Introduction
LMJ 23: Sound Art
What’s in a name? That which we call “Music” is judged by the full weight of history and fashion; substitute “Sound Art” and most of these preconceptions fall away. As recently as a decade ago the reaction instead might have been bemusement. The term Sound Art was coined in the late 1960s to describe sonic activities taking place outside the concert hall: interactive installations, listening walks, environmental recordings, open duration sound events—even “happenings” and performance art were occasionally lumped under this rubric. For many years Sound Art remained an interstitial activity, falling between music and visual art, embraced fully by neither. Many composers viewed self-styled Sound Artists as failed mem- bers of their own club pursuing “a career move . . . a branding exercise” (as Chris Mann is quoted as saying in Ricardo Arias’s contribution to this volume of Leonardo Music Journal [1]). Most museums and galleries, in turn, shied away from an art form that was often stunningly unvisual even by the standards of Conceptual Art and for which there appeared to be no mar- ket. (Gallery assistants often found it very irritating to boot.) By 2013, however, Sound Art clearly has been accepted as an identifiable musical genre, an art world commodity, and a subject of critical study. Its newfound visibility can be traced to a number of aesthetic, technological and economic factors. First and foremost, I suspect, is the ubiquity of video in contemporary life: On the heels of the ever-declining price of camcord- ers, cellphone cameras have brought the world—from out-of-tune Van Halen concerts to the Arab Spring—to our laptops, and every video clip is invariably accompanied by sound. As I observed in an earlier volume of LMJ,
For many artists . . . the digital camcorder has become the new sketchbook, and it’s so difficult to defeat the camera’s built-in microphone that most video footage is accompanied by sound by default. And, just as a camera often redirects the artist’s eye, so the constant presence of a soundtrack, whether intentional or not, draws atten- tion to sound [2].
This “video-isation” of our lives contributes to the muddling of the distinction between Art and Music: Art keeps getting noisier while music is increasingly represented in visual formats, creating an ideal nurturing environment for Sound Art. Moreover, the development and dissemination of powerful digital tools minimize the importance of domain-specific training: One doesn’t need to master counterpoint or life drawing to be a virtuoso of ctrl-X/ctrl-V; artists can cut sound as easily as musicians can arrange images. And, of course, the recent vis- ibility and financial success of a handful of artists identified with the genre, such as Christian Marclay, Janet Cardiff and Susanne Philipsz, has heightened public awareness. The ascendance of Sound Art could be seen in the flood of proposals we received after choosing the subject as the theme for this volume of Leonardo Music Journal—four times as many as for any previous issue. The submissions we accepted illustrate the rich inclusiveness of the field as it stands today. Environmental sound (both pastoral and urban) and the spatial distribution of sound, while of marginal significance in traditional music, are common obsessions in Sound Art and are germane to many of the papers in this volume. Llorenç Barber documents his citywide performances with church bells. Peter Batchelor, Marc Berghaus, and Jane Grant and John Matthias contribute essays on various aspects of sound spatialization, ranging from multi- speaker arrays to motorized “sound showers.” Mike Blow suspends solar-powered circuitry
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 1–2, 2013 1 in trees. Florian Grond, Adriana Olmos and Jeremy R. Cooperstock employ echolocation technology in the design of sculpture for the visually impaired. Sound walks and portable electronics are central to the work of Yolande Harris, Rob van Rijswijk and Jeroen Strijbos, Jes- sica Thompson, Edwin van der Heide and Emma Whittaker. David Monacchi, Jos Mulder and Colin Wambsgans employ field recordings in their gallery presentations, while Florian Holler- weger creates time displacements from real-time recordings of visitors to his installation. Several of the articles focus on technical innovations, employing both cutting-edge and anti- quated materials. Yuan-Yi Fan and David Minnen describe their research in gesture control for 3D sound distribution. Jess Rowland builds loudspeakers using copper tape on paper and other flat surfaces, integrating sound directly into graphic artworks. Jay Needham and Eric Leonardson use historic gramophone horns, old mechanical clocks and other spring mecha- nisms in their performances. This volume contains a number of historical and critical essays as well. Ricardo Arias reviews the work of three contemporary Colombian artists; Gascia Ouzounian surveys Sound Art in Belfast; and Simon Polson discusses the role of the Berlin Wall in the work of Terry Fox and Anthony Hood. Daniele Balit focuses on artists experimenting with audio perception and what he calls “discreet sound,” while Ethan Rose looks at examples of Sound Art in which the physical object is of great importance. Dugal McKinnon writes about the role of silence in Sound Art. Chuck Johnson analyzes the role of cybernetics and system theory in several pio- neering electronic performers. Daniel Wilson contributes an account of relatively unknown pre-loudspeaker Sound Art in Victorian music halls. The choice of theme for this edition of LMJ was prompted by a symposium on “Sound Art Theories” organized at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall of 2011 by my col- league Lou Mallozzi. Hosted by the first American art school to have a Department of Sound, the event was distinguished by the inclusion of several younger critics. The papers from this symposium (by Daniela Cascella, Michael Eng, T. Brandon Evans, Erin Gee, Seth Kim-Cohen, Åsa Stjerna and Salomé Voegelin) form a special on-line supplement to this volume, with abstracts and an introductory essay by Mallozzi included in print. The CD for this issue is curated by Seth Cluett, and demonstrates how listenable Sound Art has become. As the wall between art and music crumbles, it is being replaced by a very invit- ing promenade.
Nicolas Collins Editor-in-Chief
References 1. Ricardo Arias, “Rakes, Live Deaths and Modified Cassette Players: Three Contemporary Sound Artists in Colombia,” Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). 2. Nicolas Collins, “Noises Off: Sound Beyond Music,” Leonardo Music Journal 16 (2006) p. 7.
2 LMJ23 Introduction A Music out of Doors
Llorenç Barber
raveling along the Spanish highways, espe- which I devoted my doctoral the- T sis, and also visit Darmstadt where cially along the wide and flat Castilla, the image that impresses me the most is a bell tower rising up as if being born from I met and connected with the Free the asphalt. Antonin Artaud suggested that metaphysics enters Music Group of Vinko Globokar, through our skin; in Spain meta(l)physics has traditionally J-P Drouet, etc. and the extended a b s t r a c t entered through the ears: Saint Bernard called it fides ex auditu. voice and attitudes of Roy Hart The bells in these towers have, for centuries, been the vehicle, (all of them involved with the first The author describes the inspiration and influences behind the very substance, of the most profound aural thought. performance of the intuitive music his compositions, installations Humans inhabit sound as they inhabit space and time. Bells of K. Stockhausen’s Aus den sieben and performances, from solo have demarcated spaces and times throughout history; they Tagen), and also the first European work with voice and bells to per- have functioned as sonic regulators in rural and urban com- performance of Terry Riley’s In C, formances in city centers with bells, horns, ship-alarms, sirens, munities until so recently that their sounding still conforms as well as Helmut Lachenmann groups of drummers, symphonic to our most intimate and mysterious references. With their (Air-Musik), Frederic Rzewski and bands and cannons. trembling, bells announce births, the toil of work, misfortunes Dieter Schnebel, and to experi- and festivities, as well as encounters with the beyond such as ence the first performance of Ka- consecrations. During droughts bells summon rain; during gel’s Acustica and Stockhausen’s storms they protect from lightning; in the darkness they guide; Stimmun, and become acquainted with the warm person of and in some communities they accompany—and make pub- Ligeti and his devotion to repetitive music in pieces such as lic—the agony of death. Selbstporträt mit Reich und Riley. To the Spaniard, bells are part human and part divine. They I also began collaborating with the London Musicians Col- are ceremoniously baptized and given names. The public lective (1987–1988) and presented my first animal and street knows how to decipher their messages: They are instantaneous interventions, in the feeling of R. Murray Schafer’s The Tuning and intelligible newspapers at the service of all. of the World, at their festival Music Context. As with every Spaniard, my childhood fears and joys have I constructed a portable bell stand (Fig. 1), which gave been nurtured by the sounding of bells. I was born on the day greater richness and versatility to my presentations with only of the greatest celebration in Valencia, the city of my birth, and one hung bell and voice, even when the bells were intention- gasped my first breath while the bells rang 200 meters away. ally tuned irregularly—imitating the groups of bells in Medi- Later, attracted by the sounds of the bells, I would hide in the terranean bell towers. The result is no scale is formed, which bell tower to feel their vibrations in my body. Today as an ur- emphasizes the timbre and the characteristic “broken” sound ban man, I carry a rural bell tower in my memory—its cosmic of our city, where cracked or false tone bells abound. magnetism still reverberates at the slightest cause. All through the 1980s I developed a subtle combination of My earliest postconservatory works were of strong minimalist diphonic voice and bells that—always in an improvised way— flavor until one day in 1981, while looking for a smoke outlet spread out everywhere, in Europe as well as in Latin America for my stove, I found some industrial metal pieces shaped like and the United States. Meanwhile, I participated in three au- UFOs, with resonances marvelously similar to those of bells. dio art symposia, the first in Stuttgart (1985), the second in Touched by their sound, I suspended them from the ceiling of Hasselt (1987) and the third in Linz (coinciding with the Ars my studio and explored them at my leisure with mallets made Electrónica Festival). At those events, our discussions were in- of metal, wood, yarn and plastic. I brought my mouth close tense about the nuclear and specific notion and practice of to their lips and gave birth to a sort of micromelodies never what we then called “audio art,” and what we now refer to as heard before. It was then that I began a sonic love relationship “sound art.” with the bell. This is how linguopharincampanology was born: a Questions about synaesthesia (the old “Correspondences” rumble of crisscrossing vocal-metallic harmonics that gener- of Baudelaire), and even more so about the emancipation of ate, like threads, capricious third voices that come and go as sound from music and the rigid structures of formal composi- they please, touching the outer edges of auricular perception. tion, etc., were essential parts of our seminars as well as the Of course, to arrive at this point, I first needed to meet combinations of different elements to create unknown situ- and enthusiastically join the Spanish Fluxus (called ZAJ), to ations that placed the receptor or the context or a certain manifestation of the technology as the central “personage” of the sound proposition. Llorenç Barber (composer, performer and musicologist), Valencia, Spain. Installations, performances, events, collages, new sonorities, E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 3–5, 2013 3 sources and distances cross and blend, Fig. 1. The author performing with squares that act as a vibrant drum, and bells. (Photo © awful avenues flooded with deafening, Iraida Cano) speeding engines), or of the foresight and consent of our town councilors who limit and defend certain public spaces from the occasional sonic recreation. As a matter of fact, after so many ac- ceptances of, in short, so much reality that for some, particularly for musicians, seemed and seems excessive, I was still determined to continue calling “music,” “compositions” and “concerts” some- thing that, for them, is frayed and chaotic or merely an accidental hearing of bells, without knowing where they are. There was a musician who did not hesitate to describe my city concerts of bells (over several years there have been occasional additions of horns and ship- alarms, sirens, groups of drummers, bands, cannons, etc.) as “utopian,” add- ing an evocative nuance of unreality to something that, nonetheless, is as real as able to realize (more than 12 hours play- this—I say—has fostered an “expanded” a slap in the face, as beautiful (although ing without stop!) at the Berlin “Sonam- concept of music, one that is integrative not always and not completely) and, in and all-encompassing but one that, nev- biente Festival für hören und sehen” any case, as topical (relating to topos, to (1996)—all were the result of those early ertheless, coexists both with traditional the terrain) (and therefore impossible to symposia. These experiences, along with forms of the sounding art anchored in realize anywhere else) as a custom-made my appearances onstage with Gordon the past yet still apparently fertile and suit for a clumsy and hunchbacked body. Monahan, Horst Rickels, Christian Mar- with a whole hermaphroditic series of In fact, to take a city, a landscape (Cart- transitions (smooth or not) among mu- clay, Shelley Hirsch and many others, are agena Bay, in a Naumaquia of 1993) or sical practices with very different aims. still alive in my memory, as are musicians one night (the mountain concerts of De and philosophers such as Daniel Charles, Sol a Sol) as something that “is” or some- Robert Ashley and the astonishing Con- Bells and the City thing that “is there,” albeit in profane lon Nancarrow. dumbness, and to transform it—even if When, in 1987, after several years of work very fleetingly by means of the meticu- within the barbarian and improvisational lous and skilled labor of writing (a score Music at the Mercy of the Taller de Música Mundana (“World Music Elements for each city or occasion), rehearsals in Workshop”) and solo with bare music, which the timings and chronometers In a way the whole history of music of voice and small bells (Fig. 2), I made the last century is one of extending the leap—not without great hesitation, nineteenth-century limits—integrating several times somersaulting without a Fig. 2. The author performing with bells. to various degrees the dimension of “real- net—to propose and prepare a concert (Photo © David Jiménez) ity” with the heart-strings of “the artistic.” for a whole city. At the time I could not To grasp, to integrate and to make “ar- imagine how much reality and how much tistic” matter that is immediate, instan- expansion I was inviting to that which taneous, full of movement and speed: I conceived (and still conceive) of as collage, assembly, simultaneism, objet “music.” trouvé, phonetic poetry, action music or Indeed, despite the fact that the concept synaesthetic installations, intermedia and praxis of music have expanded—em- interventions and settings—among oth- bracing and making prominent concepts ers—is but the tip of the iceberg. of space, projection, mass, chance, struc- Focusing on the world of sounds, the ture, landscape, interferences, etc.—the acceptance of dissonance, the incorpora- fact of composing for a place as irregu- tion of noise and the sonic “continuum” lar, unrepeatable and unencompassable with all its microtones, new sound sources as a city, unequally seeded with nests of such as concrète and electronic sounds, bells—was an endeavor that implied a and sounds of nature, as well as the ma- generous acceptance of redundancies, nipulations of all the above either in the of the individual and responsible listen- studio or live (moving the sound around ing point and perspectives of each one, a space in real time, at the same time of the atmospheric influences (winds, that it is being produced and interacting humidity, storms, heat waves, etc.) of the with its environment) and the radical ac- urbanism (with walls where disorienting ceptance of “whatever is there, as it is” of clapper-beats bounce, alleys that convert the paradigmatic 4'33" by John Cage, all into sonic tubes, corners where different
4 Barber, A Music out of Doors mythical, ceremonial, etc.). It was thus Fig. 3. Llorenç Barber performance that I recently entered in Alberomundo, a with bands of sort of Tauromaquia, a provocative sum- mobile wind instru- moning of the public to become the ments. (Photo © central navel (omphalos) of a sonic, very David Jiménez) singular massage that, according to how we lived, was very magical. In fact, a bullring is a solar place loaded with the numerous resonances of bells and band sounds. Above all, if subvert- ing conventional relationships (as in the urinal fountain of Marcel Duchamp) the public occupies the albero, and the musi- cians become fighting bulls that climb up the terraces, trapping us with their game-ballet of sudden hiding places, their races, their clustered rackets, their ceremonial pasodobles, their trumpeteer are looked at under an eyeglass, acts of out there like dust or rain falling over announcements and their accumulative persuading many people (it is essential things, houses and people: the insisting, final drunkenness, it is a catchy and in- to count on exquisite collaborators) to hammering clacks of bells, rather than sisting place under an unfair sun. conveniently set up that “something” notes or chords, are documents, bundles In front of such craziness, it seems use- and rescue it from its dull exile, giving it (clusters) that, armed with secret keys, fly less to act as an analyst of parts, themes presence, dimension, intensity and new, in with a fuss (one that is simple but con- and conclusions (“why care about ‘be- significant depth for whomever wants to crete and intense), precluding transits cause,’ why care about ‘why,’” as ZAJ, the earn it—is an enormous challenge. (whether individual and/or collective) of Spanish Fluxus, used to say). The bottom Moreover, it is necessary to give pre- times and states. The bell is, ultimately, line in bewitching sonic celebrations cise information to a public who in this immediate communication, but also such as Alberomundo is not dismember- case is summoned to a complex sound- memory (a conversation that is retroac- ing by the book, but rather the luxury of making in which they—rather than tive as well) and therefore melancholy. experiencing excess without a model for acting as passive receptors—become in- the eye (or the ear), the storytelling in tuitive detectives weeding out clues and the company of our people. It is, council, evidence, coming to conclusions and A Motive Called “Band” sinodal music, that is, one of walking-in- acting accordingly. Their location(s) dur- After several years of composing and company, allowing oneself to be show- ing the concert are determining aspects: producing concerts for cities, both in Eu- ered by the cluster of heterophonies in whether they are in one street (or plaza) rope and America (how rich the memory movement that, stubborn, do not want or another, whether they climb to a ter- of that sonic accompaniment to a solar to go anywhere, but instead can only be race or balcony, remain motionless or eclipse in Oaxaca!), a halting “beyond” humming confusion. wander peripatetically around the sonic came to me when I suddenly stumbled A certain ecstatic happiness (as in environment. Their personal decisions upon the possibility to use nothing good healing or minimal music) invades are determining factors for the simple less than 22 symphonic bands from my us at concerts like this, a happiness that and physical fact that a body cannot oc- homeland (Valencia) as a disciplined intensifies our senses and memories. In cupy two spaces at the same time. and above all mobile instrument (Fig. 3) the case of Alberomundo, perhaps due to A heap of challenges thus accompa- that adds a suggestive counter-position the ceremonial environment, musicolo- nies the displacement of the limits of ar- to those heavy and immovable pieces of gist Lothar Siemens’s words were: “a sub- tistic proposals, challenges that run up bronze, which bells are. jugating creative unity, a true testimony of against certainties that some people do With sabbatical enthusiasm I dove into blood which impresses and fascinates.” not want to abandon (whether due to la- creating sonic pots of choral intensity ziness or aesthetic choice), and above all kneaded by means of the thoracic effort Manuscript received 2 January 2013. to a trembling, tribal fear of reality and its of 2,000 performing and displacing mu- Born in 1948, Spanish composer, performer and direct and dislocating virtus. This reality sicians. All this gave birth, in 1994, to El musicologist Llorenç Barber studied in Valencia, is, in one sense, simple acoustics but it Concierto de los Sentidos, whose “locus” was Madrid and Darmstadt (1969–1976). Since 1980 is also urbanism with cubbyholes within a wandering walk around Murcia’s Ca- Barber has been engaged internationally as an which music—always fleeting, erratic and thedral, where, at the same time that we improviser on his own personally constructed bell tower. In addition he has fulfilled commissions from stumbling over spaces—seems to live so were making sound, we were also enjoy- all over the world to write symphonies of bells, each rapidly that, at times, quoting Rulfo, “I ing touching, tasting and above all smell- specifically designed for individual towns and cities. imagine it playing races with time.” But ing in successive waves of incenses and In recent years, after sounding more than 100 cities this reality is also, in this case, historic other aromas, while the public strolled in in about 20 different countries, his urban landscape citizens’ concerts have grown with the inclusion of sediments of events, sayings and legends a jammed, Jerichonian procession. drums, cannons, sirens, ships, fireworks and, most (genie du lieu [spirit of the place]), since Almost purposelessly, I, as composer, of all, spatially distributed wind bands. This led bells and their soundings are loaded with had become an uninvited guest to the cel- him to plan Naumaquias (a concert battle with the fertile knowledge/analog taste. ebration, a party of coarse gears that gave participation of sirens and guns of ships), Tauro- So much so that we can affirm that the me an endless present of formulas, mel- maquias (symphonic bands sounding around the public arena) and Concert os senses (a synaes- sound of bells is in itself a complex found odies, rhythms, dispositions, encounters thetic spatial composition with the participation of object, something unmistakable thrown and connotations of all kinds (sacred, hundreds of musicians).
