Sound Installation Works - Week 2 (November 28 to December 03)
Robert Rowlands (Entry)
Moments and Movement
Moments and Movements is a program which generates an indeterminate soundscape, with an accompanying visual element, lasting for approximately 17 minutes. Although the piece creates a consistent sound world, no two performances of the work will be the same. The work draws upon a recording I made in my childhood of the chimes from a broken mantel clock. Rediscovering the tape 23 years later, I was inspired to collect recordings of the spaces and times that I occupied as an adult. I recorded a series of snapshots of these spaces throughout a year of my life. The 'snapshot' recordings, and those of the chimes, form a bank of sounds from which the program draws using simple random number triggers, governed by an overall organizational structure. Some of the recordings have been transformed using an array of audio software and processes. The sounds that I selected for the final program reflect the space and the season in which they were recorded and as they combine and juxtapose, a soundscape of changing atmospheres evolves. Conventional music recordings demand the elimination of real world 'time markers' (noise) in order that the piece appears to have been recorded 'at the same time' (and in a silent space). Moments and Movements is an embrace, and a playful exploration of the 'noise' of time, where all sense of temporal consistency is removed. In a sense, this piece is a self portrait, yet it also functions as a meditation upon the nature of sound as a marker of moments. There are periods of great stillness, and moments where time is compressed, stretched or even played out in reverse, and there are clamorous and agitated passages which may appear at any time. Sonic fragments often reappear as auditory cues in the unfolding soundscape. As a result, Moments and Movements gives the listener the chance to construct their own narrative from the work, each random performance offering the chance to be both author and audience. There is no direct link between the visual and aural elements of the piece, other than their existence within the performance space. Associations are left to the imagination of the audience. The images are simple geometric abstractions of timepieces and natural forms, such as leaves and shells. The suggestions of seasonal and temporal change within the unfolding image, provides a visual backdrop, at times in harmony, at others in discord with the developing soundscape.
Rob Rowlands trained as a Fine Art Sculptor, and is currently researching "a sculptural approach to sound art" for PhD at Liverpool John Moores University. Using field recordings and computer generated sounds he creates pieces which are indeterminate in nature. Texture and transformation are the bedrock of his work, which deals with the potency of sound to suggest and create spaces. A number of his 'fixed' pieces have been released on Compilation CDs and his audio visual generative programs have been internationally exhibited. His work is an investigation of sonic material through the use of a wide variety of audio software, and it is the exploratory practice involved in the compositional process, and it's relationship to his sculptural work, which is the focus of his present research.
Ian Stevenson (Gallery 1)
Soniferous objects
"a distant sound, a vague and joyful murmur." A. Rimbaud
Soniferous Objects - An exploration of imagined space.
Soniferous Objects is a collection of materialised images. Ordinary objects given life through sonification. The mysteries of containment and closure are made present in these objects. The viewer infuses the object space with his or her own subjective poetics.
Machines, luggage, cooking utensils: all are subject to processes of representation and identification. Soniferous Objects attempts to bring these processes to life with in the gallery environment.
Ian Stevenson recently returned from seven years living in Europe. He has worked as a sound designer and engineer in the fields of film, theatre and broadcasting. Ian’s installation work has been heard in galleries and public spaces in the United Kingdom and Australia. During 1997 and 1998 Ian completed a Masters degree in acousmatic music, digital signal processing and interface design, at the electronic music studios of City University London, studying under Dr Simon Emmerson. In October 1997 his sound installation, Motion was exhibited at the Coronarium in St Katharine Docks, London. He has also studied and worked in the fields of philosophical aesthetics, cultural studies, engineering and music. He currently lives in Sydney.
John Arthur Grant (Gallery 1)
"2000 BARS" by John Arthur Grant
A web of interactions for four speakers and two live instruments.
Composed and produced Dec 1999 - Nov 2000 for Sonic Residues 02 .
6 discreet sound sources. Four are speakers. The other two are yours.
Don't just stand there, PLAY ! Listen to the sounds around you, and make your own contribution.
The title, 2000 Bars, refers to any or all of the following:
1. A number of measures of music/sound. The pre-recorded part of the work is composed of approx 2000 bars (musical phrases) of material. The themes re-appear, mutate, and interact in various guises, but the work repeats itself only after about 5 hours, not including visitor participation.
2. Types and methods of prison bars, which hold and constrict us all in some way, just as this work is held and constricted by the environment, themes, instruments, performers, and treatments.
