INTENTIONAL ARC: Soundworks Music and Sound Archive | 2000-2020
“The life of consciousness – epistemic life, the life of desire, or perceptual life – is underpinned by an ‘intentional arc’ that projects around us our past, our future, our human milieu, our physical situation, our ideological situation, and our moral situation, or rather, that ensures that we are situated within all of these relationships. This intentional arc creates the unity of the senses, the unity of the senses with intelligence, and the unity of sensitivity and motricity.” — Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945
ia01 - APOPHENIA | 2004-2007 | UK, Japan | 53:28
ia02 - PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES | 2005-2008 | Japan, Indonesia | 60:28
ia03 - OTOPLEXUS | 2009-2015 | Japan, UK | 75:00
ia04 - RHAPSODIES | 2015-2019 | UK | 70:25
ia05 - DISCOMBOBULATION Part 1 - Reassembled Transmissions from the Infected Past | 2020 | UK | 64:38
ia06 - DISCOMBOBULATION Part 2 - Reassembled Transmissions from the Infected Past | 2020 | UK | 41:27
ia07 - BEATS & PIECES| 2006-2016 | UK, Japan | 46:00
ia08 - JIGS | 2006 | Japan | 50:00
ia09 - REFRAIN | 2018 | UK | 31:00
ia10 - FILM SOUND 1 | 2018 | UK | 58:00
ia11 - FILM SOUND 2 | 2018 | UK | 41:00
ia12 - INOWHERE | 2020 | UK | 45:00
ia13 - BEATS & PIECES II | 2000-2002 | UK | 56:00
ia14 - GLITCHES AND GONGS | 2003-2005 | UK, Japan | 47:00
ia15 - BEATS & PIECES III | 2004-2010 | UK, Japan, Indonesia | 55:00
ia16 - THE BENTO BOYS | 2006 | Japan | 46:00
ia17 - IMPROVISATION | 2003-2011 | UK, Japan, Indonesia | 79:00
ia18 - SOUNDLAND - A Music Drama in Five Acts | 2010-2011 | Japan | 25:00
ia19 - YŪGEN | 2018-2020 | UK | 52:00
ia20 - RETRAUQ | 2020 | UK | 30:00
The Soundworks Archive Series documents selected computer music, field recordings, beats, noises and sound collages made between 2000 and 2020. Online at Bandcamp.
Soundworks | 2004-2020 | Archive Series | 6 x CDr + digital file release | ia 01-06
Music | Sound: Rob Szeliga
Mastering: Rob Szeliga | Unit 102 | 2023
Additional Mastering: John Cohen
Artwork: Karoline M Lange [Disc 1-4], Rob Szeliga [Disc 5-6]
Design: Sam Taylor
Discombobulation information and audio sources: www.cinema-of-noise.com/collage
Soundworks II | 2006-2020 | Archive Series | 6 x digital file release | ia 07-12
Music | Sound: Rob Szeliga
Mastering: Rob Szeliga | Unit 102 | 2024
Photography: [ia07, ia12] Rob Szeliga; [ia08] Owen Murray; [ia09] Nic Nazari, still from Hermit (2024) dir. David Alamouti & Rob Szeliga
Film Images: [1] Still from Through a Glass Darkly (1961) dir. Ingmar Bergman, [2] Still from Woman in the Dunes (1964) dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara
Soundworks III | 2000-2020 | Archive Series | 8 x digital file release | ia 13-20
Music | Sound: Rob Szeliga
Mastering: Rob Szeliga | Fox | 2025
Photography: [ia13, ia15, ia18, ia19, ia20] Rob Szeliga, [ia16] Owen Murray
Collaborators and performers: [ia13] Cinzano Taylor, Stuart Rowe; [ia14] Akane Nishizuka, Ben Wood, Simon Adcock; [ia16] Chubby Digits, Dr Ding-a-ling, The Toyama ALT massive 2004-2007; [ia17] Simon Adcock, Steve, Shoichi Iwamoto (Koufun Ninjin), Aquiles Hadjis, Paul Roquet, Nao Nishihara, workshop participants at Geidai University; [ia18] Adam Strange, Tenko, Kenta
I grew up discovering music on the radio and television. In the 1990s I began to buy cassettes, records and CDs. Later I immersed myself in digital downloads, peer-to-peer file-sharing and the never-ending reach of the internet. In 1997 I started to experiment with a digital sampler. This new tool allowed me to consider my music collection as raw material for my own music. By combining and manipulating various sonic elements I could recycle, reorganize and recontextualize the culture around me to create something new. As a teenager this ability to record and manipulate what I heard was what fascinated me most about music and technology. I became interested in sample-based music production and the remix culture of 1990s electronic dance music. This led me back in time, discovering musique concrète, magnetic tape technology and the history and techniques of artists working with collage and found material. As a sound designer I work directly with pre-recorded material in a non-linear, digital post-production workflow. The role involves the sourcing, organising, editing and mixing of various digital sound media, much like the sample-based music I discovered in the 1990s. The instinct to create from what we find expresses a desire to understand the world around us. Contemporary urban and online life unfolds as a kind of collaging of the sights and sounds that we experience. This urge to combine, synthesize, juxtapose and rearrange what we encounter is part of the fundamental gestures of life in a complex, techologically mediated world. The material presented across these twenty collections is an attempt to understand the various times and places I found myself living in between the years 2000 and 2020. These sounds are part of a personal archive of recordings, collages and compositions that together represent a 20-year period of electronic sound tinkering marked by study and travel. Across the years and from many different locations running throughout this archive is an interest in sound and its digital representation.