Barber, A Music out of Doors 5 Artists’ Statements
The Intimate and the My current practice emerges from a coherent, spatially detailed sound land- Immersive in Grids: background of fixed-media composition scapes. I am interested in the various Multichannel Sound using real-world sounds, and thus is one ways that the listener might engage with Installations that routinely involves the pursuit of the fabricated space within each work spectrally rich and spatially immersive (experiencing sound through, above, Peter Batchelor (composer, sound art- sonic environments, usually performed beyond or within the physical object) ist), Music, Technology and Innovation, over large-scale speaker arrays in the while becoming more aware of the real De Montfort University, Leicester, concert hall. In my recent work I have space that they share or inhabit with LE1 9BH, U.K. aimed to condense such spatial and and within it. E-mail:
Fig. 1. Peter Batchelor, CLUSTER prototype, sound installation, 64 channels, 2011. (© Peter Batchelor)
6 LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 6–21, 2013 © 2013 ISAST landscapes (rainstorm with cars passing, through array of omnidirectional My goal for each of these installa- countryside environment), to meso- loudspeakers and thus departs from tions is to create a complete environ- scale details and “still lifes” (a more the surface-based configuration of ment in itself, either isolated from or focused exploration of object behaviors the other setups. As such, the sound interacting with the larger world. And in certain contexts: marbles rolling envelops the listener, who experiences once viewers enter this space, they down a tabletop, a pool of bubbles), it from within but can navigate it, inves- will perhaps notice things that were and to microscale interiors (the imagi- tigating zones of activity from a variety taken for granted earlier. My goal is to nary internal structures of objects). My of viewpoints with individual speakers subtly bring attention to the obvious exploration of surface was significant in as point sources. It can also be viewed but ignored—the background—in our designing the studies, particularly the from outside the sculpture, yielding a surroundings. behavior of objects as they might exist single coherent spatial image, but one outdoor/indoor/outdoor (2008) (Fig. 1) at a variety of different depths behind that has physical depth (Fig. 1). is a site-specific installation constructed that surface. The canvas invites differ- In all of these works I have aimed specifically for the rooftop gallery at the ent viewing perspectives: standing back to translate some of the creative and Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State will reveal the full “picture”; standing theoretical preoccupations of the University. Enclosed by high concrete closer permits scrutiny of inner spatial acousmatic and soundscape arts to new walls, it is an ambiguous space. Carved detail; standing off-axis affords expe- purpose-built sound environments, from yellow pine, the work consists of riencing various speakers’ different allowing the listener to engage with three pieces of large furniture, scaled proximities (i.e. varying distance). By the sonic and spatial detail that each up from 1950s dollhouse furniture—a changing perspectives, the listener has presents, and encouraging ambulatory very formal sofa, a chair and a large much greater control over his or her investigation of, and an intimacy with, console TV. Inside the television screen experience of space within the work. their contents. Through the relation- is a wide-angle lens focused on a mirror Ceiling (anticipated completion 2013) ship of the audio content of each with that is set at a 45° angle and aimed up will also present a flat-panel array of its visual and situational setup, these through a window in the top of the TV loudspeakers, this time over an entire works aim to encourage a greater set. The TV screen “plays” nothing but ceiling within a confined, cell-like awareness of the sonic environment in the sky above—the colors of the sky, space. Inspired by James Turrell’s Sky- which they exist. clouds, birds passing by. space series, in which simple apertures Installed under each carved “cush- in the ceilings of otherwise bare spaces Reference ion” in the sofa and chair is a tactile open to the sky [1], I conceive Ceiling to transducer, which transmits sound 1. J. Turrell, Deer Shelter Skyspace, installation, York- operate as a portal to an external (fic- shire Sculpture Park, 2007. not through the air but through solid tional) sonic “reality” that exists above material, including human tissue and the listener. Much as with Turrell’s Manuscript received 2 January 2013. bone. The sounds encountered while work, the environment’s inaccessibility sitting in the furniture are those of beyond the portal draws attention to Peter Batchelor is a composer and sound artist weather and nature, among them thun- the confined, claustrophobic space that whose output ranges from two-channel “tape” derstorms and birds singing. Although the room in which it (and the listener) compositions for concert diffusion to large- these sounds are audible from any- is “contained” represents. scale multi-channel installation work. He where in the space, the work produces a DOME(s) (2012) comprises a series of lectures at De Montfort University, Leicester. literally thunderous effect only to those geodesic dome structures with speakers seated, rumbling the body and brain. placed in the vertices between the trian- The basic idea of this work is that the gular panels of each. Listeners sit within Three Environments viewer/listener goes outside to do what the domes, experiencing sound circum- Marc Berghaus (artist), P.O. Box 838, one normally does inside (sit and watch ferentially and distally—always out- Meade, KS 67864, U.S.A. TV), only to look at and listen to the wards or surrounding. The domes are E-mail: <[email protected]>. outside. designed to be unenclosed, and thus Website:
Artists’ Statements 7 Fig. 1. outdoor/indoor/outdoor, site-specific installation in the rooftop gallery at the Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, 2008. (© Marc Berghaus) former outside, I hope to bring atten- connected to the volume sliders via anyway, both literally in terms of radio tion to how distant we actually are from steel rods, which raises and lowers the waves themselves, and also in terms of the world we depend on and coexist volume of all 16 channels in a rolling, our culture’s background noise. with. I have placed a level of mediation wave-like motion. Not all my recent installations uti- between the viewer/listener and the This constantly shifting sound is lize sound, but sound can—and often Nature around them, which they are— then fed to an Audio Spotlight
Fig. 2. Sound Shower #1 (Radio Wave), installation of 16 radios with motor-driven crankshaft, mixing board and Audio Spotlight, 2009. (© Marc Berghaus)
8 Artists’ Statements Fig. 1. Jane Grant, John Matthias, Nick Ryan and Kin, Plasticity, at the onedotzero “Adventures in Motion” Festival, BFI (South- bank), London, 2011. (Photo © Kin Associates Design)
Plasticities and Ghosts: In 1908, Henri Bergson wrote, “A “memory,” a small artificial cortex based Relationships between remembered sensation becomes more on a non-linear integrate and fire- Stimulus and Memory in actual the more we dwell upon it, that spiking neuronal network model [5]. the memory of the sensation is the sen- Once installed, live sounds picked up Noisy Networks sation itself beginning to be” [2]. Berg- by the microphones outside the instal- Jane Grant (educator, artist), Art and son describes the compelling idea that lation space stimulated artificial spik- Sound Research Group, School of Art recalling a memory is the beginning of ing neurons modeled in the computer and Media, Plymouth University, U.K. experiencing it, despite the absence of to “fire,” sending small fragments of E-mail:
Artists’ Statements 9 into the microphones, triggering short Solar Work #2: A Solar- Long-term weather-driven composi- sections of this sound when one of the Powered Sound Artwork tions found expression in Max Eastley’s neurons “fires.” The neuronal network aeolian instruments [5] and Jem Finer’s is driven by a noisy signal that keeps the Mike Blow (artist), Sonic Art Research Score for a Hole in the Ground [6], an system “buoyant” and has an additional Unit, Richard Hamilton Building, interesting example of a permanent algorithmic plasticity code that changes Oxford Brookes University, Headington outdoor work designed to reflect, soni- network connection strengths accord- Campus, Headington Hill, Oxford cally and visually, the environment in ing to causal firing between the neu- OX3 0BP, U.K. which it is situated. rons, mimicking simple learning. When E-mail:
10 Artists’ Statements Fig. 1. Mike Blow, Solar Work #2, sound installation, 1 March 2012. One of the gramophone horns, with wires leading to the oscilla- tor circuit and PV cell. (© Mike Blow.)
8. Durational work is notable for its aspirations. As to global warming or other climate References and Notes David Toop, writing about Jem Finer’s durational changes, and can be thought of as a 1. K. Friedman, ed., The Fluxus Reader (New York: work Longplayer, points out, “In the face of human sonification of weather data, as the Academy Editions, 1998) p. 61;
Fig. 2. Aerial view of the installation site of Solar Work #2, 27 April 2012. Dots show the location of each horn. (© Mike Blow)
Artists’ Statements 11 Making Sculptures Audible through Participatory Fig. 1. Evaluation of audible sculptures, Sound Design 25 September 2012 Florian Grond (researcher, sound
Adriana Olmos (interface designer), Pivotal Labs, 875 Howard St, Fifth Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103, U.S.A. E-mail:
Jeremy R. Cooperstock (engineer), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 3480 University Street Montreal, QC H3A 0E9, E-mail:
12 Artists’ Statements Adriana Olmos works as a design researcher ABSTRACT soundscape from its environment forces and interaction designer with a focus on vi- us to listen as outsiders, inevitably bias- sual- and audio-driven interfaces across many The author discusses her works that explore ing our understanding. This can lead devices, contexts and communities, ranging sound’s influence on creating a sense of presentness to a pseudo-understanding of a distant and her aim to increase the audience’s awareness of from blind people to professional musicians to location, which, at its worst, I call “sonic power plant engineers. this influence. colonialism.” When listening to field Jeremy R. Cooperstock is an associate profes- recordings, we need to consider our sor in the Department of Electrical and Com- The deceptively simple process of relationship to the recorded sounds: puter Engineering and director of the Shared recording sounds from a chosen envi- the context in which they originate, the Reality Lab, which is broadly concerned with ronment and replaying them at another place in which we hear them and how human-computer interaction technologies, time and place is laden with assump- our experience is mediated by technol- emphasizing multimodal sensory augmenta- tions about context and portability. ogy. This also applies to environments tion for communication in both co-present and Whether considered documentation, that we cannot physically access, such distributed contexts. preservation or musical material, this as underwater, inside the body or other practice, usually referred to as “field extremes of physical and temporal recording,” provokes important ques- scales. Presentness in tions about establishing relationship If sound is a form of energy, gen- Displaced Sound to place through listening. The theory erated and embedded in place and Yolande Harris (composer, artist), and practice from the 1970s to today describing acoustic relationships occur- DXARTS, Box 353414, University of sound artists and acoustic ecologists, ring within a specific location, then a of Washington, Seattle, WA such as Schafer, Westerkamp, Lock- recording is like a sonic ghost of place. 98195-3680, U.S.A. wood, Oliveros, Dunn and LaBelle, How can a sense of presentness—an E-mail:
Fig. 1. Yolande Harris, Tropical Storm, sound and video installation, 2009/2012. Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, 2012. (Photo © Yolande Harris)
Artists’ Statements 13 invigorate the use of field recording in recordings and routes. The shift in My approach to both sound and sound art. The following three works temporal relationship between the media is greatly informed by my experi- approach displaced sound through location seen and the sounds heard ence of walking in urban environments, different means: a visual arts exhibi- provokes a perceptual awareness of which I consider a form of personal and tion, an Internet sound exhibition and our reliance on sound, its influence on spatial encoding. I began working with a sound walk workshop, demonstrating the visual and on our sense of place. sound and technology simultaneously various strategies for exploring these Participants in the workshop walks out of a desire to articulate the imme- ideas. learn to use simple sound recording diacy of walking while carving out a Tropical Storm (2009) (Fig. 1) poses technology in a precise way to create sense of place within the acoustic ecol- these questions of displaced sound a heightened awareness of sensory ogy of the city. Over the past decade, I through the tradition of an immersive perception and to enhance their sense have navigated these spaces through a playback space [1]. Sound and video of presentness in the immediate envi- gradual progression from headphone- recordings of a tropical storm evoke ronment. based artworks to interactive pieces that the multisensory experience of being merge the affordances of objects with immersed in a torrential rainforest References and Notes the expressive potential of the body [1]. downpour. The installation presents the I am interested in the ways that 1. Exhibited at “Cage 100: Opening Spaces for Ac- intensity of noise and energy through tion,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, 2012. sound can shift the parameters of spa- minimal editing, allowing the exact tial practice from the body’s position 2. Commissioned for exhibition Soundworks, Insti- synchronization of sound and image to tute of Contemporary Art, London, 2012;
14 Artists’ Statements the following question: Since we per- ceive sounds as coming from individual sources that merge and interact with the acoustic space around us, would it be possible to achieve a similar experi- ence by using radio waves in the elec- tromagnetic space? Sound is spatial not only because it traverses and reflects in the three-dimensional space around us; it is also spatial because we perceive it as a temporal phenomenon that takes place in that space. Radio is often used to transmit indi- vidual signals from one point to one or more other points. To establish these communication channels, we use mod- ulation principals such as AM, FM and GSM. Individual transmitters broadcast via their own frequencies, and with a receiver we tune into a specific fre- Fig. 1. Jessica Thompson, Triangulation device, Arduino boards, MIDI Shields, GPS modules, quency while filtering away the others. headphones, 2013. (© Jessica Thompson. Photo © Jasper Fung, School of Creative Media, I wondered what would happen if, City University of Hong Kong.) instead of using modulation, we directly addressed a certain frequency range dances of objects with the expressive References and Notes within the electromagnetic spectrum potential of the body. I am particularly 1. For more information on the projects mentioned by shifting the sound up in frequency. interested in the ways in which sound here, please visit
Artists’ Statements 15 The wavelength of a wave depends magnetic component. These two direc- tion. They change slowly and eventually on its frequency and traveling speed. tivity patterns, I realized, correspond to repeat after 4–10 min. The changes Radioscape uses a relatively long wave- the patterns of two microphones: the within a layer are the slowest. The next length (175 m = 1.7 MHz) to avoid omnidirectional and the figure-eight. level of change is the interaction that standing wave patterns coming from, The mid-side (m-s) stereo record- occurs when one does not walk but for example, reflections between build- ing technique uses exactly these two merely moves the receiver. By doing ings in a street. At this wavelength, microphones, and I started to wonder so, one reorients oneself in the field of buildings are not only reflectors: They whether it would be possible to realize a received signals and finds new perspec- start to become conductors and resona- stereo receiver with this antenna setup. tives in the environment. The third tors for the transmitted signals. As a It would not be a receiver that receives and last level of change is the result of result, the physical environment gets a signal broadcasted in stereo, but a walking, getting closer to certain trans- excited by, and responds to, the trans- receiver that creates a stereo image mitters while moving away from others. mitted radio waves. resulting from the positions of the indi- Certain signals will become audible or In developing this work I learned vidual transmitters. A transmitter on the louder while other signals decrease or about different antenna principles. A left of the antenna would be heard on disappear. Listening alters one’s focus vertical antenna has an omni-direc- the left, and a transmitter on the right and way of interacting. Navigating the tional sensitivity pattern and relates to would be heard on the right. Rotating city generates a unique sonic order, the “electric” component of the electro- and moving the receiver would change combinations and timing within the magnetic field. A coil or loop antenna the stereo image directly. composition. is only sensitive from the sides and In Radioscape, each transmitter trans- The Radioscape receiver is handheld. relates to the electromagnetic field’s mits its own layer of the meta-composi- Moving the receiver enables one to explore the surrounding space. The scale and the speed of change match Fig. 1. Radioscape in the city center, Amsterdam, 2004. (Photo © Studio of the space that the participant’s hand Edwin van der Heide) and arm movements describe. The space thus becomes almost tangible, allowing the participant to explore and remember positions and transitions. It is intuitive to navigate and reveals itself easily, while complex enough to require ongoing exploration. Radioscape takes place in public space. My preferred locations are areas within a city that are diverse and easy to walk in and have streets close to each other so that the participants must frequently choose their directions. The resonating buildings are an interesting example of a situation in which the real world interacts with an added environment. The transmitted signals do not merely form a parallel reality: The physical space and the elec- tromagnetic space directly influence one another. When I began to develop Radioscape, I was not yet aware of Max Neuhaus’s Drive in Music. His statement regarding placing sound in space instead of in time is an important one and applies well to Radioscape. It is interesting to see how Radioscape builds further upon this early work.
Manuscript received 2 January 2013.
Edwin van der Heide is an artist and re- searcher in the field of sound, space and in- teraction. He extends the terms composition and musical language into spatial, interac- tive and interdisciplinary directions. His work comprises installations, performances and en- vironments. The audience is often positioned in the middle of the work and challenged to actively explore, interact and relate themselves to the artwork.
16 Artists’ Statements Fig. 1. The Letters, locative narrative, Darting- ton Hall, Devon, U.K. (© E. Whittaker and J. Brocklehurst. Photo © Emma Whittaker.) The onscreen map simultaneously plots the participant’s position in the virtual and the real-world location.
Listening to Locative experience. Affordances of consumer the story time and time as represented Narratives: Illusion and headphones enable sounds in the envi- within the virtual location. Each sound- ronment to bleed into the recorded the Imaginative Experience scape has a narrative arc that suggests audio that in turn augments the moving through the space and arriving Emma Whittaker (sound artist, participant’s vision, resulting in cross- at destinations. The virtual locations are researcher), School of Arts and Media, modal interactions, unplanned syn- plotted to maximize the visual and audi- Plymouth University, Drake Circus, chronicities and ruptures of the visual tory connections with the real world; Plymouth, PL4 8AA, U.K. E-mail: and the aural. Auditory streaming for example, the sounds of the sea are
Artists’ Statements 17 to make predictions about situations, SoUNd reSoUrceS: tion at music concerts, underlining the actions, people and internal states [9]. environmentAl important role loudspeakers play in The stance taken by participants of instAllAtion contextualizing sound, whether musical a locative narrative experience ensures or not. In that same period of time, I Jos Mulder (educator), School of Arts, that, however naturalistic the sound- made a number of trips to the relatively Murdoch University, 90 South Street, scape may be, it is arguably perceived remote Wolgan Valley, northwest of Murdoch, Western Australia 6150, as a mediated artifact. As Barry Truax the famous Blue Mountains of New Australia. suggests, interpretation of soundscapes South Wales. The abandoned village E-mail:
Manuscript received 2 January 2013.
Emma Whittaker is a researcher of locative me- dia and sound at Plymouth University. She convenes the Expanded Narrative Research Group and curates
18 Artists’ Statements to make predictions about situations, SoUNd reSoUrceS: tion at music concerts, underlining the actions, people and internal states [9]. environmentAl important role loudspeakers play in The stance taken by participants of instAllAtion contextualizing sound, whether musical a locative narrative experience ensures or not. In that same period of time, I Jos Mulder (educator), School of Arts, that, however naturalistic the sound- made a number of trips to the relatively Murdoch University, 90 South Street, scape may be, it is arguably perceived remote Wolgan Valley, northwest of Murdoch, Western Australia 6150, as a mediated artifact. As Barry Truax the famous Blue Mountains of New Australia. suggests, interpretation of soundscapes South Wales. The abandoned village E-mail:
Manuscript received 2 January 2013.
