jonasgruska

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Jonáš Gruska – Chočské vrchy a doliny

Collection of field recordings from Choč mountains in north-central Slovakia, capturing soundscapes of local villages Kvačany and Veľké Borové, surrounding meadows and insect population. All profits will be donated towards environmental protection through Lesoochranárske zoskupenie VLK.

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Discography

Jonáš Gruska – Site Specific Resonances V (2016, self–released)

Jonáš Gruska – Луна (2014, self–released)

Jonáš Gruska – Site Specific Resonances II (2014, LOM)

Jonáš Gruska – Солнце (2014, self–released)

Jonáš Gruska – CAA #9 (2013, Cyland Audio Archive)

Binmatu – Crystylys (2013, Kvitnu)

Jonáš Gruska – Nočné oscilácie pre jedného (2012, LOM)

Mrkva / Bolka – Mrkva / Bolka (2012, LOM)

Field recordings

Jonáš Gruska – Chočské vrchy a doliny (2016, self–released)

Jonáš Gruska – Vlakom (2016, self–released)

Jonáš Gruska – Lúky (2015, self–released)

Jonáš Gruska – Zvuky Slovanftu (2015, self–released)

Jonáš Gruska – Kvílenia Bratislavy (2015, Sonospace)

Jonáš Gruska – Vzduchotechnika (2014, LOM)

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Jonáš Gruska – Vlakom

Vlakom is a collection of raw electromagnetic field recordings from a train ride between Bratislava and Prague. In an electromagnetic field, a train becomes an electric creature – interwoven with streams of neuro-digital communication, it thirstily sucks its life-energy from the wires above. The electromagnetic dimension only embraces the notion of how alive these iron monsters actually are. It might change the way you see and hear trains forever. The recordings are unprocessed and contain a lot of very high frequencies, which might be harmful at extended periods of loud listening.

Vlakom by Jonáš Gruska

Reviews and mentions: Fluid Radio CDM BBC Radio 3 His Voice Postmatter: Railway resonances

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Electromagnetic vehicles

Electromagnetic recordings of public transport in Slovakia. Recorded with Elektrosluch (electromagnetic listening device) and Olympus LS-11.

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Jonáš Gruska – Site Specific Resonances V.

Site Specific Resonances V. was a site-specific sound installation in abandoned post office building in Vienna, during "Parallel Vienna" exhibition. It was composed for a ventilation system, which consequently acted as a speaker.

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Jonáš Gruska – Lúky

"Lúky" is a compilation of recordings from my search of pristine meadows around various parts of Slovakia. All sales will go towards environmental protection through Lesoochranárske zoskupenie VLK (wolf.sk).

Lúky by Jonáš Gruska

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Jonáš Gruska — Zvuky Slovanftu

"Zvuky Slovnaftu" (Sounds of Slovnaft) is a set of field recordings, dedicated to flare stacks during unusual activity at Slovnaft oil refinery, Bratislava, Slovakia. These sounds were heard tens of kilometers around and kept the city awake for several nights. I tried to capture the atmosphere from the immediate distance, including the polymetric variations of rhythmic patterns produced by crickets and cicadas, joined by the massive beating of the flames.

Zvuky Slovnaftu by Jonáš Gruska

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Jonáš Gruska – Dvere (Site Specific Resonances IV.)

Site specific installation made for VII. Zlín Youth Salon 2015 The work consists of three compositions for an unused metallic door.

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Jonáš Gruska – Kvílenia Bratislavy

This release consists of two separate topics, sharing a certain screechy quality. The first part is dedicated mostly to the door at the entrance of Hlavná pošta, main & biggest post office in Slovakia. These doors remain engraved to every ear which passes through, since they hold a very unique sonic footprint. The second part is about trams in tram tracks. Its motion presents very recognizable screeching, accomapnied with heavy sounds of wheels and delicate clicks and clacks of the inner mechanics. Since the album contains a lot of binaural recordings, headphone listening is recommended for best experience.

Kvílenia Bratislavy by Jonáš Gruska

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Tečúci Vietor

Track from an forthcoming album "Spevy". It is dedicated to exploration of system excitations, wind and water in their tight collaboration exciting objects of their liking, Jonáš tries to play along. It is dedicated to all the beauty hidden in the chaotic behavior of fundamental constituents of the world and their liquid rhythm.