3. All manner of wooden and metallic bars fashioned into musical instruments. Kalimba, vibraphone, balaphone, bamboo gamelan, log drum, marimba, and especially, synthesized variations and synthesizer treatments. These "found" and "formed" sounds total around 2000 physical bars (wooden, metal, and synthesized), and are the sonic basis of this work. The bamboo gamelan and keyboard synthesizer (programmed with a variety of suitable sounds) add more physical bars, ready for you to add your mark to the time and space.
4. The number of licensed venues that I have visited, in the service of my chosen profession as musician and sound artist.
[Silence allows space for echoes of past sounds, and echoes from the surrounding environment. Ghosts of sounds weave their way through the gallery space.]
2000 BARS celebrates natural timbres and unknown sonic vistas alike.
An interactive web of score, space, time, and performer.
Thanks to KORG for synthesizers and effects
John Arthur Grant has improvised electronic music on live-to-air radio; composed a 40-minute space odyssey to accompany one man and many puppets; co-wrote and co-produced a top-ten single for the D-Generation; performed on Countdown; programmed a synth to sound like the Melb Town Hall organ; performed on the real Melb Town Hall organ; joined a band called Vinnie and the Vibrators; arranged orchestral parts for "Carols By Candlelight"; played music in an aircraft hangar at Broome airport; composed a dance suite called "The Eight Frogs and the Snake"; formed a surround-sound ensemble where the only performance directions were "we are frogs in a swamp"; curated a Fringe Festival series called Extraordinary Music; conducted synthesizer seminars; demonstrated vocoders; and pulled sounds out of thin air! "2000 BARS" continues his life-long fascination with sound and un-sound - acoustic and electronic - musical and un-musical.
VIDEO Program (Gallery 2)
Renate Oblak and Michael Pinter
Concept Comp.TOT 4
1 Idea and Intention
Strange, not to identify, cryptic video-sequences were interpreted as subject-matter of a perfect engineered world. Irritation of the machine as function of the machine. So it will be given referance to the one history of the functional disturbance or functional definition respectively.
2 Origin and Development
It's about a formal investigation of specified interpreted frames of a videosequence.
Disdinguished frame definitions wich present common moments and accentuate the pluralism of its pictorial and reflected function so as the multiplicity in its layers. A complex accumulation process of the data wich is reorganized in a different astetic context is generated through the limitation of the machine itself. The strong streaming of visual information is reflected in its illegibility of symbols, but processes a dialog in combination with specification and function of the images. Identity of the sequence obtain its expression in concrete instability. In association with
the colour fidelity characterize the frequences the dialogability between optic and acoustic, a attempt contrary to the system exact descriptive confrontation.
Video recordings were disintegrated by a transmission process of corrupted equipment, so that from the original material was nothing perceptible anymore. The remaining fragments were transfered into a defective computer system, which couldn't capture completly the strong streaming of the visuals. Result: The original concrete material is reorganized in a different aesthetic context.
Observation and Installation
The high speed by playing the visuals and the colour intensity is leading to a quick change of sequences, so the observer is not always able to catch the entire impact of the visual material.
Created in the video/soundatelier Tulpstraat 19, 3702 VA Zeist, the netherlands, tel. 0031-30-6912252, e-mail: kolake@wxs.nl
VIDEO Program (Gallery 2) cont.
Dennis H. Miller
RESIDUE
Residue was written in 1999 and unlike other works by its composer, the animation and music were created simultaneously. The technical and artistic challenges this created were immense, but the necessity to carry both elements forward, each with some meaningful continuity, plus keep the two "in sync" from an aesthetic viewpoint, provided the author with a stimulating and provocative experience.
Regarding technical aspects of the work: All visual images were rendered using the POVray scene description language, while the main sonic sources included the Kurzweil K2500 and the Symbolic Sound Kyma System. Final scheduling and compositing were done in Adobe Premiere, and final output was done via a DPS Perception video system.
For the record, the work consists of 16,200 individual Targa (graphic) files, which live a precarious existence on the composer's hard drive.
Dennis Miller received his Doctorate in Composition from Columbia University in 1981. Since that time, he has been on the Music faculty of Northeastern University in Boston where he heads the music technology program and serves on the Multimedia Studies steering committee. He is currently Associate Professor. Miller was the founder and served as director of the League-ISCM
in Boston from 1982-1988. His works have been performed on concerts and festivals throughout the world, and his music appears on Opus One Records and the Frog Peak Collaborative CD, among others. Miller is an Associate Editor of Electronic Musician magazine, for which he writes about music software and hardware technologies. He is also active as a graphic artist and 3D animator. His works are available at www.casdn.neu.edu/~dmiller.