Emma Whittaker is a researcher of locative me- dia and sound at Plymouth University. She convenes the Expanded Narrative Research Group and curates
18 Artists’ Statements Mining has always been an impor- from political, ecological and also in in a cafe or off a cell phone, music is an tant Australian industry; currently the this case sonic perspectives. increasingly common presence in our continent’s economy is maintained by The sounds of mining are absent in public spaces. These sounds rarely have the export of minerals, in large part most people’s lives. Rather than playing a function beyond pleasant (or annoy- brown and black coal. The acceleration them back from the auditory perspec- ing) distraction. They are not intended of exploitation and export to maximize tive of a recording, I aimed to recreate for close listening, despite being orga- profits from the “boom” fueled by the such sounds in a different environment: nized into structures that listeners are growing Southeast Asian economies as actual sources. Our hearing is very accustomed to following. Yet, whether leads to much debate and, to some powerful when it comes to environ- our intent is to listen or tune out, the extent, a divide in Australian society. mental cues. Sound carries much more music’s form prompts our unconscious The wealth of the resources boom meaning than what we perceive intellec- response. can easily be recognized in a city like tually; that said, the use of loudspeakers I frequently find musical sounds Sydney, even though the actual min- diminishes its ecological, “everyday lis- arising unexpectedly in my ambient ing, processing and transportation tening” aspects, transferring sound and recordings. Rather than consider takes place elsewhere, out of sight. For framing it into an intellectual “real.” them distractions from “real”—that instance, the electricity grid is fed by Loudspeakers can produce any is, intended—soundscapes, I want to large, coal-fueled power plants a long sound imaginable, and digital technol- embrace these found musical sounds way away, close to the actual mines and ogy allows us to create those sounds. as sonic events on the same level as out of sight, smell and earshot. Loudspeakers bring these sounds into any other sound in a field recording. My installation piece Sound Resources the sonic environment and into the I have found that capturing music (Fig. 1) was inspired by my environ- context of the situation in which a work within a broader sound environment mental concerns and triggered by the is on display. In a similar way to a canvas forces two comparisons: It gives the ear abandoned works in the Wolgan Valley or a TV screen, loudspeakers create a a framework to hear other sounds in and the absence of noise and dirt there, sonic frame that essentially underlines the environment, and it suggests the as well as the actual pollution of mining the importance of content over context, cultural associations inherent to the and coalmining in our daily lives. Min- while abandoning the potential mean- music. Although these comparisons are ing for the production of electricity was ing and complexity of sound’s ecologi- directly due to music in the recordings, particularly in mind—electricity that in cal aspects. the recordings themselves cannot really addition to many common usages can be called musical; the music in them is be used to power multimedia installa- Acknowledgment too buried. Yet the ear and the memory tions in museums and galleries. are still drawn in and guided by its pres- This installation was realized with the support of In sketches for the installation I pro- UTS DAB-LAB gallery manager Aanya Roennfeldt ence [1]. posed a loudspeaker playing alarming and Bert Bongers’s Interactivation Studio. I would My piece BatileDa,01 shows this simul- sounds while over time chunks of coal like to extend them my thanks. taneous, dual effect [2]. When I set up would fall onto it, changing its response Manuscript received 2 January 2013. a recorder on Bastille Day in a neigh- and over time destroying the speaker. borhood outside of Paris, I was expect- In a later phase of the process, I got rid Jos Mulder is an academic, a live-sound engi- ing to record an interesting French of the loudspeaker, allowing the fall- neer and, since this project, an artist. street and, I hoped, some firecrackers ing coal to become the sound source or jets. Inadvertently, I also recorded and eliminating the need for sound Musical Phonography: the distant but easily identifiable reproduction technology, producing a Upending Listening sound of someone practicing piano, motion-sensor-cued system powered by Expectations mostly Bach’s “Two-Part Invention, a small solar panel that dropped chunks No. 4.” Although often interrupted or Colin Wambsgans (sound artist/ of coal from a reservoir. The coal fell obscured by other sounds, the music composer), 3251 Larga Ave, Los onto a rail, rolling noisily onto the gal- kept implying a coherence to the rest Angeles, CA, 90039, U.S.A. lery floor, which was filled with other of the soundscape, even when absent. E-mail:
Artists’ Statements 19 Fig. 1. Beauregard House at the Chal- mette Battlefield, Louisiana, 2011: In the field recording made here, music came from the steam- boat just beyond the levee. (Photo © Colin Wambsgans)
rehearsal and the cycle of compressed a narrative with more questions than frequencies, like the engine of an oil playback—then feel instead like irregu- answers. Who is this amateur? What tanker. My recent soundwalk piece lar time. Our expectations of how sound has motivated her to practice now? A River through an Island on the Land is organized are especially confounded Why is her rehearsal so brief? Since the involves participants creating a map by this “squeezing” of organized sounds. recording is clearly of an incidental, of the Los Angeles River from musi- Hearing music focuses our expectations nonpresentational performance, it does cal sounds played simultaneously. In for the timing of events in the rest of not exist as something strictly “musi- my pieces written for more traditional the recording, even when the Bach is cal” but more as something personal, instruments, I will often base the writ- no longer audible. Instead of highlight- cultural, associative and imaginative. ten music on a nonmusical source, such ing my digital manipulations, my piece By forcing the listener to focus on par- as a speech, and place performers in shows the power that the Bach has tially obscured music, the piece stresses nontraditional performance sites, so on our organization of sound. Other these various associations of history that the audience stumbles unintention- individual sounds in the recording—a and questions of performance. The ally on its own moment of found sound. firecracker or a church bell—seem like listener wants to actually listen rather they must be happening with a hidden than merely hear, but time and again References and Notes periodic regularity. is forced into other considerations, 1. I have been influenced by Bob Snyder, Music and The fact that this music is a famous as the music is mediated not only Memory: An Introduction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, Bach piece also creates cultural asso- by time compression but also by the 2000) and by Seth Kim-Cohen, In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sound Art (New York, NY: Con- ciations. Bach’s influence on Western environment in which it is set. Other tinuum, 2009). music and the popularity of the piece prominent, clearer elements of the 2. This piece, and documentation of others listed itself mean that the sounds identified as soundscape complicate listening to the later, are accessible at
20 Artists’ Statements Sound Installation 24/7: Aestheticization of experience shifts from soundmak- Aestheticizing Everyday Everyday Sound ing toward listening. Visitors listen to Sound and Rhythm The development of sound art is closely sound from a point in time that prob- associated with a “musicalization” [1] ably occurred before their visit to the Florian Hollerweger (sound artist). of everyday sound in the 20th century. gallery, which even might have been E-mail:
Fig. 1. Florian Hollerweger, 24/7, sound installation, PS2 gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2009. (© Florian Hollerweger)
Artists’ Statements 21 Fragments of Extinction: Acoustic Biodiversity of Primary Rainforest Ecosystems
David Monacchi a b s t r a c t This paper describes the conceptual origins and develop- ment of the author’s ongoing environmental sound-art project Background Fragments of Extinction, which explores the eco-acoustic com- In 1998, while conducting a field recording campaign on Ital- ity of its organization and making it plexity of the remaining intact ian natural soundscapes, I had the intuition that the biophony available to audiences. In high can- equatorial forests. Crossing [1] of untouched forest ecosystems should exhibit a more opy forests, sounds come from ev- boundaries between bioacous- structured behavior, maximizing efficiency within diversity. I ery direction, including above (e.g. tics, acoustic ecology, electro- acoustic technology and music realized that, if properly reproduced, soundscape recordings birds and monkeys) and below (e.g. composition, the project aims to of these ecosystems could be powerful means for raising aware- amphibians and insects) the listen- reveal the ordered structures of ness of acoustic biodiversity and its heritage [2], now being ing position. The human brain de- nature’s sonic habitats, define a destroyed by rapid deforestation and climate change. When in tects this three-dimensional (3D) possible model of compositional information in its entirety through integration and make the out- 2002, with the help of Greenpeace, I traveled to the equatorial come accessible to audiences Amazon to record in an undisturbed area of old-growth rain- several subparameters that agree to foster awareness of the cur- forest, my hypothesis was immediately confirmed by finding with our composite natural percep- rent “sixth mass extinction.” extremely balanced acoustic systems produced by hundreds tion of direction, depth and dimen- of species of insects, amphibians, birds and mammals neatly sion of sound sources. In order to vocalizing within stunningly regular circadian cycles. Since record all these spatial attributes in then, I have been pursuing research and integration between the field, I employed “space-inclusive” and “space-preservative” the scientific inquiry of these soundscapes’ configurations and standards and experimental mic techniques [5], enabling my- the ways in which their aesthetic features can be explored, self to fully reproduce these ecosystems over periphonic loud- interplayed with and rendered for the public. speaker arrays. The investigation of long temporal sections Aware that intensive field work was essential (Fig. 1), I trav- (over 24 hours of continuous recording) in such remote and eled to the world’s largest remaining areas of primary rainforest dangerous habitats forced me to develop recording strategies [3] along the equator (where, given the equal length between suitable to extreme conditions (humidity up to 99%, sudden days and nights, life cycles—and thus sonic behaviors—are rainstorms, absence of electric current) and self-sufficient sys- evolutionarily tuned to extremely regular patterns) and re- tems for hazardous situations, capable of adjusting the sonic corded 24-hour sound portraits of various habitats within what perspective to on-ground, mid-floor and canopy species. Tak- are considered to be the oldest and most diverse ecosystems on ing into account all these concerns while making the most out Earth. If we consider that the most recent International Union of cutting-edge technology was a process of years of research, for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) [4] projections indicate which resulted in vivid sound portraits of this endangered bio- that half of the original species (the great majority of them logical heritage, now available for posterity. not even known to science) will be extinct by the end of this century, we also understand the urgency of recording sound examples of these diverse and unique, yet fragile, ecosystems: Fig. 1. The author recording Bai-Hokou saline, Dzanga-Sangha, the remnants of nature’s original “organized soundscapes.” 2008. (Photo © David Monacchi)
Field Research During my trips I have given great attention to the recording process. As compared to other scientific approaches, which mostly focus on a single species’ sonic languages and behav- ior, the recording strategies I adopted called for a broader ecological perspective, involving the collection of as many components as possible of a complex soundscape. Within this approach, the spatial information of a given acoustic environ- ment becomes a key element in understanding the complex-
David Monacchi (composer, researcher), Conservatory of Music “G. Rossini,” 5 Piazza Olivieri, Pesaro, Italy. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 23–25, 2013 23 gineered the Bio-Acoustic Theatre (Fig. 2), an immersive facility [9] capable of reproducing periphonic 360° audio and visually rendering the real-time spectro- gram of the soundscape as it unfolds. The theater, a scalable geodesic setup, con- sists of an array of 13 to 65 quasi-equally spaced loudspeakers, an array of projec- tors for circular display, and a seating system to optimize the placement of the audience toward the center of the venue for the best 3D sound illusion. Its shell is designed to maximize external noise reduction and internal sound energy ab- sorption needed for sound intimacy and the periphonic sound reconstruction. Fig. 2. The author’s Inside the theater, the public is ex- patented Bio- posed to a sequence of three different Acoustic Theatre, sonic experiences in which the original 12m diameter fixed version, 2013. (© soundscape undergoes increasing cre- David Monacchi) ative interventions: (1) sound documen- taries (unaltered, continuous habitat recordings), (2) transformations (sonic inaudible biophonies, is complemented Integrating the Organized time-lapses and electroacoustic explo- by an electroacoustic performer’s hand Soundscape rations) and (3) eco-acoustic compositions actions, with invisible sensors driving (musical interactions with recorded/ I used extensively detailed electroacous- digital sound synthesis. The performer streamed ecosystems). A significant op- tic lab analyses with visual investigation works strictly within available temporal tion, already implemented and suitable tools to enter the framework of these and frequential acoustic niches left open to all parts of the program, is live stream- soundscapes and to demonstrate their by the other species’ sonic “languages.” ing from one of three chosen equatorial balanced organization, which is intui- forests, realized through Internet or tively understood by a musician’s ear. The Bio-Acoustic Theatre satellite transmission (Fig. 3). Although While intraspecific calls (individuals of The aesthetic experience proposed real-time feeds do not always express the same species vocalizing from differ- by Fragments of Extinction [8] required optimized soundscapes, the simultane- ent territories) are traceable in record- a specific space to preserve the sonic ous immersion in an intimate habitat ings collected with space-preservative characteristics (acoustic perspective and expressing its live dynamics arouses a mic techniques, interspecific niche seg- dimension of virtual sound sources) of different inclination to listening, and regation dynamics only become evident these dense and diverse ecosystems. I en- aims to make the audience aware that it through spectrogram analyses. Following a bio-acoustic “niche hypothesis” [1], my research primarily aims to reveal the Fig. 3. Illustration of the real-time transmission to the Bio-Acoustic Theatre from three aesthetic significance of typology/fre- areas of primary rainforest where extensive field research was done (Amazon: Amazonas’ quency/temporal sonic niches and their Rio Juaoperi Xixuau, 2002; Congo Basin: Central African Republic’s Dzanga-Sangha Dense Forest Reserve, 2008, 2010; Borneo: Brunei’s Ulu Temburong Reserve, 2012, 2013). complex interactions within these un- (© David Monacchi) touched, therefore highly coordinated, natural systems. Considering the possible artistic ren- dering of ecological processes, I was guided by two questions: Is it possible to learn from a primary ecosystem and to compose within the same laws that have shaped these ancient acoustic en- vironments? Is it possible to deferently use compositional tools to reveal and en- hance existing configurations of species? While exploring nature and trying to de- code its sonic strategies, I developed a compositional approach to complement sound environments with performance, which I termed “eco-acoustic composi- tion” [5]. One example—among others [6]—is the piece Integrated Ecosystem [7]. Here, a proportional and chronological time-lapse of a 9-hour continuous re- cording, followed by an exploration of the sonological properties of audible and
24 Monacchi, Fragments of Extinction is witnessing an ancient, but disappear- References and Notes 9. Rossini S.P.A.C.E. (Soundscape Projection Ambi- sonic Control Engine), engineered by David Mona- ing, biome. 1. Bernie Krause, (Berkeley, CA: Into a Wild Sanctuary cchi and Eugenio Giordani, is the first periphonic Heyday, 1993). The theater program thus combines sound facility built in Italy. It operates as control scientifically accurate soundscapes with 2. R. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World (New room/mixing studio for the project. musical integrations, proposing a pro- York: Knopf, 1977. gression of immersive, didactical and 3. For a thorough report, see David Monacchi, “Notes Manuscript received 2 January 2013. artistic experiences. The moving spec- from Africa,” Ear to the Earth Festival, New York (2009):
Monacchi, Fragments of Extinction 25 Music and Sound-Art Reviews
Leonardo Reviews
Leonardo Reviews is the work of an international panel of scholars and professionals from a wide range of disciplines who review books, exhibitions, CD-ROMs, web sites and conferences. Collectively they represent an intellectual commitment to engaging in the emergent debates and manifestations that are the conse- quences of the convergence of the arts, sciences and technology. Reviews are posted monthly on the Leo- nardo Reviews web site
BARBER, JOHN F. Review of The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies, edited by Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld, Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013).
BARBER, JOHN F. Review of The Beatles and McLuhan: Understanding the Electric Age by Thomas MacFarlane.
BARBER, JOHN F. Review of In the Field: The Art of Field Recording edited by Cathy Land and Angus Carlyle.
GRAUBARD, ALLAN. Review of Looking for Bruce Conner by Kevin Hatch, Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013).
IONE, AMY. Review of Pairing of Polarities: The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport by Terri Cohn, Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013).
KADE, RICHARD. Review of Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music by Alvin Lucier.
KADE, RICHARD. Review of Cameron Live! by Cameron Carpenter et al.
MOSHER, MIKE. Review of MP3: The Meaning of a Format by Jonathan Sterne.
MOSHER, MIKE. Review of Music, Sound and Technology in America edited by Timothy D. Taylor, Mark Katz and Tony Grajeda. Sounds in Your Pocket: Composing Live Soundscapes with an App
Rob van Rijswijk and Jeroen Strijbos
a b s t r a c t
The authors present their musi- cal smartphone app that uses GPS data to trigger specific sound events relative to spots Walking through a city an attentive listener That personalized experience is within an area predetermined will notice how the sounds are never quite the same. Traffic what we aim for in our sound pro- by the artists. Moving through zooms by at various pitches that weave together in a texture cessing app Walk With Me [1], origi- the area, users listen to these overlaying everything else. As people mill about, snatches of nally developed in 2011 and written events via headphones, complet- ing the soundscape composi- conversation, the ebb and flow of voices, can be heard. Per- for iPhones fitted with headphones. tion. The article outlines the haps birds or dogs make themselves heard as well. There may Walk With Me blurs the boundaries effects and the workings of the be the distant roar of a plane flying overhead. Sometimes a between installation and compo- app, which combines elements bus lets out air in a hissing burst. Sirens wail down the street. sition. On the one hand, it is site of composition and installation, Music blasts from a shop front, from passing cars. Around a specific, and predetermined occur- and which the artists have so far adapted to a number of different corner the overall texture may shift considerably. The reverb rences, such as the live processing areas. of the interwoven sounds changes, possibly becoming deeper of sounds picked up by the micro- or harsher. phone of the smartphone, are writ- The variability of urban sounds and the sonic richness of ten into the software. The choice well-chosen spots have been the focus of sound walks con- of the various spots, however, has ducted by people who (wholeheartedly or more loosely) been made with composers’ ears; and as composers we have subscribe to views that came out of the acoustic ecology move- added layers of sounds that resonate with the sonic properties ment. Each environment is an integrated system of sounds of various points in a specific environment. Each of the areas that can be appreciated on a musical level. Walking “by the we have devised pieces for is in this sense a composition, a ears” one becomes enmeshed into a larger sonic structure—a software-coded score that is realized by people who use the composition or an improvisation. The esthetic experience is app on their iPhones as they walk there. defined by the mind imposing order on the sound events that When we prepare a piece for Walk With Me, we usually select strike the ears. an area because we find the sounds it generates exhilarating. Now imagine walking through this selfsame city and streets The next step is to map out the locations that sound most and hearing the sounds around change their character with promising and inspiring to us. Each is fixed with a geo-tagged each step. A sonic aura grows around them, intensifies, then marker and is linked to a certain mode of signal processing subsides. An undeniably musical drone or a layer of subtly that gets more intense as app users get closer to the spot in shifting chords overlays the permanent basic texture. From question. Weaving their way through these spots, users create one spot to the next the sounds assume new aspects: The varying sequences and patterns. We relinquish our control, noise of traffic on a nearby road is cloaked in distortion or leaving it to them to decide on their “final” version of the somehow seems to echo in a reverberant dome of varying size piece, which is in essence aleatoric. Consequently, each lis- that apparently expands, then contracts. Some of these sounds tener has the opportunity to experience the surroundings that do not belong to the place, but do harmonize with its sonic are the source of the basic material in a novel way. manifestations. One’s perception and experience of the area, regardless of how mundane or exceptional it is, changes with the modification of its sounds. It makes the impression of an Composition and Installation organized whole that goes through different permutations Rolled into One depending on the route taken through the area. Again, the Walk With Me marks a further development in our collaborative sounds form a composition with elements of improvisation. output as composers and sound artists. There is a clear link We have taken the sonic experience one step further from to our work as theater composers, where we enhance the ac- the awareness of environmental sounds in a sound walk to a tion onstage with music. On the other hand, when we started personalized cinematic experience. making autonomous works (i.e. not for theater or dance pro- ductions), we decided to present the music in the form of in- stallations—they are the instruments we compose for. Making Rob van Rijswijk and Jeroen Strijbos (composers), Stedekestraat 53, 5041 DM Tilburg, the installations, we have to take space into consideration. Each Netherlands. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 27–29, 2013 27 Fig. 1. Sample block diagrams showing the modifications to sound input from the user’s environment. (© Rob van Rijswijk and Jeroen Strijbos)
of reverb and the favored pitches of a sounds and of the volume. Because sition of the user within it is a vantage room in which an installation is placed. various spheres can overlap, so do their point. What he or she sees and hears Moreover, we want the audience to move effects. The resulting layered sounds there affects choices about how long in relation to the installation to enhance can be quite complex. The fact that all to remain there and where to go next their awareness of what is happening mu- added music fragments are interrelated (Fig. 2). sically and visually and of the way their through the mode of the ambient com- changing position alters the sound and, position means that they will not clash with that, enhance their perception of but are always in consonance with one Nonlinear and Adaptive the work as a whole. Most of these works another—however different their sound We consciously opt for relatively “simple” have been devised to make the audience characteristics may be. The app is a ma- melodies and harmonic structures. Es- move around a space from spot to spot trix of possible routes for the listener. thetically we subscribe to what one might where they can experience sonic events Space is an integral component: the po- call a “new modality”: we feel a kinship [2]. Walk With Me avoids the need for de- signing an object to be placed in an en- Fig. 2. Geo-tagged markers and sound locations indicated on a dummy map of the Walk With Me area, showing the overlapping spheres of influence of various musical effects. (© Rob closed space. In essence the environment van Rijswijk and Jeroen Strijbos) is an open-air installation. Each environ- ment has its own changeable acoustic properties, which we can incorporate into our composition. What we espe- cially like about this is that we can now effectively work with musique concrète elements and that we can do this live. For each spot we can write a command for the smartphone microphone to be switched on or not. When it is on, the sound input is routed through a complex of modifications (Fig. 1). What a user will hear, on top of the am- bient composition that we have created for the entire area, is both the environ- mental sound itself and a live-processed version of it. We may also add extrane- ous sounds, composed specifically for that spot—the hoot of an owl or faint swirls of piano playing. Sometimes we use sounds or effects to tweak people’s impressions of a spot. We may bring an intimate sound into a wide-open space or make an enclosed space sound volu- minous by adding reverb. Each spot has its sphere of influence. This gets weaker as a user moves away from its center, reflected by a weaken- ing in the modification of the concrete
28 Rijswijk and Strijbos, Sounds in Your Pocket with composers who distance themselves app, scheduled to be premiered at the over the world, more prominently emphasizes the from serial music, atonality and the “new festival Sonica in Glasgow in October concept of sound in a richly resonant space. This piece is intended for spaces with ample reverb, such complexity.” This doesn’t mean that our 2013. This will adapt the music to the as churches—high vaulted ceilings provide the right compositions lack complexity or depth. time of day and to the season in which it acoustics to add an atmosphere of ritualistic mys- We just look for these characteristics is played. Another recent development tique. in other aspects of music: in timbre, in is that Walk With Me has become part of 3. We worked on Cross Avenue with ETHEL when we the interplay and the layering of various projects in which other composers write were in New York to make a version of Walk With Me for the app. One of these is an exchange in Central Park. In this piece, the four musicians are components, in interaction with live mu- each placed with a speaker on a pedestal at the mid- sicians and the environment in which we between five European cities. Composers point of each of the four walls of a room. A separate stage our pieces. In our compositions and who live in each of these cities are invited set of four speakers is placed with one speaker in each corner. The sounds played by the musicians are installations we aim at extended lengths to write for four or five walks through relayed to the center of the space, where we process of time, in which we do not necessarily them. This marks the starting point for them live and feed them to the speaker sets. The re- have to control everything and anything making the app available worldwide to sult is an ever-shifting complex of sounds that differs in quality depending on the location of a listener in that happens. composers on an open source basis and the room. Walking around while it is being played By its nature, Walk With Me is a non- creating a community of people who changes people’s reception and perception of the linear, adaptive musical piece that op- write for the app and share the results music. As in Walk With Me, the listeners make their own individual version of the composition and com- erates in a similar fashion to a gaming among each other. plete it by their movements. environment. We experiment with soft- ware and hardware; with ways to com- References and Notes bine concrete, environmental sounds 1. See
Rijswijk and Strijbos, Sounds in Your Pocket 29 ON-LINE ARCHIVES
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Yuan-Yi Fan and David Minnen
We designed and prototyped a software ap- ogy advancements in audio process- plication that allows users to control 3D sound rendering for ing give the composer the ability to spatial composition with intuitive gestural input (Fig. 1). Our explore spatial composition tech- a b s t r a c t interface is made feasible by the availability of low-cost depth niques [3] via software spatializa- sensors and real-time vision algorithms. With the free-space tion systems such as Zirkonium The authors describe an artistic gestural interface, users are able to explore the relationship [4] and Sound Element Spatializer exploration of sound in space between sound and space in a convenient and natural fashion. [5]. Similarly, advances in motion enabled by real-time computer vision algorithms that provide For example, 3D hand tracking allows sound designers to draw tracking and spatially aware envi- hand shape and 3D hand- spatial trajectories and to loop a sound source in space, while ronments provide the performer tracking information. specific hand shapes mapped to common functions allow us- with continuous control based on ers to execute other tasks during the interaction. We envision gestural input. Users can navigate that such gestural interfaces can help prototype 3D sound ef- and manipulate virtual objects us- fects for spatial compositions used in theme parks, interactive ing the hand tracking capabilities of interactive systems such as exhibits and cinematic experiences. the gestural interface designed by Oblong Industries [6] and The use of gesture control for sound spatialization dates the immersive environment in the Allosphere [7]. back to 1951 when Pierre Schaeffer developed a system (po- The intent of the Move That Sound There project is to explore tentiomètre d’espace) that allowed users to route a pre-recorded the use of a markerless gestural interface built around the audio signal through multiple speakers [1,2]. Recent technol- Kinect for live performance [8] and sound spatialization. We are interested in a new interface for sound spatialization and Yuan-Yi Fan (student), Media Arts and Technology Department, UC Santa Barbara, an interface design that promotes discoverability and a positive 3309 Phelps Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, U.S.A. E-mail:
Fig. 1. Move That Sound There, consisting of a software application, low- cost depth camera, host PC and display, enables users to control 3D sound rendering with intui- tive gestures. (Photo © Oblong Industries Inc.)
