Daniel Ottini

Sound Artist/Field Recordist Daniel Ottinis’ work focuses on seeking deeper truths about human emotion and experience using sound as a medium of inquiry and expression.His Sound Art practice currently utilizes documentary audio, field recordings, electronic textures, and spatial sound, to probe (and engage) the listener’s perspective in an immersive but non-didactic manner.In addition to his artistic work, he remains active as a field recordist, sound designer and electronic composer, where his sounds have been utilized in video, podcasts, video games, and as demonstration audio for music hardware and software companies.

Dying is Fine, But Death?

For electronically generated sounds, processed field recordings and spoken word.Object Based Spatial Audio/Channel Based Installation - Audio (Dolby Atmos), Video/Audio (Dolby 5.1)Dying is Fine, But Death is a database-driven, multi-channel, site-specific sound installation, which re-examines Western cultural practices related to death and burial. It takes its title from a poem by e.e. Cummings, which contrasts the natural and artificial aspects of Death/Dying.The piece alternates between the (peaceful) recordings of necropolis spaces and snippets of narrative speech, to gently interrogate the listener’s perspectives and allow an opportunity for self-reflection/revelation on a topic that, although seldom examined, forms an integral part of our existence as humans.

Is This a Test?

For test tones, manipulated field recordings and found sound.Object Based Spatial Audio/Channel Based Installation - Audio (Dolby Atmos), Video/Audio (Dolby 5.1) -Conceived as an installation, the piece utilizes test tones and archival recordings of the American Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) as a play on the concept of “testing” (one testing type (audio) benign, while the other more fraught) and a reflection of what it means (in the current political climate) to be provoked by a message that may suggest a darker outcome (the suspension of broadcasts, and other restrictions on freedoms, for example).We are regularly bombarded with “test” messages such that we are perhaps unsure when something is not a test; this is akin to the complacency people exhibit when fire alarms are triggered after having experienced multiple fire drills.

The Allure of Shipwrecks

For electronically generated sounds, manipulated field recordings and spoken word.Audio (Dolby Atmos), Video/Audio (Dolby 5.1)Based upon a poem from the collection “Harborless” by Cindy Hunter Morgan (St Lawrence, 1878 – A Four Color Process), the piece examines the fragmentary nature of time, memory, and history, through the lens of a maritime disaster and the fascination that attracts humans to such disasters (which offer many unanswered mysteries).The visual element is a video recording taken of a shipwreck (now gone) located along the QEW between Toronto and Niagara Falls (Jordan Harbour) – La Grande Hermine has a tragic story in itself. The video was cut and manipulated to produce 5, one-minute variations (to coincide with the 5-minute audio piece).

Hinterland

For processed field recordings/ videoAudio (Dolby Atmos), Video/Audio (Dolby 5.1)Hin-ter-land (definition): the land behind a city or a portThis piece explores this odd landscape of a naturalized area bordering an airport and industrial zone.Employing in situ field recordings (and video), the piece transitions from the sounds of the natural word into the increasingly invasive sonic artifacts of human life; at first somewhat benignly, then increasing in intensity.There is a strange crossover here between the natural and human-made worlds, with a significant wildlife population, high noise levels and jet exhaust from the airport operations - and the equally invasive sound and odours from the industrial zone; the natural world is preserved, but one wonders at what cost to the species that live (or could have lived) there.

Pathway

Soundwalk - Stereo – Binaural/Mid-Side/AmbisonicPathway is a suburban soundwalk through 3 distant acoustic spaces, each utilizing a different microphone/ technique, the transition between each of the three environments punctuated by auditory “Cut outs”..