unsounded

Some very beautiful Sound Art installations outside by Max Eastley on The Wire. Max Eastley seems to be interested in the Aeolian Harp, and their works are reflective of this kind of autonomous, self sustaining sound piece. Each one captivating in its own way, some of the “Kinetic Drawings” remind me of Kinetic Art pioneer Alexander Calder. Visually striking sculptures, that also create intrigue and investigation in the visitor. Its more of an active type of art to digest, as opposed to the sometimes passivity of Ambiance. In a sense, this is the right side of Ambient, where the visitor is compelled to investigate. In the same way that speakers are passive and active. So are visitors. I would like to create work that is not obvious in its intentions, so the visitor can discover it. Works like Basanta, La Monte Young, Longplayer, are these enveloping centre pieces. I think I am more concerned with the indiscernible.

These bowls in water are great autogenerated sound art piece, the flowing water disrupts the pool of water, and the different sized ceramic bowls hit each other producing different tones. The guitar piece, is probably one of my first exposures to Sound Art. When I was in College, this was playing at The Barbican. I like these autogenerated pieces. Naturally occurring, auto generated pieces are quite fascinating, when reading up on Muzak and Background Music, a lot of the sources I studied referred back to the Aoelian Harp, as the earliest instance of background music. A harp in a location where the wind will cause the vibration of its strings causing a drone-y ambient chord.

These Aeolian harps are not only visually interesting, they also producing very satisfying sounds.

I liked Ben Patterson’s use of plastic frogs, as it was taking a benign object away from its primary use. That is why I am liking these Wing Organs from plastic bottles. This could make an interesting sculpture, or at least could be used to create some quite interesting field recordings. Assembling a bunch of different sized bottles could make for a very interesting modern wind harp.

“One-sided LP in an edition of 345 copies. “The new Ben Patterson piece, issued on Alga Marghen’s VocSon series, is based on the basic principles of the polyphonic music of the Bantu tribes of West and Central Africa. First principle: the practice of interlocking individual pitches or tones performed by one person into spaces between other pitches or tones performed by another person, thus alternating pitches or tones of one part with those of another part to create a whole. Second principle: use of cyclical and open-ended forms involving one or more ostinato melodic/rhythmic pattern as a foundation. Third principle: community participation…non-specialists are encouraged to join in long performances with much repetition. Fourth principle: rhythmic complexity with the juxtaposition of double and triple patterns, multiple layering of different patterns, and interaction between a core foundation and improvised parts. And, most important, the family ‘ownership’ of a specific tone: in the musical culture of these tribes, each ancestral family ‘owns’ and is responsible for one or more specific tones, which must be sounded at specific points, sequencing with the many other specific tones ‘owned’ by other families, to create a seamless melody. Ben Patterson made a music based on this information by taking the initials of artists listed in Fluxus: The Most Radical and Experimental Art Movement of the Sixties and encoding them in basic International Morse Code. These ‘dots and dashes’ were then performed on a Yamaha DJX keyboard (voice pattern setting), connected to a Digitech JamMan Looper (over-dub setting), connected to an Eurorack MX 602A mixer. Front cover reproducing the original score.”

Really engaging listening. I like the way Ben Patterson assigns sounds in his Sound Art pieces. The timbre of the low bitrate quality voice pattern settings on the Yamaha DJX Keyboard. Using the rhythm of morse code to turn these samples into a language. I am not sure how the audience participation would work for this specific piece. But in Pond (1966), audience participants place wind up frogs in a grid and repeat chosen phrases based on the gradient of their frogs. Which results in a playful polyphony which reflects the individual voice of each participant in a controlled manner.

In this example, not participants chosen words are English. I love how such a simple piece can cause such complexity when the human beings are introduced. This mixture of rules with room for creativity is brilliantly struck. A strong theme in both works is a type of polyphony. Here is a video which does a great job of rounding up the rules of the piece with the late composer and pioneering sound artist.

Here is the score to Paper Piece

There is something very chaotic about this video and its visually very interesting to me. Sensory experience, mixed with participation. Taking a rudimentary object from everyday life and maximising its sound into this ocean of susurrations.

In a strange way it brings to mind this viral video from a few years back…

Here are a few sounds I enjoy and would like to incorporate into some kind of Patterson inspired performance. Key phrases from my notebook: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, AUTO-GENERATED SOUND, AMBIANCE???, MOVEMENT, ACTION, VISUAL, OBJECTS???, PERFORMANCE, SPACE, MUZAK, BACKGROUND, ARTEFACTS, UNINTENTIONAL MUSIC.