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 31–32, 2013 31 tener positioned at the origin of a quad- con and by rendering graphical widgets 3. M.A. Baalman, “Spatial Composition Techniques rant grid. When a gesture is recognized, that depict available gestures and their and Sound Spatialisation Technologies,” Organised Sound 15, No. 3, 209–218 (2010). a visual widget shows context-sensitive associated function based on the current instructions, audio status, additional context. The use of earcons in our system 4. C. Ramakrishnan, “Zirkonium: Non-Invasive Soft- ware for Sound Spatialisation,” Organised Sound 14 functionality and 3D position informa- received positive reviews, particularly (2009) pp. 268–276. tion. The underlying perceptual system from first-time users who appreciated 5. R. McGee and M. Wright, “Sound Element Spatial- recognizes both hands at the same time the immediate feedback that indicates izer,” in Proceedings of the International Computer Music and continuously detects hand shape and successful gesture recognition and con- Conference (2011). 3D position. The depth camera searches firmation that they were performing the 6. See
32 Fan and Minnen, Move That Sound There Flexible Audio Speakers for Composition and Art Practice
Jess Rowland
The author presents a creative and technical practice using flat flexible audio speaker surface arrays. These arrays can be formed to various environments, offer diverse design possibili- y current work explores how sound ex- sound-making qualities (such as ties and allow for user interac- M tion. This practice provides ists physically in the body, materially in space and as percept, traditional speakers or objects with an alternative to traditional all at once. As an artist, musician and scientist, I have been speakers attached), I want to cre- models of sound reproduc- interested in disrupting the boundaries that separate our no- ate material that is sound itself—to tion by considering how visual tions of the physical and the experiential, the present and vir- place sound in the foreground of and physical material could tual, of sight and sound. I am specifically interested in sound material, rather than as a byprod- be construed as sound itself. Taken as art material, these technology as a way to approach these dynamics more deeply: uct. The central notion is that a lis- surface array systems open up Are there alternative models of sound production that can tener, a viewer, one who interacts, unique possibilities for acoustic lead to a different understanding of how audition and vision, can approach sound directly as it spaces, composition and sound physical material and the phenomenological realm, can be is manifest physically and visually. interactivity. construed to create our experience? This question led me to This process is constrained—and the development of flat flexible speaker arrays—distributed, made possible—by the physical stochastic, continuous, multimodal, with potentially unlimited laws that govern electrical sound channels—and to the creation of artwork using these arrays production. as a material [1]. I create the flexible audio arrays using flat conductive mate- My work has much in common with that of other contem- rials that carry audio signals. The electromagnetic fields gen- porary sound artists who explore the technology of sound pro- erated by these flat and flexible circuits then interact with a duction as a way to reveal the magic of sound in the world. permanent magnet to generate sound, much like traditional My work drew inspiration from artists such as Paul DiMarinis speakers. I use conductive materials suitable for flexion such [2], who creates installation work that carefully manipulates as conductive inks and thin foils. Flexible surfaces consist of fire (e.g. Firebirds) and water (e.g. A Light Rain in collabora- magnetic strips, paper, foams, plastics such as clear acetate, tion with Rebecca Cummins) to generate the sounds of voices and other lightweight materials that allow small rare-earth and music that lead viewers to a new sense of awe about the magnets or magnetic particles to be attached or embedded. I nature of their personal experience of sound, and Christina shape the copper foil circuitry primarily by machine cutting Kubisch, whose Electrical Walks use induction and specially or by printing processes. Figure 1 shows a typical machine-cut designed headphones to allow users to discover sound from array using copper foil adhered to paper. spatially distributed electromagnetic sources [3]. In each case, Maximizing the boundary between the magnet and the cir- these works playfully confound our everyday notion of sound cuit design is optimal for the strongest audio response. With production, expand our awareness of the mystery of sound this in mind, regular tiling of the magnetic material, such as and, by extension, change how we relate on a fundamental Archimedean tiling of triangles or squares (as in Fig. 2) cre- level to auditory experience and our own awareness. ates an efficient dense sheet of copper foil arrays on a clear My work explores similar themes: These flat flexible speaker acetate backing. arrays confront the listener with an unexpected physical form of sound creation. Here, however, the material form of sound production acts as a vehicle to explore, question and confound Fig. 1. Jess Rowland, flat hexagonally patterned speaker array using copper foil on construction paper, 4 × 8 inches, 2012. specific boundaries between modalities of experience, espe- (© Jess Rowland) cially the boundary between visual art and music.
Flat Speakers as Art Material I primarily think of these flexible speakers as an art mate- rial. Rather than materials that only tangentially exhibit
Jess Rowland (artist, composer), 1605 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA 94709, U.S.A. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 33–36, 2013 33 guide users to interaction points where Fig. 2. Jess Rowland, flat the electromagnetic field is maximized, speaker array opening up possibilities for haptic and with square tactile feedback without the mediation of tiling, using a control system. copper foil and This exploration coincides with the flat square neodymium current interest of musical theorists in magnets on reexploring the role of the body and acetate, 4 × 4 gesture in technologies of music making. inches, 2012. (© Inspired by theories of embodied cogni- Jess Rowland) tion, theorists such as Marc Leman have been interested in re-placing the body at the center as an essential mediator between the musical intention and our extended technologies [6]. Rather than employing technology that hides the re- lation between our physical experience in the world and the technological tools we use, here, gesture, movement and the body can once again be at the center of the dialogue about sound production.
I also wanted this material to be trans- in the gloves themselves, users have full Compositional Fields parent, in the sense that nothing about freedom of movement to explore the ar- With flexible speaker arrays, surfaces can the process is hidden; there is no black rays. Sound is generated in proportion be built up with multiple channels of box (or, more appropriate to today’s to the proximity of the user’s hand to the sound output. Each sound channel can consumer electronics, white box). The array. contain a different sound signal. When technology is immediate; the disconnect Sound gloves have been explored in a person using a sound glove interacts so common to our contemporary experi- other contexts, such as the Lady’s Glove with the surface, it becomes possible for ence between the material and the user is instruments made by sound artist Laeti- different glove placement or different minimized. The technology used here is tia Sonami, which are used for perfor- speeds or directions of movement of the fundamental and legible. Nothing about mance and rely on sensors [5]. But the gloved hand to generate different sound the physics of this situation would be un- gloves presented here offer a different patterns. With more than one person ex- familiar to an engineer from a hundred approach: Without data measurement ploring such a surface at the same time, years ago. It is also materially light, unob- or information control, this process the complexity of possible interactions trusive and mostly recyclable. provides an unmediated alternative to increases exponentially. Other researchers have developed pa- sensor technology. As an intentionally This kind of interaction allows for per circuitry from an engineering and lo-fi alternative, the process can also a nondetermined compositional prac- design perspective. Most notably, Han- nah Perner-Wilson has pioneered DIY paper speakers [4]. In the same spirit as Fig. 3. A sound glove with neodymium magnet attached. (© Jess Rowland) her work, the technology explored here can be implemented by anyone with some basic supplies available at a local art store, rather than requiring industrial processes or expensive materials.
Sound Gloves and Gesture If, rather than thinking of sound repro- duction as a form of optimization for consumption, we think of it as a suffi- cient condition for the goal of engaging awareness, then these arrays can allow for alternate forms of interactivity, explora- tions of sound and composition. By mounting the magnet that acti- vates the speaker on gloves worn by the listener, I created an active experience in which gestures control sounds from the speaker array. These “sound gloves” con- sist of everyday gloves with a permanent neodymium rare-earth magnet attached (Fig. 3). Since there is no wiring involved
34 Rowland, Flexible Audio Speakers tice—compositional fields in which ini- tial conditions are set up by the artist (e.g. the choice of the sound signals that can be discovered, the visual design that gives rise to their physical presence, the way those sound signals can change through time and the potential for the field to change its properties through interaction with people and the environment)—but the form of the piece is brought into be- ing by those interacting with the piece. The interaction takes place at the level of human gesture, without demanding any special technique. There is no begin- ning or ending to the organization of the sound, no predetermined form. There is only a field of possibilities that emerges from the person, or people, interacting with the piece. As with much interactive art and alea- toric composition, the composer here has relinquished the traditional role as an authority. However, this particular practice provides a unique perspective on the place of the composer’s intention: Certain compositional properties are re- tained—the choice of predetermined sound material and the spatial layout. As with most audio speakers, any sound ma- terial whatsoever can be played through this system. I like to use recordings from Number Stations (intermittent shortwave radio broadcasts believed to be coded spy transmissions), reflecting the fact that the work itself presents a secret code waiting to be revealed by the listener [7]. Fig. 4. Jess Rowland, Circuit Drawing, a four-channel speaker system, copper Figure 4 presents a four-channel sys- foil on marbled paper, 24 × 18 inches, 2013. (© Jess Rowland) tem that blends elements of sound in- stallation and visual art to produce an interactive sound environment that can for music making that could not be ad- This questioning of boundaries fits be used to drive a compositional field. equately or appropriately transcribed into a stream of thought in contemporary Note that the geometry of the electro- through traditional music notation. But music practices. For example, Bigo et al. magnetic field production has been in- unlike most graphic notation, the re- at the Institut de Recherche et Coordi- tentionally obscured by artistic concerns. lationship between the physical marks nation Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) Efficiency and optimization have been and the gesture has been transformed. developed a paper composition system thrown out the window. If form follows In this case, the sound is physically in the in which drawing with a specialized pen function here, then the function must be markings. The place of gesture happens on notation paper would generate corre- to explore and wander. on the markings. The relation between sponding sounds (played through a com- the physical and the sound has been puter) [9]. Intended as a compositional confounded. One might reasonably ask, tool, it could also be thought of as an in- Graphic Notation then: Is it more appropriate to think of strument itself and evokes the possibility This work could be equally read as a this system of markings as a musical in- of expanded visual design. Instrument peculiarly active form of visual graphi- strument? builders are also exploring this blurring cal notation, which allows but does not In Fig. 5, the size of the image has of modalities: Adrian Freed, as one exam- require sound. Like a score, it can be ap- expanded to that of a body (4 × 2 ft). ple, recently created an instrument with proached without requiring further ac- This piece, Majikethise, is a four-channel touch sensors attached directly to the dia- tion, although the intimation of action speaker that allows for interactivity with a phragm of the speaker, which plays music remains potent in its markings. sound glove or similar device. It consists in response to those sensors—co-locating Graphic notation (i.e. the use of non- of copper foil, as well as magnet wire, the gesture, the tactile experience and traditional musical notation) is alive and recycled plastic industrial circuit sheets the sound production at the same locus well and expanding its range to include used in computer keyboards, aluminum [10]. Or consider instruments that play contemporary composers and artists tape and other mixed media on PVC with scale to dissolve spatial, visual and from many backgrounds [8]. Like most and acetate sheets. Is this piece an audio auditory boundaries, such as Ellen Full- graphic notation, the visual markings in speaker? Graphic notation? Music com- man’s Long String Instrument [11] or Tim my work are meant to convey directions position? Visual art? Musical instrument? Hawkinson’s Uberorgan [12].
Rowland, Flexible Audio Speakers 35 these materials. I have recently created speakers by embedding these sound ma- terials in sculptural sheets of dried glue, for example. Our technologies can either isolate us from or bring us closer to meaningful, physical experience of sound. Falling between the cracks of all these artistic la- bels—art, science, performance, compo- sition—I choose technologies that bring me closer.
Acknowledgments The author wishes to acknowledge the generous support and guidance of Adrian Freed, Research Director of the Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT), as well as the kind support of CNMAT.
References 1. Jess Rowland and Adrian Freed, “Flexible Surfaces for Interactive Audio,” Proceedings of the 2012 ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Sur- faces, Cambridge, MA, November 2012. 2. Paul DeMarinis, Buried in Noise (Heidelberg, Ger- many: Kehrer Verlag, 2011).
3. See an introduction to Christina Kubisch’s Electri- cal Walks at
Fig. 5. 5. See
36 Rowland, Flexible Audio Speakers Instruments of Tension: Gramophones, Springs and the Performance of Place
Jay Needham with Eric Leonardson
R obert Falcon Scott took two Victor gramo- in 2009. While listening to the re- phones to Antarctica as a part of the ill-fated 1910 Terra Nova cordings, we were drawn to those expedition. Photographer Herbert Ponting created an image that had a certain richness, evok- that depicts one of the expedition’s dogs standing next to one ing a sense of scale and immersion a b s t r a c t of the gramophones as if listening (Fig. 1). The image offers that audibly described Antarctica. a curious set of entry points for analysis and creative reflec- If Chronography: animal describes a The authors discuss Chronog- tion. Performed as a bit of comic relief on the ice and as an dramaturgy of place, the Antarctic raphy: animal, a live electro- acoustic work based on sound homage to/riff on His Master’s Voice, Ponting’s picture reveals field recordings are placeholders: recordings Needham gathered a number of relationships, extending the role this image has fragments and audible evidence of in Antarctica in 2009, along with as an historic exploration artifact. The image portrays several a time, but a broken record never- related works. intervals of time simultaneously. One such interval is the initial theless. exposure on film, perhaps a fraction of a second. Another For this work, I repurposed two interval represented is the domain of musical time occurring antique brass gramophone horns on the platter and in the air. An additional interval is the per- and an aged clock mechanism as amplified instruments (Fig. ceived time that we accord the dog in the image. The latter 2). The brass horns are technical and historic signifiers that illustrates the continued desire we as humans have to commu- reference a music from the past and symbolize the two ma- nicate with other animals, in this case using the Victor Talking chines that accompanied Scott on the expedition. They are Machine in an effort to establish a communicative link. The simultaneously ear and horn, receptor and transmitter. In image is a telling expression of how music helped to maintain present-day use, they serve as instruments that are bowed, a specific kind of mission time. In this way, the gramophone percussed and scraped to evoke a sense of time and place. was a cultural sextant for those who explored and those who Retasking the horn as an instrument—ear, stethoscope, pro- wandered off-leash. tomicrophone—we project sounds into the air. In reverse, it The traveling of these sound machines into the wilds was helps focus sounds to our ears. possible because of the continued innovation of mechanical Co-author Leonardson’s Springboard [1] is also featured in clock technologies. A gramophone is a tension instrument not Chronography: animal (Fig. 3). The instrument, built in 1994, unlike the chronometer. Each instrument stores and releases is an heuristic device for making sound. The Springboard tension, but each is designed to unwind and perform time for a different perceptive outcome. The layers of accumulated time in the Ponting image influenced my concepts around the Fig. 1. Dog listening to the gramophone, Antarctica, Herbert framing and performing of Chronography: animal. The piece Ponting, 1911. (Photo © Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, is a live electroacoustic work that unwinds layers of time; it New Zealand) is conceived as a bridge to connect practices of improvised music and sound art as an evocation of place. In this piece, we hear sounds from Antarctica accompanied by the sounds of manufactured objects that were used in the exploration of that continent. We depart from the Ponting image and draw from our eco- minded interests in the arts and sciences, specifically acoustic ecology, improvised music and instrument creation. The piece is based primarily on field recordings I gathered in Antarctica
Jay Needham (educator, sound artist), Department of Radio, Television and Digital Media, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901, U.S.A. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 37–39, 2013 37 anism is a curiously open assembly of gears and springs. When wound, it ticks steadily, reliably counting until the clock spring relaxes and the process of trans- ferring one’s own human energy into the tension of the spring is again required. This ticking is a lingering echo of the Longitude Act of 1714. England’s John Harrison [2] received funding through the Longitude Act to expand on his clock designs and create the innovative Grasshopper Escapement. At that time, accurate and safe transoceanic explora- tion required the most precise of clocks for charting distance according to one’s home hour. In Harrison’s age, the critical maintenance of time allowed one to actu- ally reach the known limits of a territory and navigate beyond the range of human perception and physical endurance. My Fig. 2. Jay Needham and Eric Leonardson performing Chronography: animal, world repurposed clockwork follows the design premiere at the 46th Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, Germany. of Harrison’s Grasshopper Escapement (Photo © Katharina Szmidt) (Fig. 4). The small, sharp-wheeled assem- bly is the most delicate part of the instru- ment; it also emits the most interesting works, both literally and figuratively. It is associative figures and cinematic atmo- sounds, especially when pressed, sped up simultaneously the instrument for pro- spheres. The performance techniques or slowed. My playing of the Grasshopper ducing the creative act and a product he applies to both the Springboard and Escapement is, in part, a reflection on of a creative act (a heuristic process in gramophone horns evoke animal vocal- the practical necessity of timekeeping, itself). The bowed coil spring is a ten- izations, wind and rain, and other famil- while also a physical way to manipulate sion instrument that mechanically stores iar yet strangely different sounds. the audible timbre of the clockwork. In energy and, like an electric battery, con- Portions of Chronography: animal are effect, I make sound instrumentally that tains the potential for work. Leonard- also performed on an amplified spring- is simultaneously associated with the son’s performance on the Springboard wound mechanical clockwork. Long ago bending of metronomic time. complements the Antarctic field record- removed from its case, and without hour Various ecologies of sound have con- ings in an acousmatic context by offering and minute hands, the faded brass mech- tributed to an ongoing dialog about the
Fig. 3. Springboard. (Photo © Eric Leon- ardson)
38 Needham and Leonardson, Instruments of Tension alike. The added gramophone horns, clockwork and Springboard culminate in a performed acoustic history—a work for sound that describes Antarctica from a number of audible and chronometric vantage points. This approach has in- spired us to author multivalent sound works informed by the interrelation of histories, conceived of in relation to place and experienced as something old and yet unknown.
References and Notes 1. Eric Leonardson, “The Springboard: The Joy of Piezo Disk Pickups for Amplified Coil Springs,” Leonardo Music Journal 17 (2007) pp. 17–20. 2. Humphrey Quill, John Harrison: The Man Who Fig. 4. Escapement detail. (Photo © Jay Needham) Found Longitude (London: Baker, 1966).
