics within randomness, crystallized in the experience of the recent total solar eclipse. The sonic-scape of Tuning Fork explores a process of frequency scanning amid the vast interstices of vibrations alternately discovering then losing, finding again – signal. This sonic brew provides the medium from which the story is tuned. Shifting tones of the narrative arc delineate a journey to the central trajectory of the total solar eclipse that raced coast-to-coast across America in August of 2017. Above image is an installation by Bradley in his backyard used to document the partial solar eclipse 2017. About the collaboration. Bradley/Sturgeon WorksStephen Bradley and John Sturgeon have collaborated in creating sound art works, as well as streaming events and performances, nationally and internationally for over 16 years. Mutual interest in spatial aspects of surround-sound, the […]

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