Lena Ortega (Lena Lee)
Lena Ortega is a sound artist from Mexico who focusses on the relationship between nature and culture. I watched her visitor practitioner episode and thoroughly enjoyed the meditational practice she took us through. The practice required us to focus on our breaths, to find the rhythm of our pulse and then clap it out with our hands. I had difficulty with this in the moment but found it quite fascinating. The challenge of it was to find your own bodily rhythm, remain in it and refrain from synchronising with the others. We didn’t get enough time with this exercise for everyone to find their own rhythm, but the concept of what the exercise is aiming for is something I’d like to look further into.
A lot of her work that was shown throughout the episode consisted of an array of meditational sounds that evolved around nature and natural environments. I particularly liked her recordings of the bird songs. I also found her field recording that looked into atmospheres and embodied experience quite interesting. Images were shown of her and a sound engineer creating a live sonic ambience. The sounds were being played to a room of people who were relaxing, lying down on cushions, getting into a mediative and restful state. She played a snippet of it in the lecture and I loved the fusion between the environmental sounds and the singing flute. The relationship between the two spaces in the piece gave the piece its own personal world in which the listeners could find their own meditative state.