Manuscript received 2 January 2013. social dimensions of a soundscape and transdisciplinary and open to new inter- the roles that interpretation and artistic pretation. Creating sound from the re- Artist Jay Needham is president of the Ameri- intent play in the creation and presenta- working of manufactured objects speaks can Society for Acoustic Ecology and an Associate Professor in the College of Mass tion of an eco-minded work. The fluid to aspects of craft and functionality, but Communication and Media Arts at Southern boundaries that pertain to this practice also involves playing and performing Illinois University. and study often defy classic conceptions with pieces of history in both literal and that are customarily assigned to artistic figurative terms. While Ponting’s image Eric Leonardson is a Chicago-based artist, mediums. Perhaps it is sound’s inability served as an initial historic inspiration president of the World Forum for Acoustic to be categorized and placed within one and temporal backdrop, the field record- Ecology and Adjunct Associate Professor at genre that makes the field so uniquely ings aid both performers and audience the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Needham and Leonardson, Instruments of Tension 39 Publish in Leonardo! Leonardo seeks articles in the following areas of special interest
Art and Atoms Guest Editor: Tami I. Spector The modern world of chemistry is vast and its connection to art strong. From nanocars and extraterrestrial materials to DNA origami and biofuels, chemistry—like art—expresses its transformative, material essence. Chem- istry’s unique connection to art is the focus of this special section. Full call for papers:
(© Chris Ewels)
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Environment 2.0: Through Cracks in the Pavement Guest Editor: Drew Hemment In urban environments we are separated from the consequences of our ac- tions as surely as the tarmac of the road cuts us off from the earth beneath. But between the cracks in the pavement, another world flourishes—local ac- tivism, recycling, environmental collectives, permaculture, urban gardening. Leonardo solicits texts that document the works of artists, researchers, and scholars involved in the exploration of sustainability in urban environments. Full call for papers:
ArtScience: The Essential Connection Guest Editor: Robert Root-Bernstein What is the value of artistic practices, techniques, inventions, aesthetics and knowledge for the working scientist? What is the value of scientific practices, techniques, inventions, aesthetics and knowledge for the artist? When does art become science and science, art? Or are these categories useless at their boundaries and intersections? Artists, scientists, artist-scientists and research- ers of all sorts are invited to explore such questions in the pages of Leonardo. Full call for papers:
Ricardo Arias a b s t r a c t Sound art activity in Colombia has proliferated in the last decade, as evidenced by the considerable number of shows focusing on sound As both a term and a practice, “sound art” has become increas- lation and sculpture [7]. A second works by Colombian artists ingly prominent since the late 1990s. The label has been embraced group of sound artists, active in the in recent years. The author presents three artists—Rodrigo by artists, curators and critics, and the number of museum and Colombian art scene today, that Restrepo, Leonel Vásquez and gallery exhibits dedicated to (or prominently featuring) sound began working in the 1990s, such Ícaro Zorbar—each of whom art has grown exponentially in recent years. While showcasing a as Ana María Romano, Rodrigo Re- represents a distinct point in the new generation of audio artists, many of these exhibitions have strepo and Daniel Prieto, have been continuum between music and also traced a genealogy of sound art that stretches back to the able to move more swiftly between sound art. The artists’ individual and distinct approaches to the emergence of the art form in the 1960s and have thus given the categories. The generation of those use of technology and their very current boom an historical footing. who became active in the new mil- personal conceptions of space lennium, such as David Vélez, Leo- and time are discussed. —Christoph Cox [1] nel Vásquez, Ícaro Zorbar, Juan The span of years since the dawn of the new millennium has Sebastián Suanca and Carlos Bonil, witnessed a remarkable increase in shows, exhibitions and pro- does not seem to be troubled by be- grammes devoted to a hybrid, elusive and not-too-clear form of ing perceived as sound artists. They simply embrace sound creative expression which has come to be known as “sound art.” as another material at their disposal to realize their artistic projects. —Daniela Cascella [2] This gradual shift in terminology from music—be it ex- perimental, electronic or electroacoustic—toward sound art As Cascella observes in the above epigraph, sound art indeed that has occurred in the last 2 decades echoes the opposition seems to be blossoming worldwide in the new millennium. between music and noise that Christoph Cox puts forth in de- Critical and scholarly attention to this artistic practice and, veloping an ontology of sound [8]. This agreement between more broadly, to sound as an object of study, are also prolif- practice and theoretical discourse suggests that we may indeed erating [3]. be experiencing a significant paradigm shift in our awareness In trying to understand this burst of activity in sound art, it and use of sound. This predicament leads us to think that at is imperative to start broadening our field of vision to include this point in the history of Western Culture, an art practice what is being done beyond Europe, North America and Japan with sound, “sound art,” that is different from music is indeed in order to have a truly global perspective on the issue [4]. It coming into its own and may need to rely no longer on existing is my intent with this paper to contribute in this respect by categories and traditions but on a renewed appraisal of sound giving a glimpse of what is being done in my current place of itself to justify its existence. residence, Colombia.
Sound Art Practice in Colombia Rodrigo Restrepo, Ícaro Zorbar and Sound art activity in Colombia has abounded in the last de- Leonel Vásquez cade, as evidenced by the considerable number of shows focus- The three artists whose work I present here belong to the ing on sound works by Colombian artists in recent years [5]. second and third generational groups outlined above. I have Some of the artists involved in these shows, such as Roberto chosen these particular artists, Rodrigo Restrepo (b. Bogotá, García, Juan Reyes, Mauricio Bejarano, Alba Fernanda Triana 1977), Leonel Vásquez (Bogotá, 1981) and Ícaro Zorbar (Bo- and I, have been working with sound for quite some time, gotá, 1977), because each of them represents a distinct point and while our work has been categorized as experimental or in the continuum between music and sound art. Each of them electroacoustic music, we are now considered to be sound art- also has a distinct approach to their use of technology and a ists [6]. Such rebranding has had an effect on the work and very personal conception of space and time. on the way the artists view it, prompting exploration of areas Restrepo is a musician and composer by training but has entered only occasionally in the past, such as sound instal- gradually drifted away from conventional musical practices into hybrid, interdisciplinary ways of conceiving and present- ing his work. Zorbar holds degrees in film, television and fine Ricardo Arias (composer, sound artist, educator), Departamento de Arte Universidad de Los Andes, Carrera 1 No. 18ª-10, oficina S-201, Colombia. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 41–46, 2013 41 presenting sound—was the Habitáfono (Sound Room) (2005) (Fig. 1), “a multi- timbral instrument (a sound sculpture), a stage the size of a small room” [11]. The experience of creating the Habi- táfono, says Restrepo, “brought me ever closer, yet not fully consciously, to the realm of ‘sound art,’ in which the spatial dimension of the work gains a greater importance in relation to its temporal di- mension” [12]. The space that Restrepo discovered in the realm of sound art was not the same “loudspeaker space” (or acousmatic, simulated space) that he had explored in his electroacoustic pieces. This new space is the actual space that the sculpture proposes in relation to the body of the performer. The experience of space facilitated by the Habitáfono can be understood through Campesato, who cites Bleser and Salter’s four modes of experiencing space and posits them as appropriate for understanding the use Fig. 1. Rodrigo Restrepo, Habitáfono, Teatro Delia Zapata, Bogotá, 2005. (© Rodrigo of space in sound art: Restrepo) One can experience space in four modes: “social, as an arena for community cohe- to carry out his research projects and grammer, composer and artist are all incom- sion; navigational, as local objects and creative output through the medium of plete and problematic terms. The same geometries that combine into a spatial geometry; aesthetic, as an enhanced aes- sound. holds true for the terms used to describe particular works, such as sound art, mu- thetic texture; and musical, as an artistic sic, performance, installation, or sculpture. extension of instruments” [13]. Toward the Sonorous: Consequently I prefer to think of myself Rodrigo Restrepo as someone who exercises his creativity, Restrepo has continued to develop his Restrepo views his own work as a wide, which is a factor common to all the cat- work, taking advantage of the possibili- egories just mentioned [10]. open-ended endeavor that goes beyond ties opened up to him by the notion of traditional ideas of music. In the early sound art and adopting the computer stages of his career, Restrepo’s practice One of Restrepo’s works that first sig- as his main technological aid. More re- with sound developed through two par- naled a shift away from traditional mu- cent works include interactive sculptural allel paths: (1) his work in a traditional sical practices—or more generally away structures (Girófono, 2011) (Fig. 2) and manner as a composer of “tape” pieces from a strictly performative mode of interfaces for the performative control carefully crafted in the studio and re- sulting in fixed compositions meant for reproduction through loudspeakers Fig. 2. Rodrigo Restrepo, Girófono, “Densidades: Arte Sonoro en Colombia” exhibition, (through his work with loudspeakers Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, 2011. (© Rodrigo Restrepo) he became aware of the compositional importance of the spatial dimension of sound) and (2) his work in free impro- visation, which afforded an opportunity to work directly with acoustic sound sources, exploring them in relation to his body and his physical gestures and not worrying as much about method or final results. As he worked on these two musical practices, Restrepo gradually started to realize that “music, or the musical, was but one aspect of a much wider universe that offered him even greater creative possi- bilities: that of sound, or the sonorous” [9]. He thus came to an understanding of his work not just as music or art but in terms of the general attribute of creativity.
In trying to define my work I have tended not to worry too much about the name or label I should assign to it. Musician, pro-
42 Arias, Rakes, Live Deaths, Cassette Players I love the idea of fragility. I think it is something that characterizes human na- ture. So I work with machines, sounds and projections, in circumstances that evoke interpersonal relations. I try to un- fold and underscore the fragility inher- ent to certain interpersonal connections in which I find a constant tension [18]. Another work in the series of as- sisted installations, Ventilador (Ventila- tor) (Assisted Installation #6) (Fig. 4) (see Webliography), consists of a spa- tial arrangement of various elements: a loudspeaker, a swinging fan, a modified cassette player and an audio cassette. A fi- nal aspect of Zorbar’s work is much more evident in this piece than in the previous one: The sound material, a song in this case, is crucial to the expressive effect of the installation. The character of the song is clearly pathological and acts as what Salomé Voegelin has called “sonic memory material” [19], and it completes the sentimental character suggested by Fig. 3. Ícaro Zorbar, Swan Lake (Assisted Installation #5), 2006. (© Icaro Zorbar) the fragility and instability expressed by the way the elements of the piece are arranged. The music acts as a “pathetic of live audio signal processing (Raking, acoustic amplification, and provides trigger” [20], accomplishing, in my view, 2012) (see Webliography at the end of some further clues about various aspects a sentimental engagement on the part of this article for video documentation of of Zorbar’s work. The duration of the the viewer. both of these pieces). sound aspect of the work is determined by the time it takes the “assistant” to wind Live Deaths and Silent Screams: Ícaro Zorbar’s up all the music box mechanisms and Leonel Vásquez Sentimental Machinery the time it takes for them to unwind. In Leonel Vásquez develops his creative Ícaro Zorbar is, in his own words, “a Co- this case Zorbar uses mechanical, analog process “from the vantage point of doing lombian artist who works with machines, technology, which is a signature element and thinking with sound” [21], and this songs, sounds and projections” [14]. of his artistic practice. Zorbar states: “I process can take the form of “sculptures, From this short statement, it is clear that like to discover how things work. In this installations, sonic architectures, actions sound is a very important aspect of Zor- respect, analog technology is more inter- and videos” [22]. His activities include bar’s work. He, however, does not think esting to me because it is a technology the teaching and researching, always in and of himself as a sound artist: “Sound al- functioning of which can be discerned around the experience of sound: “I ex- ways represents 50% of the work and the through simple observation” [17]. periment with sound as a malleable mate- visual aspects (be they sculptural or vid- Swan Lake is installed in a deliberately rial, as the form and content of sensory eographic) the other 50%” [15]. Most of unpretentious, precarious and fragile experience” [23]. His work not only in- his works are performative and have a “fi- manner. Fragility and its expression volves a critical reflection on the techno- nite,” often narrative, temporality. Some through a very particular use of analog logical means of sound production and of his works require his presence and his machinery is yet another characteristic of reproduction but also places a great deal intervention in order to be activated. He Zorbar’s work and it is at the service of of emphasis on listening, “not only as an calls them “assisted installations.” In Zor- the artist’s ultimate expressive intentions. instrument of perception but as a prob- bar’s own words:
I have chosen to refer to some of my works, those which exhibit a particular Fig. 4. Ícaro Zorbar, temporal quality and that require my Ventilador (Assisted presence in order to function, as “assisted Installation #6), installations.” In these installations I have 2007. (© Icaro to pay close attention to things like the Zorbar) duration of a song, or I have to wind up a music box, find the exact place where I have to drop the needle on a record, or change, rewind or thread a cassette tape [16].
Swan Lake (Assisted Installation #5) from 2006 (Fig. 3) (see Webliography) is one such assisted installation consisting of a number of music box internal mecha- nisms placed over a speaker cabinet for
Arias, Rakes, Live Deaths, Cassette Players 43 Fig. 5. Leonel Vásquez, El Grito (The Scream), 2011. (© Leonel Vásquez)
lem of the relation between subjects, that which produces tears, screams, si- Deaths), “is an installation/action that spaces, objects, and the environment in lences: human emotions [25]. takes place within a constructed acoustic general” [24]. His concern with the indi- space contained inside the gallery space” vidual/personal and collective/social di- El Grito (The Scream) (2011) is a sculp- [26]. The artist/performer activates with mensions of sound makes Vásquez’s work tural piece, or rather a unique piece of his breath and for a very long time an more political than that of Restrepo or furniture that expresses the artist’s con- instrument that is at once a container (a Zorbar, without being simplistic or pam- cerns quite eloquently through an im- box) and a flute. This box is filled with the phleteering. His conception of sound in- plied use of sound (the piece is silent). bones of an unknown person or persons volves the emotions, as does Zorbar’s, but The object consists of a table that con- [27]. The realization of the piece takes is less concerned with the cultural repre- tains a naturally mummified body of a cat the form of a performance that seeks, sentations of these emotions than with that cannot be clearly discerned through through this peculiar sound-producing their experiencing and exteriorization. the opaque piece of glass used as the object and its intensely focused and pro- Vásquez conceives of sound and silence tabletop. There is a black structure at- longed ritualistic performance, both to as manifestations of vital forces. tached to the table that invites the viewer enact a symbolic reunification between to take a peek, at which point he/she is the living and the anonymous dead and I am interested in thinking about the confronted with the cat’s face frozen in to provide the dead with a dignified and potentialities of sound to configure the the midst of a terrifying cry (Fig. 5). proper place of rest in the “underworld” expressive components of a space, of Another piece from 2011 that contains bodies, of a series of gestures, so as to [28] (Fig. 6) (see Webliography). attain the poetic conformation of a ter- strong affective elements and political ritory that invites us to experiment with connotations, titled Muertes Vivas (Live
44 Arias, Rakes, Live Deaths, Cassette Players scribing his piece Live Deaths. This is a in ways that do not conform strictly to Conclusion peculiar trait if one considers that au- canonical forms of the practice. Whether The works of the three artists discussed tonomous and continuous installations this is a particularity of sound art made here are not by any means representative are often considered to be the clearest in Colombia or, more broadly, in Latin of prevailing trends or “styles” in Colom- expression of sound art. Restrepo’s, Zor- America is yet to be explored. bian sound art. A wider survey reveals, as bar’s and Vásquez’s works all conform it does in most other parts of the world, a to the “canonical” position that broadly References and Notes richly varied range of artistic approaches defines sound art as closely related to 1. Christoph Cox, “Sound Art and the Sonic Uncon- to sound. installation art or to an “expanded con- scious,” Organised Sound 14 (2009) pp. 19–26. The three artists discussed use differ- cept of sculpture” [29] and at the same 2. Daniela Cascella, “Watch This Sound” (2007): ent and varied technologies according time counter this notion’s twin idea that
Fig. 6. Leonel Vásquez, Muertes Vivas (Live Deaths), 2011. (© Leonel Vásquez)
Arias, Rakes, Live Deaths, Cassette Players 45 of activities are defined depending on academic tra- (2003):
46 Arias, Rakes, Live Deaths, Cassette Players Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in Belfast
Gascia Ouzounian a b s t r a c t This article introduces examples of recent sound art in Belfast, a city that has undergone radical transforma- tion over the past decade and n the global arena, Belfast is most frequently rec- and Quiet Music Night, all of which is home to a burgeoning com- I munity of sound artists. The text ognized as the epicenter of the Troubles, the name given to have operated out of the homes of the decades-long armed conflict in which local communities artists and curators. Numerous fes- investigates the ways in which sonic art can redraw boundaries were pitted against one another, with divisions formed along tivals, including the Belfast Festival in a city historically marked by a combination of political, religious, socioeconomic and geo- at Queen’s, Cathedral Quarter Arts myriad political, socioeconomic, graphical lines. Loyalist or unionist communities, who are pre- Festival and Sonorities Festival of religious and sectarian divisions. dominantly Protestant, maintain allegiance with the United Contemporary Music likewise pro- The article focuses on sound Kingdom and typically identify as British. Republican or na- works that reimagine a “post- vide national and international conflict” Belfast. These include tionalist communities, who are predominantly Roman Catho- forums for contemporary perfor- site-specific sound installations lic, seek the reunification of Northern Ireland with Ireland mance and art. in urban and public spaces, and typically identify as Irish. It is possible for a contemporary The presence of sound art within soundwalks, sculptures, locative citizen of Northern Ireland to hold two passports—British and this scene has become increasingly and online works, and experi- mental sonic performances that Irish—even as the country remains constitutionally part of the prominent, owing in part to the draw upon traditional Irish song United Kingdom. establishment of the Sonic Arts Re- and music. The violence that characterized the Troubles has profoundly search Centre at Queen’s University diminished since the signing of the Good Friday agreement, Belfast in 2005, which, along with the 1998 treaty that established Northern Ireland’s current the University of Ulster, is a prin- governmental structure and signaled a sustained truce. Still, cipal site for research and creation in sonic arts in Belfast. there remain signs of sectarian divide within Belfast, which There is also a growing understanding of the relevance of is otherwise described as a “post-conflict” city. As recently as sonic arts within the wider arts community in the region. In December 2012, tensions flared as conservative and radical 2010, the Turner Prize, the most prestigious award given to elements within the Loyalist community protested a deci- British artists, was awarded to a sound artist for the first time sion by the local city council to fly the British flag at Belfast in the award’s history. Susan Philipsz, a Glasgow-born artist, City Hall only on designated days instead of the entire year. was recognized for such works as Lowlands (2010), a sound in- As some of these protests became violent, counterprotesters stallation that featured a layered, multichannel version of the staged a 1,000-person “peace rally” at City Hall. Organized artist singing a 16th-century Scottish lament. The decision to by local artist Paul Currie, this gathering invited demonstra- award the prize to a sound artist was predictably controversial. tors to make any kind of noise for a few minutes, suggest- One detractor wrote, “Never before in the 26-year history of ing, “The peaceful silent majority needs to be heard too” [1]. the Turner Prize has it been won by an artist who had nothing The chaotic soundscape that ensued—a boisterous melange to show for her £25,000 prize money but sounds fabricated of hand-clapping, shouts, hollers, horn blowing, drumming by her own voice” [2]. A BBC article quoted a conservative and laughter—served as a stark contrast to the sounds most frequently associated with public gatherings in Belfast: the fife-and-drum tunes of Protestant marching bands that wind Fig. 1. Pedro Rebelo, Rui Chaves, Matilde Meireles, Aonghus their way through the city during marching season each year, McEvoy and Max Stein, Belfast Sound Map, interactive website, 2012. regarded by some as a demonstration of cultural pride, and by Screenshot of Belfast Sound Map showing Kevin McCullagh’s record- others as a triumphalist and threatening gesture. ing “Beechmount RPG Avenue.” (© Rebelo, Chaves, Meireles, McEvoy, Stein) Within this larger context of a steady but imperfect peace, Belfast has also been home to a virtual cultural Renaissance over the last decade. For a city whose population falls under 650,000, there are a remarkable number of art institutions and initiatives. These include established institutions such as Crescent Arts Centre, Waterfront Hall and Ulster Museum; alternative and artist-run spaces such as Black Box Belfast, Catalyst Arts, Platform Arts and PS2; contemporary art galler- ies such as Golden Thread Gallery and Fenderesky Gallery; and grassroots initiatives such as Delawab, Household Belfast
Gascia Ouzounian (educator), School of Creative Arts, Music Building, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 47–54, 2013 47 art group that announced, “the award cant attention to sound art in the region, Many of the artists whose works are men- should not go to a ‘singer.’ . . . ‘It’s just and served as an educational moment. tioned here are under 35, a sign that the someone singing in an empty room. It’s One reporter introduced Philipsz’s work nascent scene will continue to develop. not art. It’s music’” [3]. Conversely, sup- by explaining it was “[art] so intangible Some were born and raised in Belfast, porters embraced the decision as a boon it can’t even be seen” [6]. while others have relocated here in order for sound art, with one prominent critic This article introduces recent sound to pursue education and work opportu- characterizing the win as “a shot in the art works created in and for Belfast, giving nities. All, however, share the common arm for sound art” [4]. The same critic special attention to works that reimagine purpose to contribute in unique ways to explained, “you can even study courses the city, offering alternatives to the domi- the cultural life of a city whose image can, in sound art at a handful of art colleges nant images of a “post-conflict” Belfast. and is, being redrawn through art, even around the country. So the momentum’s I am especially interested in discovering art so intangible it can’t even be seen. already there. The high-profile win for the ways in which sound—a medium In both metaphorical and actual ways, Susan Philipsz might just build this up to characterized by impermanence and in- the projects mentioned here can be said the tipping point needed for sound art visibility—can bypass or even bridge the to “recompose the city”: They position to really take off” [5]. Whether positive normal barriers, whether physical, social, the city not as an object or collection of or negative, the decision brought signifi- political or cultural, that exist in this city. objects, but instead as a resonant idea that is cocreated by, and shared among, its inhabitants, visitors and, most espe- cially, its listeners. Through these sound Fig. 2. Fionnuala Fagan and Isobel Anderson, Sailortown multimedia installation, 2012. works the city can be newly understood as Detail showing the listening station for Isobel Anderson’s song “The Ghost of Sailortown.” (Photo © Fionnuala Fagan) a collectively generated, unstable and un- fixed, imagined and experienced, lived and living composition: one that can be continuously heard and sounded— and, when filtered through the dynamic matrix of sound, art and environment (physical, social, cultural and politi- cal)—recombined, reoriented and re- composed.
