portfolio — kevin corcoran

notes on place-time listening | portfolio of recent work

still from *mineral listening,* video and sound, 2023
mussel rock, daly city
excerpt
this land-use performance involves tracing contours of site by walking along canals designed to slow erosion in an active rift-zone landslide atop a decommissioned landfill while carrying natural and industrial composite rocks wound in copper wire. this transforms the rocks into radio receivers and noise making devices. broadening the concept of a field recording to include electromagnetic fields in addition to environmental sounds, the inclusion of noise relates to the accumulation of excess in a location where human traces are simultaneously acts of compounding toxicity, extraction, and remediation.

still from *feedback field recordings,* video and sound, 2023
candlestick point, san francisco
excerpt
in this example of land-use performance, environmental sound is simultaneously recorded and played back into the site through a small amplifier. as my gestures shift the direction of the hand-held recorder, instances of feedback occur in the signal chain. introducing the sound of feedback into the environment by moving my body in relation with construction debris, soil erosion, and remediation infrastructure, a metaphor is made for the feedback loop of anthropogenic climate change likely to raise water levels at this bay shore location, an extension of the city built of infill.

still from *becoming heap,* performance with min yoon, video and sound, 2023
treptower park, berlin
a continuation of our international duo practice concerning relationships of the human body with sound, movement, and environment, we found two large heaps of recently excavated soil and flora and performed our own composting alongside them. in addition to the sounds of percussion, voice, and our rustling footsteps in the leaves, the voices of people passing by, birds, traffic, and the HVAC system of an adjacent building define the sound here.

collaged excerpt of field recording composition mojave traces made at and around the granite mountains research station in 2022.

while working in the desert over four days, my recordings were informed by walking and tracing lines in the landscape. in some cases these lines delineated boundaries of public and private space for various land use, while in others the lines were effects of weather phenomena in stone, sand, and flora.

tympanum · unfinished objects in the field (excerpt)

collaged excerpt of 2022 composition unfinished objects in the field, interactions with landscapes of fire, water, and stone.

this recording is a triptych considering different approaches to field recording: removing a single object from it’s located context and interacting with it through touch, recording the same site at multiple layers above and below water while narrowing it’s frequency range, and combining a location recording with mimicry of its sonic context through the addition of percussion sounds.