VIDEO Program (Gallery 2) cont.
Kim Cascone
Residualism
Cascone has been working on a triptych of computer music for the past four years. The first two releases, "blueCube( )" and "cathodeFlower" were investigations in building sounds directly with computer code. The final installation of the triptych,"Residualism", takes this technique in a
somewhat different direction: instead of embracing long flowing sounds, "Residualism" contains smaller atomic pieces taken from the first two releases, and are then recombined and layered by custom software designed in Max/MSP.
The inspiration for this new working process came while Cascone was visiting a clothing boutique while on holiday in Los Angeles. The in-store DJ had two popular sampling CDs playing on the music system. Cascone heard this as a algorithmically generated, layered mix that became the conceptual basis of the software he designed for "Residualism." Instead of the smaller parts making up the whole, the whole was composed algorithmically by the random combining of individual parts. "Residualism" is an attempt to utilize this process to explore how small units of sound information can be algorithmically combined to build a larger structure of sound.
"Residualism" is a blurring of the line between atomic samples and compositions. Cascone has been fascinated with shorter formats of music as evidenced in his latest work "Pulsar Studies" (Falsch) and his production of a collection of sonic icons for Thomas Dolby's internet audio company Headspace. Taking this interest in modular sonic information one step further, Cascone describes this release as another approach to his concept of "residualism": residualism is "the process of removing a signal until all that's left is its ghost-signal or the artifacts thrown off by the signal." "By algorithmically combining these residual artifacts in a new structure a higher level of abstraction can yield new sonic structures."
"Residualism" has been performed at the "Lovbebytes Festival" (UK), "Transmissions Festival" (USA) and the "Send and Receive Festival" (Canada) as well as many venues across Europe during Cascone's summer 2000 tour.
for more information please contact Jon Berry <JBERRY@nyc.rr.com> US
Force Inc/Mille Plateaux/Ritornell office
Kim Cascone has a long history involving electronic music: he received his formal training in electronic music at the Berklee College of Music in the early 1970's, and in 1976 continued his studies with Dana McCurdy at the New School in New York City. In the 1980's, after moving to San Francisco and gaining experience as an audio technician, Cascone worked with David Lynch as Assistant Music Editor on both Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart. Cascone left the film industry in 1991 to concentrate on Silent Records, a label that he founded in 1986, transforming it into the U.S.'s premier electronic music label. At the height of Silent's success, he sold the company in early 1996 to pursue his love of sound design and went to work for Thomas Dolby's company Headspace as a sound designer and composer. Currently he is working for Staccato Systems as the Director of Content where he oversees the design of new sounds for games using alrorithmic synthesis. Since 1980, Kim has released more than 15 albums of electronic music and has worked as a collaborator and producer on numerous projects including Nurse With Wound, Keith Rowe, Merzbow, Haruomi Hosono among others. Cascone's compositions have been performed at the International Computer Music Conference (Ann Arbor), Lovebytes Festival (UK),Ver Ui De Maat Festival (Rotterdam), Transmissions Festival (North Carolina), Send + Receive Festival (Winnipeg) and recently performed new work on a 6 city European tour. Cascone was one of of the co-founders of the microsound list (http://www.microsound.org) and writes for Computer Music Journal (MIT Press) and Artbyte Magazine.
Ros Bandt (Gallery 3)
Speak before it is too late focuses on lost or endangered languages. In Australia we are in danger of losing contact with our linguistic roots of both indigenous and imported cultures. This installation brings some of these sounds into audibility before they slip away from us forever. The sound of ancient Greek and Latin languages, the most important sources of the English language are heard in snippets from Homer, Parmenides, the liturgical mass, while members of the Yorta Yorta and Barkindji language indigenous groups tell their horrendous stories of colonialism. Languages of migration become frozen, lost or mutated by their dislocation from their source as is evidenced in the 1930s Warsaw Polish.
6 ceramic urns, reminiscent of funerary urns but also preserving jars hold these living sounds. 6 channels of voices, whispering and emphatic tones come and go from these jars. Contextual sounds of real sound environments where these languages were recorded, the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and the Murray/Willandra region, Australia are mixed through the 6 channels to give a sense of place and location for the sound sources. The passer-by must stop to focus on each or easily slip past, missing these sonic residues of an environment and culture that is
changing very quickly. The sonic hues, shaping the Australian identity are symbolised in the smell of red box eucalyptus, an unprotected woodland eucalypt often used for firewood.