Sounds and Stories of the City On 20 April 2012, the Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC), an £18-million building, opened its doors in Belfast with the aim of becoming the region’s premiere inter- disciplinary arts center. The first Artist- in-Residence program at the MAC was a sound art program that featured the work of researchers from the Sonic Arts Research Centre, and one of the MAC’s first exhibits, Sounds of the City, featured the work of sonic artists Pedro Rebelo, Fig. 3. Detail of Sailortown showing the listening station for Isobel Anderson’s song “Mary’s Song.” (Photo © Fionnuala Fagan) Rui Chaves, Matilde Meireles and Aong- hus McEvoy. Over a 4-month period this group developed five sound art projects, working in partnership with participants from the Tar Isteach and Dee Street community centers [7]. Among these projects were The Walk Home, a sound in- stallation in the MAC’s corridors wherein the sounds of visitors’ footsteps merged with “the sound of footsteps made by thousands of shipyard workers return- ing home,” described by the artists as “an iconic aspect of Belfast’s aural iden- tity”; Call for Work, in which factory horns evoking Belfast’s industrial past—created in collaboration with community par- ticipants who recalled these ubiquitous soundmarks—were installed in the gal- lery; and the Belfast Sound Map, an inter- active, online platform that allows users to upload field recordings as well as com-
48 Ouzounian, Recomposing the City May 2012). For this exhibition Fagan and Anderson developed the project Sailortown in collaboration with mem- bers of a local community that has been particularly impacted by urbanization in Belfast [11]. Once a bustling dock- side village of thousands located inside central Belfast, Sailortown was, for over a century, home to seamen, merchants and industrial workers who manned the city’s mills and shipyards. Urban devel- opment and modernization projects in the 1960s led to a controversial decision to demolish the town in order to make way for the M2 motorway. Residents were promised relocation, but developers failed to deliver on this promise. Surviv- ing members of the community continue to be connected through the Sailortown Regeneration Group, a community de- Fig. 4. Details of Sailortown showing the listening station for Fionnuala’s song “the Harbour velopment organization whose mission Lights.” (Photo © Fionnuala Fagan) includes archiving the cultural and ar- chitectural history of the vanished town. Upon approaching this group, Fagan and Anderson discovered that they were mentary about the Belfast soundscape woken by the low rumble of land rovers not entirely welcoming of outside inter- [8]. The latter, designed in collaboration and the house shaking from the impact est. Fagan writes: with Max Stein, co-creator with Julian of the paint bombs.” The recording is Stein of the Montreal Sound Map (2008), described as “an approximation” of this The community agreed to meet with us features several dozen recordings that resident’s “sound memory,” leading the on the premise of exchange—they would visitors can browse by searching their lo- visitor to Belfast Sound Map to imagine the share the stories of Sailortown and we would then document their words and cation on a virtual interface powered by complex sociopolitical histories that in- experiences, using song and installa- Google Maps [9,10]. fl ected these particular sounds and their tion. I had expected the community to Listening to the recordings featured hearing. be excited by the prospect of this, but in on Belfast Sound Map, it is striking to As an offshoot of the Sounds of the City actual fact, they were quite suspicious of note the extent to which a city’s unique program, two local sound artists who are our motives—mainly as a result of their previous negative experience of artists. character and identity can be described also both singer-songwriters, Fionnuala . . . During our initial meetings, it be- in sound, whether through local accents Fagan and Isobel Anderson, proposed a came clear that the Sailortown commu- and speech patterns, the sounds of ev- sister exhibition, Stories of the City (7–20 nity saw us as prospective users [12]. eryday business and leisure activities, traffi c and transportation, or natural and environmental soundscapes. Perhaps in- Fig. 5. ryan O’reilly, map designed for Resounding Rivers, a site-specifi c audio installation advertently, the project has entered the and multimedia exhibition by Matt Green, 2010. (Map © ryan O’reilly, rinky Design
Ouzounian, Recomposing the City 49 Still, the artists continued to meet with the Sailortown community over a period of several months and ultimately found that, “through listening, sympathizing and repeatedly expressing our genuine interest in their stories and in the history of [Sailortown], we finally began to break down some barriers” [13] (Fig. 2). For the Sailortown exhibition, Fagan and Anderson turned their interviews with Sailortown community participants into verbatim songs that comprised the words and stories relayed to them by the participants. They performed these songs at the MAC, and installed record- ings along a series of “song shrines,” lis- tening stations that also featured objects loaned to them by the participants (Figs 3 and 4). Upon hearing their stories turned into song and sound art, the Sailortown com- munity participants expressed surprise and appreciation, not expecting that the exhibition would reflect their expe- Fig. 6. Matt Green, Resounding Rivers, site-specific audio installation and multimedia exhibition, 2010. Poster announcing Resounding Rivers in Belfast’s city center. (Poster © Ryan riences so effectively. One participant O’Reilly, Rinky Design
Living as a student in South Belfast, you rarely spend much time outside of those streets and student social circles. I feel incredibly lucky to have been given the opportunity to hear the Sailortown com- munity’s stories of this area of Belfast. Otherwise, the M2 would still just look like the M2. The docks would still be a concrete expanse with a couple of in- dustrial sized ships and the streets that remain would just be car parks and of- fices under flyovers, between barbed wire fences. Now, this area is Sailortown. That feels like an amazing privilege [15].
In a poignant way, Sailortown provided an opportunity for a community tied together by a shared experience of dis- Fig. 7. John D’Arcy, Laganside, location-activated sound poetry app, 2012, in use on iPhone. possession to communicate with an au- (Image © John D’Arcy) dience that had either been unaware, or else was willfully ignorant of, their plight. For many community participants, the Waterworks urban sites, but that literally had been simple act of “being listened to” and From 6 May to 5 June 2010, PLACE, the driven underground through processes “being heard” was in itself a powerful Architecture and Built Environment of industrialization and modernization. experience, contrasting sharply with the Centre for Northern Ireland, hosted These “hidden rivers”—the Blackstaff silence and invisibility that had charac- a large-scale exhibition that similarly and Farset Rivers, and portions of the terized Sailortown’s presence within the aimed to uncover elements of Belfast’s Lagan River (which continues to run larger Belfast community for decades. lost or forgotten history using sound. along the length of the city, but which In this way, methods that are inherent Resounding Rivers (2010) was a site-spe- has been significantly curtailed)—today to sonic arts—listening, hearing, transla- cific sound installation by Belfast-based flow underground in a series of massive tion, interpretation and recording—can sound artist Matt Green, who installed pipes. Green discovered this little-adver- be understood as providing a route to- loudspeakers in six public spaces within tised fact while studying old maps of Bel- wards cultural exchange that confounds Belfast’s city center. The loudspeakers fast, which showed rivers in places where traditional barriers, in this case barriers projected soundscape compositions cre- buildings now stand. For Green, this that included socioeconomic, cultural ated by Green that evoked the sounds of discovery represented the sheer force of and historical ones. rivers that once flowed through those urbanization and the forgetting that can
50 Ouzounian, Recomposing the City sometimes accompany it. He told a lo- cal reporter, “Something as powerful as a river and it can just be put aside and forgotten. . . . You’d never know without reading these books or looking at the map that there was a river under your feet” [16]. For Resounding Rivers Green installed loudspeakers outside a variety of ven- ues: three popular pubs, the Waterfront Hall, the BBC Broadcasting House and PLACE. The graphic designer Ryan O’Reilly devised a map for visitors that showed where each installation was lo- cated and included short descriptions of how the recorded sounds related to each site (Fig. 5):
BBC Broadcasting House
Fig. 8. Listener with John D’Arcy’s location-activated sound poetry app, When the Blackstaff River was diverted Laganside (2012) near Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. (Photo © John D’Arcy) in the late 1600s it was brought to cours- ing along Ormeau Avenue and directly over the land on which the BBC now stands. Here, the River was bound in Fig. 9. Caroline Pugh, Photo Ballads, multimedia performance, 2012. An image of audience order to form Joy’s Mill dam which pow- members taken via pinhole camera is projected onto a screen in the premiere of Photo Bal- ered the nearby Joy’s Paper Mill. In the lads at Black Box Belfast, 25 October 2012. (© Caroline Pugh. Photo © Simon Howell.) 1800s the dam was replaced by a circu- lar reservoir, used to store and distribute fresh water. Sound to be heard: The flow of small rivers, and the water wheel and mill race of Wellbrook Beetling Mill, Co. Tyrone [17].
For the 4 weeks during which Resound- ing Rivers was exhibited (Fig. 6), Belfast audiences had the opportunity to hear Green’s elaborate waterscapes merge with the sounds of everyday city life, and contemplate a process the artist de- scribes as “the past flowing into the pres- ent” [18]. The Lagan River, which today has re- placed the Farset River as Belfast’s most important river, has inspired a number of artists to create site-specific sound works. In 2010, Rui Chaves, a Belfast-based sound artist, presented walkwithme, a soundwalk and performance that took place along a popular stretch of the Lagan. For this work, Chaves invited small groups of listeners to join him while walking for approximately twenty minutes along the river. The participants wore head- phones and, using MP3 players, listened to a prerecorded soundscape created by Chaves, who led the group through the site while simultaneously performing ac- tions along the river. The journey was an intimate one that recalled a love letter by a forlorn wanderer; at one point listeners could hear Chaves saying, “I imagine you, loving me/I imagine us, having a swim in the ocean/I imagine playing you all my favourite records/I imagine hearing you breathe. . . .” [19] Chaves arranged prerecorded sounds such that they would merge in uncanny ways with real sounds
Ouzounian, Recomposing the City 51 and real events, heightening mundane occurrences and creating an altered, sound-augmented reality. For the brief moments of the event, the stretch of the Lagan footpath—an everyday haunt fa- vored by joggers, cyclists and rowers—was transformed into a lyrical, poetic realm. More recently, Belfast-based singer- songwriter and sound artist John D’Arcy launched Laganside (2012), which he de- scribes as “a mobile sonic poetry experi- ence at Belfast’s River Lagan” [20] (Fig. 7). This location-activated sound work, which functions as an app for smart- phones, was inspired by the epic poem “Laganside” (2006) by Northern Irish poet and critic Alan Gillis. A listener with the app can freely roam the length of the Lagan and hear electroacoustic compo- sitions by D’Arcy that complement a reading of “Laganside” as well as poems by Belfast-based poets Andrew Jamison, Ben Maier and Sinead Morrisey. The app invites the user to “Immerse yourself in augmented, real and surreal soundscapes that reveal themselves at key spots along the River Lagan. Listen to these musi- cal backdrops as accompaniment to the reading of ‘Laganside’ to experience the poem in new ways” [21] (Fig. 8). One user describes his experience of Laganside as a powerful reminder of the striking transformations that have de- fined Belfast in recent years:
The meandering cadence of the poem, which describes a man’s walk along the Fig. 10. Photo Ballads, Caroline Pugh performing with tape recorder and electronics regenerated riverfront with his “better at the premiere of Photo Ballads at Black Box Belfast, 25 October 2012. (© Caroline half,” gradually builds towards an un- Pugh. Photo © Simon Howell.) derstated yet profound climax. “Leaving me to find our way back to the streets, know- ing I’ll never leave here, or come back again.” Fighting back the lump in my throat, the words resonated so strongly. From the Fig. 11. Phil Hession performing with custom-designed record lathe in My heart is always grit and filth of the late eighties Belfast trembling, afraid I might give in, multimedia performance and installation by Phil Hession, has surpassed itself, moving so fast the 2012. (© Phil Hession. Photo © Simon Mills.) city is at times hard to recognise. The Laganside area is the embodiment of Belfast’s decline and regeneration; a city which never fails to impress and disap- point in equal measure [22].
Sound Art and Traditional Music One of the distinguishing features of recent sound art in Belfast lies in its in- tersection with traditional music. There exists a rich history of traditional song in the region, transmitted orally from generation to generation and kept alive in the public sphere through trad ses- sions in local pubs, radio and television programs, competitions and concerts. In merging the language of traditional mu- sic with that of contemporary art, several artists have creatively incorporated new
52 Ouzounian, Recomposing the City Fig. 12. Phil Hession performing with custom-designed polygraph device in My heart is always trembling, afraid I might give in, 2012. (© Phil Hession. Photo © Simon Mills.)
