My web site invites you to listen. To listen to the world around you and to hear the world in new ways. It is also about creating the kind of sonic world that we want, expressed in the rhythms, words, textures and harmonies which enhance our spirit’s growth.

My name is Victoria Fenner. I am a sound artist and radio producer. I gather sounds I hear, and then I compose with those sounds ... it's hard to figure out exactly what to call the finished results. Documentary, tone poem, soundscape...

I like to draw from real sounds but combine them in new ways which move beyond traditional documentary narrative style. I also am a journalist, but I try to break out of the confines of “objective” reality. My approach is often similar to the difference between a journalist covering an event and a poet writing about the same event. The reporter's treatment is intended to be fact-based, but the poet may recreate her experience on an intuitive level. My work falls somewhere in between ... sometimes it's journalism, sometimes it's poetry and sometimes it's neither. Because all of my work is based in real world sounds, I have also been called an environmental artist. That works too.

I searched for many months for a name for this web site, trying to find something which spoke of sound, but not just its physical reality.

And like all good ideas, the title "Magnetic Spirits" came from an unexpected place in a moment when I wasn't looking for it. I was sitting in the studios of WMMT, a community radio station in Whitesburg, Kentucky, listening to a recording that I had made. As my eyes wandered about the room I spied a handwritten sign on the window that said "Please erase your tapes on the other side of the glass wall to appease all the sensitive magnetic spirits in our studio".

Many believe that spirits communicate to us through magnetic waves. Is that where inspiration comes from? Does it come from spirits speaking to my microphone? I believe that they speak to me every day.

Enjoy what you read and hear on this site - I hope you can hear the Magnetic Spirits speaking to you too.

Upcoming Workshop

Bringing the Story Home
Multimedia Skills for NGO workers - Ten years ago, if you wanted to collect sound and images to share back home, you'd have to hire a sound crew or a video crew at great expense to document your work overseas.   And the opportunities to get the production to the public was limited to places like television or radio stations   ... where competition for access to the airwaves was steep.

But now, the tools of production are easily available.    Audio and video equipment is within reach of the average person and organization.   Computer production tools are now available to do production on a desktop computer. And the internet is fast becoming the place to listen to radio and television programs.    (details)

At the Rabble Podcast Network

Community radio veteran Victoria Fenner explores the role of the arts in community-building and cultural vitality. Featuring artists, activists, and noise-makers from the local and international scene. And ideas to help you explore your own inner artist too!

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Be here ...
Amidst the soughing of the trees
The clicks and whirls of summer cicadas
gentle swish of the waves
On the distant shore Be here
Not there
In the centre of metal upon metal
Low grumble of machine
Hysterical wail of sirens
responding back to the wails of the world

Be here now
With closed eyes
With ears opened
To the possibilities of a world which hears its own heart.