Uplift of Enlightenment

The current weather makes me want to just lie down in the sun and do literally nothing. I wouldn’t move a bit. Neither does this guy…

While I have been near Lago Maggiore in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, I have also been going up the stream of one of the rivers – leading into the Verzasca Valley. And by “going” i mean “driving”. Anyway… After a while you find yourself in front of a cement wall: the Contra dam. Wait a second, I know that sight: From this dam James Bond took his famous bungee jump in Goldeneye! In fact you can even do the jump yourself if you dare. Even though i just posted all those adventurous things i would like to do some day, bungee jumping was not one of them.

Contra dam aka the favorite place for Bond to Bungee Jump

Instead I continued going up the river, beyond the enormous artificial lake of the dam, and I reached a wonderful river bed carved into solid granite near a very old roman bridge. Wow. What a sight! Around this river you can climb along the rocks from one small stream to another. Near the bridge you see the mountains in the back and the water is flowing very slowly and is several meters deep. Some small streams go all around the rocks so it may very well happen that were you climb along would turn out to be a dead end after a while because you cannot cross the water except by swimming. Continue reading

You are now invited to join me on a late afternoon walk along the lake of Locarno, Switzerland. It is the beginning of June and after a completely overcast day around 5pm the sun came out and bathed the trees on the esplanade in a warm light. People came out from cafes to take a walk in t-shirts or ride their bikes along the lake. Once in a while you can hear some waves hitting the stones when a boat came by a little bit further out on the water. Continue reading

This is the first recording I made today while walking around in my neighborhood. Summer finally started and you could feel the smooth warmth of the sun on your skin while a gentle wind was moving the air around you. Not far from my home there are some bank buildings, the stadium, a huge fair hall and a techno club called OXA (which is famous within the Zurich area). Even though it can be a very busy areal on weekdays and nights, during weekend days there are almost no people around, giving me the perfect opportunity to start my first recordings of the Auralfloat project. What fascinated me was the realization that when recording audio, i have to learn to hear from scratch – almost like a photographer has to learn how to perfectly frame his shots, perspectives, the constellation of objects and lights within the scene. For example in my recordings you hear the wind and footsteps, which i almost did not realize while recording it. I also did not realize how many airplanes or even distant cars are recognizable from where i have been. But i left the recordings as they are (no editing), because I think there will be a lot of learning going on and i am really looking forward to experiment with it in the future. I hope you will like it as well and I would be very happy about any feedback you can give. Continue reading