and arcane technologies in their work. recorded, and these recordings were traditional music into the realm of con- At the 2012 Belfast Festival, the Belfast- broadcast in performance while Hes- temporary sound art commit multiple based vocalist and sound artist Caroline sion sang the tune live, his performance cultural transgressions, creating works Pugh (Fig. 9) premiered Photo Ballads further manipulated by sound engineer that rewrite a musical tradition steeped (2012), a multimedia work in which she Christian Cherene (Fig. 12) [25]. in conservation, while simultaneously photographed audiences using a pinhole In re-interpreting traditional songs introducing older traditions into con- camera and sang traditional songs in- using such experimental techniques, temporary genres that are typically pre- flected by experimental and improvised artists like Pugh and Hession take genu- occupied with newness. music techniques for the duration that ine risks. Unlike the contemporary art In 2012, Úna Monaghan collaborated it took for each photo to develop [23]. world, the local traditional music com- with Belfast-based Irish traditional mu- A BBC critic described Photo Ballads in munity does not necessarily privilege or sic scholar, sociologist and fiddler Mar- terms of the “heavily postmodernist” ap- reward originality or innovation. Rather, tin Dowling to create Owenvarragh: A proach Pugh undertook “warping [the there are pressures to conserve tradi- Belfast Circus on the Star Factory, a multi- traditional song ‘Lord Randall’] beyond tional song within “authentic” musical media realization of John Cage’s 1979 recognition by way of looping via tape re- settings, as the tradition has historically composition ______Circus on ____. corder” and “reproducing/re-imagining evolved through repetition and imitation Cage’s score, previously realized only melodies and tales otherwise swallowed rather than invention. Úna Monaghan, by the composer himself, invites the in- by the passing of time” [24] (Fig. 10). a Belfast-born traditional harpist and terpreter to create a performance from The Belfast-based vocalist and artist concertina player, composer and sound the contents of a book. Through a labor- Phil Hession has similarly repurposed ex- engineer, writes: intensive process, the interpreter creates isting technologies in creating sound art a tape part from the different sounds that reconfigures traditional Irish song. Traditional musicians had no desire to and places mentioned in a book, com- depart too far from the normal tune In Hession’s My heart is always trembling, types. New music was written, but it al- piles new texts for live recitation by per- afraid I might give in (2012), the artist re- ways adhered to the structures already in forming complex chance procedures on corded the street ballad “The Rocks of place of specific types of dance music, the original text, and chooses “relevant Bawn” using different recording devices: songs, or airs. Composers wanted their music” to include in the performance. music to be noticed for its beauty, not its a custom designed record lathe outfit- originality or innovation [26]. Monaghan and Dowling’s version was ted with a large crank, an SLR camera based on Belfast-based novelist Ciaran and a polygraph machine (Fig. 11). The Thus, the works of Pugh, Hession and Carson’s 1998 book The Star Factory, devices were themselves amplified and other artists who extend the language of considered an ode to Belfast [27]. It was
Ouzounian, Recomposing the City 53 presented in the Sonic Lab, a two-story cal transformation. The sound works dis- 14. Fagan [12]. auditorium in the Sonic Arts Research cussed in this article have reflected this 15. Isobel Anderson, correspondence with the au- Centre equipped with an acoustically transformation in meaningful ways: by thor, 23 December 2012. transparent floor and an elaborate mul- inviting people to document and ob- tichannel audio system. Owenvarragh serve the changing soundscape of the 16. Tammy Moore, “Resounding Rivers,” Culture Northern Ireland (12 October 2010); Accessed 1 featured a tape part Monaghan created city; by performing acts of historical January 2013:
54 Ouzounian, Recomposing the City (Demolishing) Concrete Music
Simon Polson
a b s t r a c t
The article addresses two pieces of sound art that incor- porate field recordings from the t least 125 people were shot trying to cross the map, and Fox added further sets of site of the Berlin Wall, during the A deconstruction of its concrete Berlin Wall, which was for them an instrument of torture and two parallel lines on either side of death. For countless others in Europe and around the world, each, creating the appearance of a presence in East Germany. The author examines two pieces as the Wall, which represented the Soviet grip on the people of musical stave. From the map, the a case study for the consider- Eastern Europe, was an instrument of division and oppression. length of the Wall was precisely ation of the historical potential For two composers, the Berlin Wall was a musical instrument. measured in centimeters; these of soundscapes and proposes This article addresses two pieces of sound art, by Terry Fox measurements were transposed that the developing genre and Anthony Hood, respectively, which use the acoustic and possesses the capability to into seconds, and the distance of preserve the sound of history, in physical properties of the Berlin Wall as structural motifs in the Wall became measured in time ways that are not possible with their construction: they are pieces of musique concrète, literally [4]. The physical properties of the written sources. The potential made from the sounds of concrete. Although not intended Wall, its trajectory and the distance problems associated with the to be, they are also the sounds of history and thus historical of its course through Berlin thus works’ reevaluation as historical sources and further works that sources. The study of history has traditionally assigned greater became the material principals of would benefit from similar recon- value to written sources than aural sources. This, however, is the object score Berlin Wall Scored for sideration are discussed. to the detriment of history’s capacity to appeal to our senses Sound. It is reasonable to consider and imagination. As Woolf notes, the current hierarchy of vi- Berlin Wall Scored for Sound an “ob- sual and written communication over the aural and spoken ject” as well as a composition, be- impinges directly on “historical consciousness” [1]. cause Fox reproduced the object score often but made only Studying Terry Fox’s Berlin Wall Scored for Sound and An- one recording. I know of at least six original editions of Berlin thony Hood’s Ein Stück von der Mauer (“A Piece of the Wall”) Wall Scored for Sound in contemporary art galleries around the offers an insight into the way history has accidentally found world, each reassembled in various ways and each with a dif- itself preserved in sound art and soundscape. Here, the com- ferent suggestion for sonic construction [5]. posers’ intentions to create a personal record of a moment Perhaps the exercise for Fox rested just as much on the in time instead created a record that sounds for all people. idea of the score as on its actual realization—if not more so; Berlin Wall Scored for Sound, conceived at the beginning of the 1980s, may well have initially been intended as a piece of visual Berlin Wall Scored for Sound art before it became a work of sound art. It was not until the Terry Fox (1943–2008) was a recipient of a Deutscher Aka- end of that decade that Fox’s only complete recording of the demischer Austauschdienst grant throughout 1980–1981 and work (which he titled Berlino) was released on Apollo Records lived in a studio in the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, and later on [6]. The object score of Berlino, a single linear organization of the Mariannenplatz in the northeastern corner of Kreuzberg, Berlin Wall Scored for Sound [7], illustrates how Fox divided the West Berlin. Fox wrote that, from the top of his building, “I contours of the Wall and, according to their shapes, assigned could look down into the Wall and follow its course for a long them one of six letters (B, where Fox deemed the contour way in both directions. I could see how it bisected streets, “chaotic”; C, “straight”; D, “canal”; E, “curved or crooked”; squares and even houses” [2]. F, “lake”; X, “Horsehead Nebula”) [8]; the repetition of the The idea of Berlin Wall Scored for Sound originated, in Fox’s sounds in the sequence and their duration is determined by words, as “a sound map . . . a kind of aural geography,” by the changing conformation of the Wall. Importantly, these which Fox might familiarize himself with his new surroundings terms only differentiate between the six sounds, as Fox did [3]. Fox traced the trajectory of the Wall on a large map of not specify what the sounds should be or even give any indica- Berlin and divided its course into sections according to their tion about their aural quality beyond these ambiguous words. position relative to the four corners of West Berlin. (The same A different organization of the object score Berlin Wall Scored was done to the zigzagging perimeter of East Berlin, although for Sound exists wherein the Wall is reassembled not in a sin- that border only intersected the Wall on its western side.) Fox gle continuous line but with sections presented on individual then drew straight lines to connect the vertices of West and staves, the shapes of which are then inverted or presented in East Berlin, upon which crisscrossed the topography of the their retrograde form, inviting the musically inclined viewer Wall itself. Each individual line was then disassociated from the to recall the treatment of thematic material by composers of the Second Viennese School [9]. Berlino is a continuing se- quence of acoustic sounds chosen from fragments of audio- Simon Polson (student), Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Australia, tape and incorporates soundscapes from Berlin, including a 8/36 Phillip St, Enmore, New South Wales, Australia, 2042. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 55–57, 2013 55 geography” inadvertently preserved “au- generated and thereby stripped of im- sounds made by the Wall itself can serve ral history”: Of the six sounds featured in plicit meaning) with which Schaeffer as a unifying feature: Gesturally, like the Fox’s own recording of Berlin Wall Scored experimented in his musique concrète col- Wall that Hood experienced, the piece for Sound, these two local soundscapes are lages of sound. By the composer’s design, rises and falls: the church bells toll and a of interest to this research. Ein Stück von der Mauer is an example of moment in time is announced, and the reduced listening, as each of the sounds Wall—and the collage—begins to fall on Ein Stück von der Mauer that compose the collage is deliberately itself. (Hood’s use of chiming bells here isolated from the context in which it to represent the fall of the Wall is not Experimental and computer music in originated. Without explicitly saying so, an isolated one: The same aural signi- Australia owes much of its develop- Hood’s own commentary on the piece fier for German reunification is used in ment to Sydney-based composer and hints at a kind of “reduced listening”: he Reinhard Mey’s 1990 track Mein Berlin educator Anthony Hood [10], whose writes, “I decided just to do a mix of the [17].) Hood’s palindromic collage stands performances with Australian electronic material capturing the sound I heard at as an intriguing contrast with Fox’s Ber- ensembles “watt” and OHM had been in- the time; especially the percussive sound lino, wherein soundscapes repeat without tegral to the establishment of sound art of people chipping at the wall I thought end, consigned to the oppression of the in Australia. Like Fox, Hood’s work en- was pretty amazing” [15]. The same can work’s infinite structure. Even with its du- compassed considerations of transforma- be said of the material in Fox’s Berlin Wall ration of 19'09", Berlino does not come tion and spatialization, but whereas Fox Scored for Sound, much of which was drawn to an end but, rather, the track simply worked across a variety of media, Hood’s from private recordings of soundscapes stops sounding. These are the sounds of focus has centered solely on sound since and studio activity wherein the artist was the Wall that would stand for “another the composer was aged 14. experimenting with acoustics [16]. hundred years”; Fox wrote of his piece Over New Year’s Eve 1989–1990, Hood What Hood calls the “material” of his that it is “endless, forming a loop, like traveled to Berlin, where the Wall once collage also includes the indistinguish- the Wall it describes” [18]. stood as one of the most enduring ges- able distant sounds of Berliners’ conver- tures of Cold War hostility. It had been sation, obscured by their distance from predicted earlier that year that contrary the listener. Only one man’s voice is es- The Diachronic Potential to Ronald Reagan’s famous demand, the pecially prominent (at 0'1.1") and even of Sound Art Wall would stand for “another hundred then, only one word is comprehensible: I propose that these pieces of sound art years” [11]. “mauer” (“wall”). Two girls approach need not only to be received as “art.” Of his experience in Berlin, Hood re- from the distance, singing with brisk am- Featuring as they do primary source field calls: ateurism the 1930s German sailor song recordings and soundscapes from signifi- I went over to Berlin for New Year’s Eve Wir lagen von Madagaskar. Their singing cant moments in time, the works possess 1989. . . . The big party was around the is interrupted at 2'52.4" by the discor- a historical, as well as cultural, value. Un- Brandenburg Gate on both the east and dant sounds of an organ grinder, a sud- like Schaeffer’s work, the historical impli- west sides and I ended up with some peo- den intrusion on the track’s left channel. cations of both Fox’s and Hood’s pieces ple on the east side (including drinking with some East German border guards at At 3'29.92" there occurs a sudden, jolt- problematize the composers’ suggestion one point). It was a pretty crazy night— ing shift: The tune played by the organ that these sounds were recorded for their people drinking and dancing on top of grinder reaches a disjointed half-cadence aural aesthetic alone. Sound of this sig- the Berlin Wall, where a few weeks ear- and is itself interrupted by a dense sound- nificance cannot be “reduced”; the value lier they would have been shot. I took scape of church and city bells ringing out of these sounds to the composer and the my Sony professional Walkman with me and made recordings that night. Over across Berlin. With time, the bells slowly audience alike surely hinges on the so- the following few days the West Berliners fade to the sound of the girls again, and cial and historical importance of their started chipping away at the Wall, trying of the Berliners’ conversation and the context, not on their content alone. By to souvenir pieces as it became obvious one prominent, anonymous male voice their titles as well as their subject material that it was going to come down [12]. from the beginning. All the while, the (and indeed, their subject matter, since Some years later Hood transformed collage is unified by the ongoing, percus- both composers titled their works with his recordings into the work he titled sive high-pitch of sickle hammers chip- allusions to the Berlin Wall), the sound- Ein Stück von der Mauer (“A Piece of the ping at concrete. scapes in Berlino and field recordings in Wall”). Unlike Fox’s work, Hood’s Ein In an article discussing the Berlin Ein Stück von der Mauer are records of his- Stück von der Mauer was intended from Wall, an allusion to “unity” might seem tory as much as they are recordings of the beginning as a piece of sound art, out of place, even foreign. Its inclusion sound. If the reader allows for the study conceived, according to the composer, is deliberate, however, for the opportu- of history to encompass a reconstruction “to be received over radio or internet or nity it provides to comment on the self- of events and not just the study of events done as an installation” [13]. referential structural features in both in a sequence, Fox’s soundscapes and Given the age at which he began ex- Fox’s and Hood’s works. The score illus- Hood’s sound collage contribute aurally perimenting with the genre, it is no trates a curious feature of Ein Stück von to the reconstruction of the historical surprise that Hood’s Ein Stück von der der Mauer: Structurally, the sound col- narrative. Hood recalls that he decided Mauer should demonstrate the central lage is a palindrome. The interruption against composing an overtly “political” principles of electronic music articulated of musical instruments toward the work’s piece [19]; structurally and materially, in those mid-20th-century treatises by central point (“C”) is bordered on either however, it was impossible that the artists Pierre Schaeffer and his contemporaries side by the sounds of conversation (“A”) avoid politics or history, altogether. Like- [14]. Prominent among Schaeffer’s ideas and singing (“B”), which are heard in wise, the sounds of a military helicopter is the concept of the acousmatique sound reverse order on their repeat: The piece gain extra-aural significance in a work (that is, a “reduced listening” of sound exhibits a deliberately palindromic A-B- whose title refers to Berlin, where their divorced from the context in which it is C-B-A form. It is for this reason that the presence, the composer notes, was an al-
56 Polson, (Demolishing) Concrete Music most daily reminder of the greater Ger- ography as history; to the musicologist, 6. The record is Berlino/Rallentando (Apollo Records man context at the time. Aural historians as much history as music. AR 088807) and was released in 1988. Segment of the Berlin Wall, Scored for Sound was released in 1984 on a are keen to lament the difficulty in recon- There is every chance the reader will compilation cassette of experimental music by Stich structing the sounds of the past [20]: The consider this article and its intersectional ting De Appel. The track has a duration of 4:34. discipline of history has long privileged approach to field recording, sound art 7. I am grateful to Genevieve Cottraux at the Berke- the visual record (writing, paintings and, and history restricted in its theory, pos- ley Art Museum for her generosity and time supply- more recently, photographs) over other sibly even applicable only to the two ing the image. means. Their discipline suggests that our pieces of sound art referenced herein. 8. Fox [2] p. 78. only hints at how events in the past may Perhaps this is an enthusiastic, albeit ac- have sounded exist in written descrip- cidental, reflection on my own response 9. The Berlin Wall Scored for Sound, pencil on paper, 79.5 × 77 cm, private collection. A reproduction of tions. Yet with the advent of accessible to the concept, content and form of this score may be found in Block et al. [5]. Further technology (such as tape recorders), Berlin Wall Scored for Sound and Ein Stück reproductions of the work may be found online at there is now a variety of forms that the von der Mauer. But these works are not
Polson, (Demolishing) Concrete Music 57 Announcing
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Edited by Tami I. Spector, Art and Atoms explores the cutting edge of the chemical sciences, art and aesthet- ics. Tracking chemistry through the 40 years of Leonardo’s archives reveals a chronological transformation in the manifestations of “chemistry and art.” In general, the earliest papers, from the 1960s and 1970s, concern themselves with the development of new chemicals and chemically based methods for creating art. Many of the more recent papers have a theoreti- cal slant, with the most recent emphasizing nanoscience. Based on changing trends in the field since the 1960s, the articles in this e-book fall naturally into the following four topic areas: • Chemical Materiality and Art • Atomic and Molecular Representations • Chemical Concepts, Analogy and Metaphor • Nanoscience The e-book was produced by Leonardo/ISAST and MIT Press. See
Daniele Balit
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The notion of discreet sound age against the achine arises through the encounter of R M the sonic avant-garde with the Sound has the ability to induce unsettling sensations such as Yet surprisingly enough, no less post-studio methods of the field disorientation, nausea or dizziness. Even so, it can be aston- a figure of reference than John of sculpture: a distinctive, situ- ishing to see an entire audience driven into a violent rage, Cage was quite critical of the idea ational aesthetics that aspires to relocate, and sometimes to as I witnessed during Florian Hecker’s concert at the Centre of regulating the listener’s atten- disperse, the listening experi- Pompidou in February 2012. tion: “It is like bringing the audi- ence within the varied spaces The empty stage and the illuminated auditorium made ence to school,” commented Cage of everyday life. In sound it clear from the beginning that Hecker was attempting to on Young’s transcendental music. art, however, there seems a predominant interest in the deny his listeners a conventional experience. However, his “But when you finish your studies sounding object as an experi- fast, cutting sounds triggered a rather unpredictable series of and you enter in life you don’t find ence delivered to the audience responses, bringing the room to a situation of total anarchy in it the perfection you were trying through indoor modalities. By within a few minutes. At first, someone stood up flapping and to obtain” [2]. comparing these two tenden- screaming to have the volume lowered. This then sparked a Dissociating himself from one cies, this article observes some of the implications for the ways further series of protests, some against a console controlled of the most influential models in which we think about the site offstage by Hecker, while others were directed at the protesters on sonic practices, Cage rejected and modes specific to listening themselves. A member of the audience burst onto the stage, Young’s essentialism as “dualistic.” practices. firmly raising his middle finger at the artist. Another man Such critique, even today, takes soon followed—perhaps feeling the need for a more drastic a novel position in the debate on action—and promptly tore down the PA system. The concert sound, a debate that seems more of- was finally brought to a standstill and the situation then re- ten preoccupied with the hierarchies between the visual and ported to the police. the aural than with those that govern the internal processes Among several possible readings of this episode, one could of sound making. Undermining dualisms between subject and say that such revolt signified a powerful and abrupt moment object, composer and listener, art and everyday life, was at the of disobedience on the part of the listener. It can be read core of the Cagean project and should thus be recognized as a breaking point in the history of sonic experimentation, among the factors at the origin of a new sound aesthetics. where the passive role often imposed on the audience by the composer had finally become subverted. Hecker is known for manipulating sounds to act on a psy- The Third Ear choacoustic level. Indeed, despite the fact that the Pompi- Psychoacoustics is one of the new distinctive areas surveyed by dou’s audience impulsively demanded a decrease in volume, sonic practices. Since Young’s minimalism opened up an un- it would seem that their general intolerance was founded less explored microscopic dimension of sound, the “third ear,” to on quantity (to the level of sound) than on quality (to the type borrow Maryanne Amacher’s term, has been central for com- of sounds). In my experience, these unsettling sensations were posers and sound artists. Hecker figures as someone who has different from having the whole body exposed to high levels recently expanded psychoacoustic research by making it a tool of sound, as for instance in the case of noise music. This was more about a breaching of intimacy. Hecker’s piercing sounds provoked a violation of a particular space inside the head that Fig. 1. Florian Hecker, Chimerization, installation view, exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, London, 23 November 2012–19 January 2013. is rather difficult to locate and thus to protect. The Pompidou (© Florian Hecker. Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London.) riot was a revolt of the audience against such an intrusion of the composer, a way to deny access to their private, psychic space. Sonic culture is a new yet very demanding area. It may re- quire ear cleaning exercises (R. Murray Schafer), deep listen- ing practice (Pauline Oliveros), sustained and active listening (Hecker) or “to adjust one’s nervous system and vibrate with the frequencies of the environment” (La Monte Young) [1]. Such approaches somehow exert an authority on the audi- ence; they claim to supervise the listening experience.
Daniele Balit (curator, art historian), 45, Rue de Belleville, Paris, France. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 59–63, 2013 59 sound. By eradicating echoes through the sound-absorbent materials of the booth, Hecker is basically silencing the essential relation between sound and space, cutting all ties with nature. It is interesting to compare Chimeri- zation with a work that originated from a similar interest in the physiology of the ear, yet developed in a different, if not opposite, direction: Organ of Corti, a device conceived by the duo Liminal (formed by architect Frances Crow and sound artist David Prior) and awarded with the PRS for Music Foundation’s New Music Award in 2010 [4] (Fig. 3). As with the phenomenon of the audi- tory chimera that inspired Hecker, Limi- nal’s project similarly refers to the way in which sonic frequencies are distributed and remapped across the surface of the Fig. 2. Florian Hecker, Chimerization, processed production still, 2012. The image, processed inner ear. Yet unlike Hecker’s installa- with a SIFT flow algorithm, depicts the anechoic booth used for the vocal recordings for tion, the emphasis moves to the relation Chimerization during a residency of the artist at the MIT/List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, that this process entertains with space, MA. (© Florian Hecker. Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London.) since Organ of Corti essentially reproduces the “tonotopic mapping” phenomena, for conceptual investigation, as well as piece” therefore induces some continu- which happen inside the ear, on an ar- dissecting its perceptual scope through ous modulations in the way we recognize chitectural scale. artificial processes often readapted from language, in an attempt to blur the dif- Rather than producing and controlling scientific fields. ferences between natural and synthetic a sonic environment, as in Hecker’s case, For Chimerization, an immersive sound vocal processes [3]. Organ of Corti acts through a “passive” work premiered at dOCUMENTA 13 To emphasize the artificiality of these process, as an acoustic filter of the noise in Kassel, 2012, Hecker appropriated processes, Hecker recorded the voices of the environment, responding only to the notion of “auditory chimera” from that recite the textual material inside the alternating range in frequency across medical research on cochlear implants anechoic booths—an isolated and alien- space. This effect is achieved through the (Fig. 1). The process of synthetically ex- ating situation that served as means to use of metamaterials, in this instance tracting and transferring properties be- affect speech (Fig. 2). In this case, rather “sonic crystals”—artificial materials tween different perceived sounds served than the site for a contemplative Cagean structured on a microscopic level to ma- Hecker as a means to disrupt the way in experience, the anechoic chamber be- nipulate sound or light waves in specific which we detect voice. His “text sound comes a laboratory for the alteration of patterns. While Hecker’s work was about
Fig. 3. Liminal’s Organ of Corti outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, Lon- don, July 2011. (© Liminal. Photo © Chris Kennedy)
60 Balit, From Ear to Site the outside world to the inside of the gal- lery, the work dismisses the norms of the modernist institution that perpetuate the quarantine of the artistic experience and transforms the gallery into an instrument that resonates with the sounds of the everyday—a way for Asher to relocate the artistic agency within the extramural [6].