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Jonáš Gruska – Vzduchotechnika

"Vzduchotechnika" is a set of field recordings taken from publicly inaccesible ventillation system machinery; circulating massive amounts of air in a soviet-era market place (Tržnica na Trnavskom mýte) in Bratislava. During two recording sessions, Gruska was able to capture various entomological rhythms and overwhelming drones created by the plethora of moving elements in the system, defining its unique sonic footprint.

Vzduchotechnika by Jonáš Gruska

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Rúry

Rúry ("tubes") was site-specific composition for set of ventilation tubes in front of "Tržnica", legendary marketplace in Bratislava, Slovakia. It was done as part of "Site Specific Resonances" series.

It was initiated by me, as a response to the call for works by festival "Tutti Frutti". I have a long relationship with the place, and I see the ventilation tubes as very essential part of the architecture, so the idea to use them for my work was already somewhere in the back of my head. After receiving necessary permits, I have been doing tests with the tubes, after which I have decided to use tactile transducers (as with other installations in Gemak in The Hague or at Prádelna in Prague). These allowed me to turn the tubes into a set of speakers with very specific acoustic properties. Every sound played through acquires special metallic character, based on resonant frequencies of the tubes and the material they are built from. My composition was based around using these "flaws" as qualities. It contained plenty of frequencies which were actually resonant naturally - therefore they sounded amplified by the whole structure. I quite enjoy this method, because there is only a little amount of energy required to excite the material for impressive results. The sound then seems to be in synchronization with the object, in sort of physico-acoustical harmony.

In the end I have built a 3 channel amplifier box, using my "Pocket Amp" project. Together with multi-channel sound card, this has allowed me to have 3 separate audio channels, for 3 separate tubes, which turned out to be very useful for creating spatial positioning of sounds and various psychoacoustic effects.

The composition was presented as a performance, where I was controlling various aspects of the sounds directly at the spot – sitting in front of the tubes. It was written and controlled in Max/MSP.

I consider the project a huge success, it had plenty of visitors (of all ages) and good response in media (SME, Pravda, Týždeň). It has been premiered on 28th of May, 2014, and was repeated once on 5th of June, 2014. Planned third repetition was cancelled due to unfortunate weather.

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Jonáš Gruska – Луна

Луна is natural consequence and female complement of the hypnotic Солнце. Луна voyages and explores the voids and seas of the Lune. Cosmic rules apply and time is heavily affected by the gravity. Occult powers may be discovered.

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Kolokoly

Kolokoly was site-specific piece made for set of bells placed on Kamenné square in Bratislava, as part of Mélos-Ethos festival. These bells normally play one song every hour. Most of the months in the year it is the same song. Every person living in the centre knows their sound very intimately. They are loud and well positioned, and can be heard for hundreds of meters. I used the bells as my instrument and composed something new. For some reason, none of the songs in the original playlist was actually written for the bells! So I gave the bells what they deserved - their personal, site-specific composition. From technological standpoint, biggest challenge of the project was connecting to the existing bell-driving system. It was controlled via proprietary PLC module (technology commonly used in industrial electronics), therefore I needed to "hack" the system with my own electronics and connect to the bells as directly as possible.

For this purpose I have used Arduino board with my custom shield, generating 24 V impulses for triggering of the bells. Arduino was ideal choice, since can be easily serving as intermediator between the world of electronics and computers.

When the electronics were finished and connected, I have started working on my composition. I used pre-recorded sounds of the bells as simulation of what might happen. I was particularly inspired by polymetric and polyrhythmic compositional methods and my involvement with various gamelan orchestras over last few years.

All work was done using Max/MSP, since I already had experience in working in particular connection of this software with Arduino hardware, using "Maxuino" patches - allowing easy serial communication with the device. It ended up being short, but intense piece - performed two times, 9th a 13th of November 2013. It got wide attention by various slovak newspaper (SME, Pravda) and there was a small report of the event in the main state Slovak television channel STV. You can hear the compositions over here:

Video from the first performance:

TV report:

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Device I made - get it here.

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Live at Kraa festival

15. 2. 2014, Kraa festival, Bratislava, Slovakia