Virtual part of workshop took place in the form of blended learning, where individual classes were connected online. At FAMU, we had a facility at the Department of Sound Design, in a classroom that is sufficiently equipped for video conferencing and critical listening of auditory works. Students and teachers from individual countries met physically in a classroom at their school at an agreed time, and these classes were then connected via the ZOOM platform. Four of the seven “online sessions” were designed as a three-hour block consisting of three parts. The first part was dedicated to theory and context, the second part was dedicated to listening, and the third part was focused on assigning and listening to so-called “micro projects”. Three of the seven online sessions were designed as masterclasses, where three distinctive and at the same time very different artists and theorists involved in audio design presented their work. French documentarian Frederique Pressmann, American multimedia artist Ariana Martinez, and British writer, theorist, and the first British professor of radio design Seán Street. Each masterclass was moderated by one of the teachers from the organizing schools and placed in the thematic context of what the students were currently working on.

The sessions also included students who were not primarily selected as active participants in the workshop; they were given the opportunity to be present at the online session as so-called “observers”. The online masterclasses were listed as a separate module intended for students of KZT and CAS FAMU. At one of the last online sessions, we divided the students into five teams of three, so that each team had representation from all countries. An important communication channel that supported the challenges associated with communication and remote collaboration was the Discord platform, which served as a structured virtual space designed for team building, was a space for communication between individual working groups, a place for sharing internal professional knowledge and practical solutions at a technical level related to the individual topics discussed. The students also used this platform during their stay in Prague to coordinate their cooperation and coordinate their free time and entertainment.

13-17th January 2025 in Prague took place the most intensive part of the workshop. Students and teachers from Greece and France arrived in Prague one day in advance so that everyone could work on Monday morning. From foreign schools, the director of international relations from the Louise Lumiére school, Ms. Raissa Lahcine, and teacher Alan Blum arrived in Prague, and musician and teacher Thodoris Papadimitriou was physically present from Greece. The basic background for the part next to the workshop was in the FAMU Studio, where we had a group session every day during which we listened to and analyzed team work and monitored progress, and the leading teachers visited and consulted with the individual teams at their workplaces individually. On the last day of the workshop, we organized a publicly accessible presentation in the form of listening in the seminar room of the KZT FAMU on Smetananovo nábřeží. Five short works were included in a single thematic area with a total length of 30 minutes. An informal discussion and farewell with all project members took place at the FAMU Club, where some of the students played as DJs.

LECTURERS

Alan Blum / ENS Louis-Lumière, Paris, France

Musician and sound engineer. In 2001, in collaboration with Pascal Rueff and other sound engineers, he founded “OmniHead”. This association focuses on the then little-known binaural sound recording technique, and explores the sensation of natural feel or illusion of sound offered by this technique through a variety of mediums and sound creations. His productions were featured in the first editions of the “Longueurs d'Ondes” radio and listening festival in Brest. These experiments led him to join acoustic research teams at IRCAM and LIMSI-CNRS, working on sound spatialization techniques. His collaborations with Brian Katz, Olivier Warusfel and Rozenn Nicol focus on the development of immersive 3D audio techniques, and on the perceptual aspects of spatial hearing. Since 2011, he has been teaching “audio techniques” in the Sound Master Programme at ENS Louis-Lumière, and coordinating the “Sound Arts” and “Sonorisation” options. He is committed to bridging the gap between work in research laboratories and sound work “in the field”.

Christos Goussios / School of Film, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece – IMDb

Christos Goussios was born in Thessaloniki in 1973. He graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering, AUTh and he received his PhD from the Department of Architecture, AUTh. He is teaching sound and music classes in the School of Film since 2005, where he is an associate professor. He has worked on the sound and sound design and also on the composition, performance and recording of music for short films, feature films, TV series, theater plays and podcasts. He has won two Iris Awards for Best Sound from the Hellenic Film Academy (2019, 2024). He is the head of sound at the studio Panorama the Sound of Film.

Thodoris Papadimitriou / School of Film, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece – IMDb

Thodoris Papadimitriou is an awarded composer, conductor and cellist from Thessaloniki, Greece. He is a graduate of the Department of Music Studies of Aristotle University and holds a master’s in orchestral conducting from Hull University, UK. He teaches film music classes in the School of Film of Auth since 2020 as assistant professor. He composes music for feature and short films, animation, theatrical plays and also symphonic music for educational purposes for youth orchestras. He was the conductor of MOYSA, Thessaloniki Concert Hall Youth Orchestra from 2015 to 2022, he conducts the youth orchestras of Thessaloniki’s New Conservatory, and also the Choir of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. As a cellist he has performed and recorded with many artists and composers.

Johana Ožvold / FAMU, Czech Republic

Johana Ožvold graduated from FAMU, Department of Directing. She continues her studies at FAMU in the doctoral programme. She regularly collaborates with the theatre scene and alternative spaces, performing in theatre as an actress, improviser, writer, musician or director. She has created a series of radio plays, documentaries and podcasts. Her artistic work crosses the boundaries between fiction and documentary. Her student films have won numerous awards at national and international festivals. Her first feature-length documentary project, The Sound is Innocent, premiered at IFF Visions du Reél in 2019, in competition with Burning Lights. The Sound is Innocent has been screened at a number of film and music festivals such as Sheffield Doc Fest, Revelation Perth or Mutek. She is currently working on a feature film which will be her debut with Bionaut Films. At the same time she is making two time-lapse documentaries about the visual arts with production company Nyasa Films.

Martin Ožvold / FAMU, Czech Republic

Martin Ožvold holds a PhD in Composition from the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. His work spans scoring, sound design for films, sound installations, radio, and podcasts. He studied electroacoustic composition with Prof.Jonty Harrison and Prof. Scott Wilson at the University of Birmingham (MA), Sound Arts at the University of Middlesex London (BA Hons), Sound Engineering at the SAE Institute London (DipHE), and completed a one-year postgraduate research internship at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal College of Arts in The Hague. At FAMU Prague, he teaches sound art in the context of multimedia production. His scientific interests and research are the cultural history of sound design and electroacoustic sound production, the history of electronic music, and, last but not least, the methodology of teaching sound production and popularizing audio culture. He works closely with Danish radio documentarist Brit Jensen. Their collaboration has been winning nominated at numerous international audio festivals, including Third Coast International Audio Festival Chicago, Prix Marulic, Prix Europe or Prix Bohemia Radio. His most notable and acclaimed artistic achievements include music and sound design for the play Holly Roth for the Slovak National Theatre, improvisation with the Birmingham Ensemble for Electroacoustic Research, and sound concept, music, and screenplay for The Sound Is Innocent, directed by his wife, Johan Ožvold.

GALerie

Photo: Andrea Petrovičová