Patrick Tubin McGinley

Patrick Tubin McGinley (AKA murmer) is an American-born sound, performance, and radio artist who has been based in Europe (now Estonia) since 1996. Since then he has been building a collection of found sounds and found objects that have become the basis of all his work. In 2002 he founded Framework, an organisation that produces a weekly field recording themed radio show, broad- and podcasting around the world. Alongside his sound, radio and film work, Patrick gives presentations, workshops, and performances based on the exploration of site-specific sound and sound as definition of space. In live performance his interest in field recording has developed into an attempt to integrate and resonate found sounds, found objects, specific spaces, and moments in time, in order to create a direct and visceral link with an audience and location.

Patrick’s work is about small discoveries and concentrated attention; it focuses on the framing of the sounds around us which normally pass through our ears unnoticed and unremarked, but which out of context become unrecognisable, alien and extraordinary: crackling charcoal, a squeaking escalator, a buzzing insect, or one’s own breath. He works equally with spaces, objects, resonances, and people in exploration of perception via attentive listening.

The source material for nail down your ghosts was recorded in an abandoned and now-demolished house in the Estonian town of Valga in October 2019. Sonic interventions were performed, and elements were subsequently reworked, by Liisa Hirsch and Patrick Tubin Mcginley, 2019/2020. The final piece was then composed from those elements in June 2020. Originally created for the short film to crumble into clouds above your living room by Anna Hints, commissioned as the Estonian contribution to the 2020 venice biennale of architecture, which was subsequently postponed to 2021 due to the covid-19 pandemic.