Ros Bandt is an internationally recognised Australian composer and sound artist. She has pioneered spatial music, sound sculpture and audience- interactive sound installation through her original works and writings. Her radiophonic works have been commissioned by the Studio of Akustische Kunst, WDR, Koln, the ORF, Vienna, and the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Her many awards include the inaugural Benjamin Cohen Peace Prize for Innovation, Ball State University, USA, the Sound Art Australia Prize and the prestigious Australian Don Banks Composers Fellowship. She has recently been working on endangered sounds and electronic sound archeologies for new media and installation and was awarded an ARC grant to develop multichannel sound sites in virtual space. Her works are recorded on New Albion, Wergo, EMI and Move Records. She has a PhD in the performance practice and composition of New Music, from Monas University. She performs, records and tours with many artists and ensembles including the early music ensemble La Romanesca. Her new book on Australian Sound Sculpture will be published in April 2001 by Craftsman House, Fine Arts Press. She is honorary senior research fellow at the Australia Centre and has just been awarded a large ARC grant to write a book on sound design of public space.
Peter Chamberlain (Gallery 4)
SAN RIN SHA began with the simultaneous pondering of the way we meter time (relative to the millenium's end) and subsequent discovery and aquisition of some old tube-based electronic metronomes that clicked and flashed. They were made in Hartford Connecticut in the early sixties and perhaps the late fifties. I took them apart and reassembled them so they would fit inside units of these sculptural assemblages.
These clean electro-mechanical designs incorporated only one tube run by a small transformer and just a couple capacitors and resistors that caused a neon bulb to blink simultaneously with the activation of a small electro-magnetic solenoid that "tapped" a small metal plate attached to a larger thin sheet of wood/veneer. No actual speaker-type transducer is involved.
The assemblages that were built to house these analogue meters of time evolved from a process of"search and re-stroy" that has become my primary mode of composing. I had skateboards in the stash, because they were solicited from my students to mount some 50-pound tube amps onto but I never got to that project. The ceramic armadillo was a gift about 8 years ago and has been sitting in my office with a set of blinking Christmas lights shoved inside. It is a piggie-bank ("armie-bank"?) so it has the slot-shaped hole in it perfect for the light...as was the hole in the stomach of the Budha-guy (originally for incense?)
The dancing Budha-not-really-a-Budha and the fencing mask are garage sale debris that have been floating around in various personal tableaux for more than a few years.
In short, visual elements of these pieces were determined largely by practical considerations.
Given the approaching transition between millenniae, and given the indexical richness of possible
"readings" of this work due to the unlikely juxtaposition of diverse cultural debris, seem to evoke all manner of personal decodings. These works - as best witnessed by the backs of the boards and the internal layout of electronics components and wiring. For better or worse, I am a sculptor, not an electrical engineer or machinist.
As for "the artist's intentions"...
it's about time and recycling and recomposing the stuff of life as an improvisational act. What you get is what you see.
While very well crafted, these pieces emit the rawness of step-by-step improvisational construction
Peter Chamberlain's solid backgrounds in the areas of sculpture, music, electronic media, and computers allow him to intermix elements of both hard and soft media with reasonable facility and finesse. He has logged extensive experience in applying these skills toward the production of intermedia works that metaphorically reflect and question unlikely juxtaposition of cultural, natural, and technological elements.
His first interactive installation was produced at Electronic Body Arts in Albany, NY in 1976. Since then he has exhibited interactive electro-kinetic and intermedia work throughout the mainland US, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, in Mexico City, in Essen and Munich W.Germany, and in Hawai'i. He has lectured on this work in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, mainland US, and Hawai'i.
Teaching activity: Chamberlain has been teaching some form of electronic arts full time since 1977. He taught sculpture and electronic arts at Elmira College in central NY for 15 years. In 1991 he moved to Oahu to restructure, update, and direct the Art Department's foundations program and design and implement Electronic Arts courses at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Kim Cascone (REAR GARDEN)
Dust Theories
"Dust Theories" is an evolving audio installation by sound designer and composer Kim Cascone. This version of "Dust Theories" was a sketch that was developed after becoming interested in Cellular Automata. The idea is taken from a novel by Greg Egan titled "Permutation City" where data that is not being used is secretly "borrowed" in order to fabricate a hidden alternate virtual reality where disenfranchised entitles could exist. This version of "Dust Theories" implements more of a poetic approach but future versions will implement a more literal approach.
See biog above. Kim Cascone biography