“Room Dynamics” is a multi-modal, modular composition exploring perceptual and affective states arising from the interactions of dynamic media architectures and the material architectures within which they are embedded. A site-responsive audiovisual architecture marked by 12 points of light and sound – each consisting of an incandescent light bulb and corresponding speaker – bisects the space vertically and horizontally, immersing spectators while remaining permeable.
The resulting architectural contour manifests dynamic behavioural states ranging between individual activities and collective operation, leaving a trace on its surroundings: reshaping its appearance and volume, creating movement and perspectival changes. Through the temporal development of this audiovisual architecture, supplemented by dynamic ambient lighting and tactile vibration, the gallery space is activated: making available architectural features, articulating navigable pathways, colouring and shading the experiential space through which the spectator navigates.“

In this piece, the lightbulbs correspond to the sounds. It’s a satisfying, simple visualisation of how sound waves behave. A drone-like sequence where the lightbulbs fade in and out of brightness and a more percussive passage follows. The spatiality of this piece is intriguing. Tactility is a term I hear a lot in association with surround installations. “Making Available Architectural features” reminds me of the installation work of last years Visiting Lecturer, Daisuke Ishida. But personally, the architectural features of a ‘white cube’ falls a little flat for me as an investigation. I think in its current setting, this installation quite as interesting as the work by Daisuke Ishida as in this instance, the exhibition takes place in architecturally distinct environments.

Sound wise with Adam Basanta’s exhibitions, I do not find the sounds I am hearing very satisfying, as someone who has a sensitivity to sound, the high pitched frequencies cause a discomfort and low level anxiety. However I think its interesting in the sense that, I don’t fully believe ambient spaces should be 100% satisfying and criticism I have become aware of within the sound arts community, is the propensity towards Ambiance. An architectural experience of space, mostly meditative as opposed to challenging. This quite harsh high frequency does in affect maybe make it less hospitable and therefore there is an element of discomfort. However, due to my own hearing. Its not something I would go out of my way to experience as on a bad hearing day could cause slightly painful discomfort.

“Contour, for a hallway is a site responsive audiovisual architecture overlaid within a material passage way. The arching contour reaching from the lobby to the elevator is marked by 12 “points” of sound and light, each of which may behave independently or join with its neighbours to create larger collectives. The contour’s dynamism – manifesting in both sound and light – leaves its trace on the hallway, reshaping its appearance and volume, creating movement and perspectival changes.
These processes take place throughout a ~20 minute modular compositional framework.

— This is an extension of the first, and whilst I do find it quite hard to bare, it’s an interesting concept. I find the compositional elements in this satisfying in between the high frequency blasts.

Overall use of light to colour sound and spatiality is very well executed here. You get an appreciation of quantum level of sound through this visualisation. It makes me feel a little bit like I am on the set of some kind of supernatural paranormal activity film. Aesthetically, it’s a bit too minimalist in its execution for me? I find the second description of the piece, more of a representation of what I am viewing. I do not agree that these works are tactile, as the viewer doesn’t really interact with the space. They are still spectators, in my opinion.

“…such macro-structural temporal aspects are rarely, if ever, discussed in the growing body of literature dealing with sound and audiovisual installations. This absence is noteworthy; after all, sound and audiovisual installations, by virtue of their use of sonic materials unfolding in time, must exhibit some time-based structural or formal features.” 

Basanta, Organised Sound

“…audiences can expect to hear sequences of sanctioned (sound-based) material voca- bulary emanating from a localised source (the stage), and experienced from a privileged, static vantage point, with each ‘work’ (or singular form) book-ended by performative acts (i.e. entrances, clapping) indicating clear beginnings and ends.”

Basanta, Organised Sound

Spatial configurations can thus be envisioned as enabling a ‘bodily flow of an individual whose decisions as to where to be [construct] the [media] composition’ (Labelle 2006: 73).

Basanta quoting Brandon LaBelle, Perspectives on Sound Art

Reading the first 3 Chapters of Basanta’s Organised Sound. Clarifies some of my musings on his work a little. Tactility, it seems to him is most likely in reference to the ability to walk through the spatialised composition, taking the visitor away from a traditional concert experience. The visitor enters and leaves when they enter and leave, the piece is breaking from the Western traditions of concert music form. Start to End – ‘Birds Eye View’ notation. The audience participation, a book-end to the performance, with silence, clapping and applause.

Music as temporal experience? Post-structuralism? What’s the compositions form? How does the work operate formally? Spatial Architecture, Time-based media, Mobile visitor. How do these effect the visitor’s experience?

When talking about the Temporal… Longplayer also springs to mind.

Does Sound Art have an obsession with the temporal?

La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela’s Dream House. Sine Wave drones constantly playing in a magenta room. This piece has been installed in various places since in conception in the 1960s.

These temporal pieces, are not linear in a sense of the visitors experience of them.