A New Home for Music The course taken by Asher in Pomona is one that fully embraces Cagean aesthet- ics, even though there are no accounts of direct influence. Asher’s installation transposes into the gallery context sev- eral of the principles upon which Cage structured his opposition to the musical tradition, namely, the rejection of the composition as object; its expansion be- yond the walls of the auditorium; the dis- persal of the performance space across the “field situation”; and the aim to free Fig. 4. Michael Asher, untitled installation for the Gladys K. Montgomery Art Center Gallery the artistic experience from predetermi- at Pomona College, Claremont, California, 13 February–8 March 1970. View out of the gal- nation and authorial control. lery toward the street from a small triangular area. Photo taken with daylight. (© the Asher If we look at the evolution of sound Trust. Courtesy of the Asher Trust. Photo courtesy of the Frank J. Thomas Archives.) aesthetics, however, it seems that its main trajectories lead elsewhere. Exploded, artificially interrupting the relationship recontextualizing, rather than generat- imploded or chimerized, the sonic object between sound and space, Organ of Corti ing, sound. remains ascribed to a framework that ac- is about reorganizing found sounds and Yet the distinctive aspect of Asher’s tually conserves the chain of hierarchies “framing them in a new way” [5]. Limi- project is the way in which the auditory expressed by the subject-object relation nal’s approach insists on the contextual experience constitutes a vehicle for a cri- (and the Pompidou riot demonstrates nature of sound as mirroring the struc- tique of institutional norms (a main pre- how this bond can be perceived as im- ture of things, rather than affirming its occupation of his career). The Pomona prisoning). own structure. installation is an attempt to dilute the From Young’s immersive environments hierarchies between the visitor and the to the neo-modernist and sensory-based art object into a decentralized, topo- approach to sound [7], from concrete to Field Situations graphical aural experience. Moreover, electroacoustic morphing, the act of lis- If we take a step backward, this morpho- by opening a sonic corridor connecting tening seems to have been reconducted, logical association of sound and space can be historically identified as the cata- lyst for the encounter between visual and Fig. 5. Michael Asher, axonometric drawing of the installation for the Gladys K. Montgomery Art Center Gallery at Pomona College, Claremont, California, 13 February–8 March 1970. aural languages. Some of Michael Ash- Thicker line indicates configuration of the space within the gallery. (Drawing by Lawrence er’s early works, for instance, focused on Kenny. © the Asher Trust. Courtesy of the Asher Trust.) the relationship between acoustics and architecture. His installation at Pomona College in California (1970) is one ex- ample in which he radically modified the configuration of the gallery. Asher removed the entrance door, lowered the ceiling and built some extra walls, creat- ing a corridor for the intensification of the sounds coming from outside the gal- lery (Figs 4 and 5). By such contextual and structural ac- tion on the auditory space, Asher some- how caused the gallery to function as a metamaterial, but by acting on the mac- rostructures of the gallery rather than by employing the microscopic patterns of sonic crystals. The Pomona installa- tion furthermore parallels the idea of a passive device, not dissimilar to Organ of Corti. Both devices process a soundscape,
Balit, From Ear to Site 61 From Space to Place Fig. 6. Susan “A place has a character; a space doesn’t Philipsz, Surround have a character,” said Neuhaus, in re- Me—A Song Cycle for the City of London, lation to his “place works,” which were Artangel commis- mainly devised for outdoor situations. sion, London, “So calling them ‘sound spaces’ didn’t 9 October 2010– make sense. They are about building a 2 January 2011. place, a new place from my imagination, (© Susan Philipsz. Photo: Nick Ash, out of a specific place” [10]. The passage Courtesy of Susan from space to place seems also to be a sig- Philipz, Galerie nificant concern in more recent sound- Isabella Bortolozzi, based practices, notably those of Susan Berlin) Philipsz (Fig. 6) and Janet Cardiff. By remodeling places through aural tools, both Philipsz and Cardiff create some experiential misreadings: confounding inner and outer worlds, producing shifts between what is perceived and what is im- agined; between the visible and the invis- ible. Although these artists often operate outside the gallery space, it is interesting to register how they have both received firm institutional backing [11]. An ecological system within art is in- herently affected by contradictions. When speaking about the risks in the cohabitation of art with life, philoso- pher Jacques Rancière warns of a loss of autonomy, of diluting art’s difference in the everyday [12]. However, just as Erik or rather maintained, in the intramural territory through critical in situ interven- Satie defended the nonmusicality of his context. The notion of the soundscape tions, contextual works, infiltrations and furniture music, the discreet practice itself has turned into an objectified ex- other forms of intrusion within the so- acts on the possibility of integrating this perience, captured and transcoded into cial fabric, often resulting in less visible paradox into its format. This perhaps indoor formulas, despite R. Murray and non-object-based outcomes. Rather explains why Neuhaus decided to locate Schafer’s claim for the recontextualiza- than affirming the artistic presence, the his famous Times Square sound installa- tion of our listening practice beyond the primary focus of these strategies is to gen- tion (1977–1992, 2002–present) in one walls of the auditorium [8]. erate new forms of interrogation within of the noisiest places in the world (Figs Yet Cage’s project concerns itself more “ordinary” reality, as an aural practice 7 and 8). with an “ecological music” rather than subsumed within a context-oriented, The somewhat radical position taken with an acoustic ecology—a notion he aesthetic program [9]. up by Neuhaus indeed fully accepted the adopted privileging the original mean- ing of the Greek term oijko~ (home), as Fig. 7. Max Neuhaus installing Times Square, 1977. (© Estate of Max Neuhaus. Courtesy he sought to enable music to inhabit the Butler Library, Columbia University.) world. Considering how the sonic field has generally dismissed the extramural hy- pothesis, the individual trajectories of artists such as Asher or, to cite another significant example, Max Neuhaus, are distinctive in the way they have located the tools to pursue a post-Cagean mu- sical project within a post-minimalist sculptural practice—Asher fairly inter- mittently, as mentioned above, whereas Neuhaus did so with a more dedicated and extended engagement. Both of these artists moved away from minimalism’s purely phenomenological, gallery-focused approach towards a situ- ational aesthetics (where the term “situ- ation” stands for an expanded notion of site)—a shift in the field of aural prac- tices that I propose as “discreet sound”: namely, attempts to expand the artistic
62 Balit, From Ear to Site non-art that allows an “aesthetic regime” to occur, causing the reconfiguration of the real. Unlike the sensory plenitude and sonic continuum often pledged by sound art, the project for discreet sound acts in a fragmented fashion. While remaining distinct from ordinary life, it interferes with and syncopates the rhythm of natu- ral occurrences.
References and Notes 1. La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, “Kontinui- erliche Klang-Licht-Environments,” Inventionen ’92 (Berlin: Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, 1992) p. 45. 2. John Cage, in Jacqueline Caux and Daniel Caux, “John Cage: Une expérience qui a changé ma façon d’entendre,” Chroniques de l’Art Vivant, No. 30 (May 1972) p. 26 (author’s translation). Other parts of the interview are quoted in Branden W. Joseph, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (A “Minor” History) (New York: Zone Books, 2008). Fig. 8. Max Neuhaus, Aural Topography of Times Square Sound Work, drawing on paper, 1977. (© Estate of Max Neuhaus. Courtesy Butler Library, Columbia University.) 3. Audio file of the work accessible at
12. See Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, Gabriel Rockhill, trans. (New York: Continuum, 2006).
Manuscript received 2 January 2013.
Daniele Balit is an Italian curator and art historian based in Paris. He holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary Art History from La Sor- bonne University—Paris I, investigating the impact of sound-based practices on the exhibi- tion context. He is the founder of Birdcage, an itinerant sound gallery producing in situ interventions.
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This paper defines the object- Ethan Rose based sound installation as a distinct category of sound art that emerges from the intersec- tion of live musical performance and the sonic possibilities of the recording studio. In order to contextualize this emergent n the past century, electronic music has po- technology of sound record- category, connections are I drawn among the rationaliza- sitioned sound away from the visibly performing body and ing, transmission and synthesis within the exclusive realm of the auditory. Through the pro- can be understood as emerging tion of the senses, automated musical instruments, the lineage cess of recording, the sonic event can be both temporally and from the historic distillation of of recorded sound and the spatially dislocated from its visible counterpart, and this has listening as a discrete category of notion of absolute music. This greatly impacted the relationship between music and per- perceptual experience. As Sterne interwoven history provides the formance. Many critics and musicologists have explored the states: “During the Enlightenment necessary backdrop for the ways in which this condition of reproducibility affects the live interpretation of three major and afterward, the sense of hearing works by Steven Reich, Alvin performance of electronic music. Instead of investigating the became an object of contempla- Lucier and Zimoun. These specificities of the traditions of performance in regard to the tion. It was measured, objectified, respective pieces are described stage, I am interested in exploring the ways in which the per- isolated, and simulated” [5]. in order to elucidate the ways formance of electronic or studio-based composition plays out Along with other cultural fac- in which object-based sound installations introduce embodied in the less-traditional art form of sound installation. tors, this objective understanding of visibility into the transformative The specific sort of sound installation I discuss here has sound through the lens of Western gestures of sound reproduction. not, to my knowledge, been categorized. I am not particu- science and philosophy contributed larly interested in the idea of assigning categories, but for the to the birth of absolute music in the sake of discourse, I will describe this type of installation as Romantic era. Absolute music was an object-based sound installation. I would typify the works that considered to be autonomous, internalized and separate from fall under this heading as those that engage an audience by the worldly and was positioned in opposition to program mu- actuating a visibly present object. My intention is to describe sic, which was considered to be narrative and therefore of the how these object-based sound installations exist in a linkage world. It is important to note that these cultural constructs of between sight, sound and body in dialogue with the history musical form both enabled and were enabled by the concept of electronic music and more specifically the ways in which of listening as a separate sense. The rationalization of percep- these installations translate the transformative powers of the tion laid the groundwork for an understanding of listening sound studio into visibly embodied articulations. In order to that transcends the visible world through the gateway of sonic convey this idea, I begin by broadly outlining a brief history of purity. In this regard, the absoluteness of music is interwoven listening in the West; then, in the second half of this paper, I with the idea of listening as a distinct perceptual experience. outline specific examples of installations that engage this his- Coinciding with this concept of absolute music, and simi- tory through the nature and form of their content. larly related to a rationalization of the human body, was the development of automated musical instruments. These instru- ments mimicked and extended the actions of the human body The Distillation of Listening through the use of mechanical technology. Automated instru- Over the course of the past decade, a number of texts have ments date back to antiquity but rose in popularity in the late emerged that investigate and historicize contemporary modes 19th century as new developments in technology and produc- of listening. I am thinking specifically of Jonathan Sterne’s tion increased [6]. These instruments removed the performer Audible Past [1] and Emily Thompson’s Soundscape of Modernity from the performance of music, replacing the instrumentalist [2]. These authors, among others, point to modernity’s ratio- with a mechanical, material object, and in the process circum- nalization of the senses and the subsequent impact on listen- navigated the performer’s mediation between the composer ing, technology and the West’s understanding of the sonic. and the heard composition. The automated instruments also Historically, one can trace this rationalization of the senses manifested an exacting clockwork performance, one that to antiquity, when Greek philosophers separated the senses could be reproduced again and again without the interven- into five discrete categories [3]. This concept was reinvigo- tion of human interpretation or error. rated in the Renaissance through the philosophy of Descartes The same cultural circumstance that gave rise to both the and his contemporaries, who conceived of these perceptions performerless reproducibility of automated instruments and as mechanisms of the body from which the mind can gather the aural-centrism of absolute music led to the possibility of an understanding of the world [4]. In the modern era, the recorded sound. It is crucial to note that electronic music and the sound studio emerge from this history as the ideal, abso- lute, rationalized “nonplace” that focuses attention away from the other senses and into the domain of the ear. It is within the Ethan Rose (artist), 1765 W. Sunnyside Ave, Apartment 1, Chicago, IL 60640, U.S.A. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 65–69, 2013 65 The recording studio yielded a sen- than addressing the sustained impact of work; as the score explains, they trigger sation of command over nature in new the questions that it raises. Recording the piece and then retire to the audience and powerful ways. More specifically, technology and the modernist approach as the work unfolds. the studio allowed for the manipula- to absolute listening have created a di- In this performance, what we see is tion of the most fundamental building verse range of response within the dis- inextricably tied to what we hear. Reich blocks of how we experience sound. The ciplines of music and sound art. In the takes a single condition of sound tech- composer is able not only to synthesize second half of this paper I explore what nology (feedback) and combines it with content away from the world but also to I understand as a distinct reaction to this a single condition of physical motion change the sonic event through trans- history: the emergence of object-based (the swinging pendulum). Either of formations of space and time. These ma- sound installations meant to translate these conditions would be extremely fa- nipulations unfold in ways that appear the tools of the recording studio into a miliar to most anyone who has ever seen to transcend our corporeal limitations, visible, bodily presence. I do not advo- a mechanical clock or attended an am- outfitting the studio practitioner with cate these works as the solution to the plified concert. Through an intentional tools that simulate a material control modernist problem but rather note their didacticism, the two culturally prevalent over nature. For instance, with the ad- delineation of a specific set of questions conditions converge, and the audience vent of recorded sound, we are able to with which to investigate the conditions quickly becomes aware of how the piece start and stop events in time in unnatural of sound-making in relation to the expe- functions through the process of its un- and physically impossible ways. Time can rience of contemporary listening. folding. This extremely intentional visual be reversed, slowed down, sped up, cut didacticism is important in the wake of up and reordered. Similarly, physically modernism’s separation of the senses. In impossible spatial environments can be Pendulum Music order to be understood, the process is to created through the use of reverb and For the first example, consider Steve be watched as well as listened to. echo; alternatively, by adjusting volume Reich’s Pendulum Music (Fig. 1), com- The idea of watching microphones and between sources, the simulation of un- posed in 1968. Reich’s score describes speakers as opposed to just listening to worldly relational proximities can be the piece as follows: these speakers problematizes modern- established. In many ways, these transfor- ism’s idea of absolute listening by em- mations can be understood as fantastic 2, 3, 4, or more microphones are sus- bracing the visibility of motion. The same pended from the ceiling by their cables extensions of our corporeal selves in pur- so that all hang the same distance from speakers that statically rested on the stage suit of a pure sonic reality that transcends the floor and are all free to swing with of Schaeffer’s absolute music are dynami- the physical world. Absolute music is thus a pendular motion. Each microphone’s cally repositioned and perform through inextricably intertwined with the fabric cable is plugged into an amplifier which embodied movement. Instead of repro- is connected to a speaker. Each micro- of the sound studio. phone hangs a few inches directly above ducing pre-composed sounds, the work A formal investigation of transcen- or next to its speaker [8]. transforms sounds into instruments dence of the worldly can be plainly recog- that produce unique feedback tones nized in Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète The performance begins with the per- based upon their physical forms (shape, of the 1940s. Through the use of the stu- formers each taking a mic and pulling it weight, size, etc.), as well as on their re- dio techniques outlined above, Schaeffer back like a swing; all then release each lationships to the material aspects of the worked to create a philosophy of music one in unison. The performers then microphones and the acoustic resonance that functions as a complete disloca- carefully turn up each amplifier just to of the performance space. The speaker/ tion of listening from the other senses. the point at which feedback occurs when microphone/space interaction becomes Schaeffer’s objets sonores (sound objects) a mic swings directly over or next to its an instrument of sorts, albeit an instru- were meant to be heard not as referen- speaker. Thus, a series of feedback pulses ment that is (almost) visibly devoid of the tial signifiers but instead as sounds unto are heard that may all occur in unison bodily presence of a human performer. themselves, divorced from the context depending on the gradually changing Through the motion of their inter- of visual meanings [7]. Musique concrète phase relations of the different mic pen- action, the microphones and speakers moved the act of composition into the dulums. transcend instrumentality in the con- studio and in so doing complicated the Performers then sit down to watch and ventional sense and can be better under- traditions of music, especially in regard listen to the process along with the audi- stood as gestural performing bodies in to its performance. Schaeffer and his ence. The piece is ended sometime after and of themselves. This is strikingly simi- contemporaries were confronted by the all the mics have come to rest and are lar to the conditions of the automated fact that works created in the idealized feeding back a continuous tone, as per- musical instruments that predate record- neutrality of the recording studio were formers have pulled out the power cords ing technology. For instance, the instru- difficult to situate outside of the studio of the amplifiers [9]. ments produce sound through visible environment. To “perform” these works This piece is clearly not an installa- motion in the absence of a human per- often simply involved placing speakers tion as such. It is a composed score that former. The performers clearly instigate on a stage in place of human perform- calls for a series of specific actions from the piece but quickly depart the stage to ers. The speakers acted as visually static a group of human performers to a seated focus audiovisual attention on the body objects that exactingly reproduced the audience. However, I wish to start with of the instrument. Like the player of au- previous actions of the composer. this composition because it can be easily tomated instruments, the performers re- In an effort to extract listening from understood as a work that combines the quire no training or musical skill; simply the other senses, modernity distilled the tools of the sound studio with the con- dropping the microphone and adjusting concept of absolute music into the ideal- ventions of performance in a way that the volume are reminiscent of winding ized form of absolute sound. Polemically leads toward the idea of object-based the spring on a music box or crank- prescribing a distinct success or failure sound installations. Also, the perform- ing a pump organ—basic actions that of this inclination seems less important ers appear almost inconsequential to the any novice could perform. Just as with
66 Rose, Translating Transformations Fig. 1. Steve Reich, Pendulum Music for 3 or 4 Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers, composed in 1968. (© 1980 Universal Edition [London] Ltd., London/UE 16155. Photo courtesy of Richard Landry. Used by permission.)
an automated instrument, the appar- Music on a Long Thin Wire is constructed the vibration, the visibly vibrating wire is ent motion and causality of the sound- as follows: the wire is extended across a clearly creating the sound that one hears. producing object is simultaneously seen large room, clamped to tables at both By translating a pure and invisible mode ends. The ends of the wire are connected and heard. Even the pendular motion to the terminals of a power amplifier of sonic vibration (a sine wave oscilla- directly evokes an antiquated, mechani- placed under one of the tables. A sine tor) into a visible, physical material (a vi- cal, clockwork device, further tying the wave oscillator is connected to the ampli- brating metal wire), Lucier converts the work to a mechanical past. fier. A magnet straddles the wire at one nonvisual sonic techniques of the sound end. Wooden bridges are inserted under However, Pendulum Music does not the wire at both ends to which contact studio into the visible realm of a perform- simply mimic the automated musical microphones are imbedded, routed to a ing object. instruments of time gone by. It is im- stereo sound system. The microphones Lucier’s choice to treat this work as portant to note that the repeatability of pick up the vibrations that the wire im- an installation as opposed to a perfor- the composition is, by intent, not exactly parts to the bridges and are sent through mance is significant. While it is possible the playback system. By varying the fre- reproducible in the way that automated quency and loudness of the oscillator, a to vary the oscillation and play the wire instruments generally are. Each time the rich variety of slides, frequency shifts, au- as a live performer, Lucier “decided to performance occurs, it will sound slightly dible beats and other sonic phenomena remove [his] hand from the musical different, depending on a whole host of may be produced [10]. process” [13]. In this sense he goes one worldly factors. In this way, Pendulum Mu- step further than Reich, divorcing the sic passes through the lens of automated Like Reich’s Pendulum Music, Lu- visibility of the performer entirely from instruments by engaging an imprecise cier’s piece includes a set of distinct the performance of the musical process. mechanism that depends on physical instructions that trigger a visual/sonic This choice puts an even greater empha- laws. Visually revealing the undoing of experience that depends on the basic sis on the visible/auditory presence of reproducibility through the mechaniza- physicality of material conditions. At the object, allowing visitors to approach tion of the very tools of reproducibility first Lucier experimented with perform- the material intimately without the usual is a clear departure from the modernist ing on the wire by manipulating the pitch boundary of audience/performer. The ideal. of the audio oscillator but ultimately he performerless, automatic nature of the In an effort to bring the transformative decided to remove the presence of a vis- work allows a close proximity to material- tools of the recording studio into a per- ible human performer, choosing instead ity that is also reminiscent of mechanical formance setting, Pendulum Music posi- to leave the oscillator on a single setting. musical instruments. With the removal tions the technology of the sound studio “I discovered that by carefully tuning the of the performer, one becomes not only against the history of automated instru- oscillator, the wire could be left to sound more aware of the mechanism of perfor- ments and more generally against the his- by itself. Fatigue, air currents, heating mance but also more intimately atten- tory of performance and reproducibility. and cooling, even human proximity tive to the material that is producing the Reich eventually went on to depart sig- could cause the wire to undergo enor- sound. nificantly both from studio technology mous changes” [11]. Lucier’s piece may The installed nature of a work such as and from the performerless approach of not be as extreme in its visibly didactic this also undoes any idea of fixed perfor- sounding objects, focusing instead on a qualities as Reich’s, because many of the mative duration. The sound of the wire body of work that dealt explicitly with a conditions that affect the sound of the proceeds continuously, limited by the return to human performance. work are not visible. However, the vis- duration of its exhibition rather than by ibility of the wire in motion is extremely the timed attendance of a seated audi- important, as Lucier instructs: “Light the ence. In this way, the piece fades in as usic on a ong hin ire M L T W wire so that the modes of vibration are each visitor makes a bodily approach The second piece I discuss is Alvin Lu- visible to viewers” [12]. and fades away in volume upon depar- cier’s Music on a Long Thin Wire (Fig. 2). While it may not be clear to most visi- ture, mimicking the ebb and flow of a Lucier instructs: tors what exactly is causing or affecting volume pot as it is turned up or down in
Rose, Translating Transformations 67 a studio. Just as the music might seem to boxes 71×71×71cm, 80 cotton balls at- acoustic differences that can be heard continue after the volume fades out on tached to 80 DC motors randomly beat within the sonic character of each indi- a vamp at the end of a pop song, so does against 80 cardboard boxes (Fig. 3). Rep- vidual object. This aspect of the installa- a sound installation physically engage etitions of this single mechanical action tion is intensified by the spatialization of this sense of continuity as one departs combine in great number across stacks of the work. Upon entering the space, one the space. It is through the movement of boxes to create a dense and continuous hears an apparently continuous sound, one’s body that one fades the volume of soundscape. but as one approaches the work, what the piece down, simply by walking away The repeating forms of single points of emerges is an auditory awareness of the from the installation. The audience is sound are relatable to more recent devel- distinct rhythm and timbre of each of put in bodily control of the termination opments in recording technology that al- the sounding objects. The visibility of of their own musical experience, subtly low electronic musicians to copy, cut and the object’s motion emphasizes this rela- translating the transformative processes paste sounds over and over again, looping tionship, allowing the listener visually to of the recording studio into a physically and layering a single sound event into a focus in and to hear the individual sonic embodied experience. similarly dense sonic landscape. Zimoun event of a single cotton ball in motion. has successfully translated this digital In a sense this spatialization of discrete editing process into a mechanical, physi- sound events encourages visitors to mix prepared dc motors 80 - , cal presentation, thus making visible the the piece by moving through the space cotton balls, cardboard layering that the studio so easily allows. with their own bodies. The body of the boxes 71×71×71cm The use of industrially manufactured ma- listener again mimics the volume fader The final work to address is one by Zi- terials allows the physical objects visually of the studio, intensifying and focusing moun, a contemporary Swiss artist known to mimic the reproducibility of sound in attention on specific sound events within for a growing number of object-based the studio environment. the context of a larger whole. