Activist Sound
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DeLaurenti 1 Activist Sound: Field Recording, Phonography, and Soundscapes of Protest Christopher DeLaurenti Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Goldsmiths, University of London 2020 DeLaurenti 2 Declaration of authorship I, Christopher DeLaurenti, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own, except when indicated and attributed otherwise. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. July 16, 2020 DeLaurenti 3 Acknowledgements I am grateful to Dr. John Levack Drever and Dr. Iris Garrelfs for their generous supervision and incisive wisdom on all things sonic and scholarly. I am thankful for funding from The College of William & Mary. The Dean’s Office provided valuable supplementary funding for the completion of this dissertation. The Department of Music’s Professional Development Fund in tandem with the Reves Center’s Faculty International Conference Travel Grant funded several aspects of my research. I thank Logan Chappell who guided me through the funding process and made invaluable suggestions. I am lucky to have wise, supportive colleagues and insightful students in the Department of Music. Many texts in this thesis were presented at conferences, invited lectures, and artist residencies during the previous decade. I’m grateful to the respective organizers of those events, but also to fellow scholars, artists, and students who offered helpful observations and asked probing questions. The sources of the texts––a book chapter, journal articles, conference papers, invited lectures, artist talks, etc.––are inventoried in the Colophon. Regarding the sound work discussed in this research, the version of N30: Live at the WTO Protest November 30, 19991 (2008) was made possible by Oliver Ressler, who invited me to reimagine N30 for a 2008 Taipei Biennial showcase, “A World Where Many Worlds Fit,” held at the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts from September 13, 2008 to January 4, 2009. This definitive version of N30 premiered at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (February 28, 2008) at the invitation of Nicolas Collins and subsequently was presented in many venues, notably at Goldsmiths (October 16, 2014). The initial versions of N30 would not exist without all the brave souls who fought for the future on the streets of Seattle decades ago. I benefitted from equipment and funding from Richard Shorter of Shorter Software Solutions, The King County Arts Commission, and an Artist Fellowship from Artist Trust. I received indispensable technical advice and supplementary equipment from Ian Vollmer, Alex Keller, and Michael P. O’Connor IV. Earlier, edited and/or incomplete versions of N30 were performed live at the Center on Contemporary Art (June 3, 2000) and aired on numerous radio programs including Sonarchy produced by Doug Haire on KCMU 90.3 FM (June 3, 2000 and November 30, 2002); Prisms produced and hosted by Iain Edgewater on KBCS 91.3 FM (October 22, 2002); the Outer Ear 04 Festival curated by Lou Mallozzi simulcast on WLUW 88.7 FM and WNUR 89.3 FM (November 4, 7, 9, and 10, 2004); and Soundproof hosted by Miyuki Jokiranta on Australia’s Radio National (September 5 and 7, 2014). As detailed in the Introduction, the thesis chapter on N30 stitches together multiple sources. I want to thank The Tentacle: The Journal of Pacific Northwest Creative Music , especially Dennis Rea, Mike Marlin, Carl Juarez, and Henry Hughes who published a two-issue special on the WTO protests in Seattle. I am also grateful to Nicolas Collins who commissioned “Making Activist Sound” for Leonardo Music Journal and to V.J. Manzo and Frederick Bianchi who included “Towards Activist Sound” in Environmental Sound Artists . Producing and hosting The Sonar Map , a radio show devoted to adventurous sound and listening on KSER 90.7 FM (1998-2001) and later co-hosting Flotation Device on KBCS 91.3 1 Throughout this dissertation N30 will denote the protest against the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference while N30: Live at the WTO Protest and its abbreviated form N30 refers to the sound, performance, and installation works I fashioned from my recordings made at N30. DeLaurenti 4 FM (2006-2009) was indispensable to my education, compelling me to confront multiple genres and strands of music and sonic art. I owe a great debt to GD Stereo, a New York-based label which bravely released the compact discs of Favorite Intermissions: Music Before and Between Beethoven-Stravinsky-Holst (2008) and To the Cooling Tower, Satsop (2015). Without the support and guidance of Geoff Dugan, these works would have found a much smaller audience. The sonic and theoretical explorations of the collective Ultra-red continue to be a source of inspiration; I am indebted to their concept of militant sound investigation. Steve Barsotti, a superb sound artist, educator, and Seattle Phonographers Union (SPU) stalwart, has been a priceless source of technical knowledge, wisdom, sage advice, and timely assists with equipment. To the Cooling Tower, Satsop would not exist without him. Although my work in freely-improvised sound, circuit-bending, data-bending, sonification, and cracked electronics precedes the chronological scope of this dissertation (2008-2018), the brilliant sound artist Alex Keller was a chief partner, teacher, and inspiration in our work as rebreather as well as within the SoniCabal and mimeomeme collectives. I owe deep, impossible-to-detail debts to my teachers in Seattle, my late father Peter B. DeLaurenti, Jr. and Arthur A. Bloom. Ken Benshoof provided essential guidance to my youthful ambition in the early 1990s. I am fortunate to count two great composers, Noah Creshevsky and Annea Lockwood, as friends and mentors. I happily thank my teachers at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College: David Behrman, Bob Bielecki, Margaret de Wys, Brenda Hutchinson, Ann Lauterbach, George E. Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Keith Sanborn, Laetitia Sonami, and especially Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009) and Richard Teitelbaum (1939-2020). Overall, my work would not have been possible without those artists active in the utopian days of the phonography email listserv in the early 2000s. My colleagues in the SPU, which I co-founded in 2002 and continues as of this writing in 2020, continue to influence my thinking on sound, listening, and improvisation. Lastly, I thank my parents for their occasionally mystified but always loving encouragement of me and my work. My closest and dearest friends (you know who you are) mean everything to me, and above all, my beloved wife Kathleen to whom this work is dedicated. Despite my abundant debts, all errors of omission and commission remain mine and mine alone. Christopher DeLaurenti DeLaurenti 5 Abstract Fusing practiced-based and scholarly research, this thesis examines and articulates the practice and products of field recording as a form of protest. Unlike studio recording, which transpires in sheltered and otherwise controlled environments, field recordings have historically been made in unstable, ad hoc, and unpredictable contexts often by un- and self-trained scholars, scientists, artists, and explorers. The contingent and elusive categorization of such recordings as ethnographic documents, environmental research, sound effects, nature recording, soundscape composition, sound art, music, and non-music not only can perturb or further unsettle the listener but offers an entryway into explicating ideologies of listening and recording. The practice-based component of this research emerges from phonography, a contemporary form of field recording characterized by critical approaches to subject matter, sonic fidelity, and the role of the recordist––mediated by the relatively recent availability of inexpensive portable recording devices. The written, scholarly component of this research is rooted in the soundscape model articulated by R. Murray Schafer and subsequently developed by theorists of and contiguous to sound studies, including Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp. Research methodologies include historical investigation, paratextual analysis, participant observation, and artistic creation. Drawing from a representative selection of the author’s unfolding practice over the last 10 years–– N30: Live at the WTO Protest November 30, 1999 (2008); Favorite Intermissions (2008); and To the Cooling Tower, Satsop (2015)––the case studies in this thesis resulted in a critical framework, “activist sound,” for identifying field recordings and field recording-based sound works as a form of protest. DeLaurenti 6 Table of Contents Activist Sound: Field Recording, Phonography, and Soundscapes of Protest .............. 1 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ 3 Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 5 Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... 6 List of figures .................................................................................................................................. 7 List of sound works on USB drive .................................................................................................. 8 Introduction: On (re)Writing.......................................................................................... 9 Part One: Origins and Early Practice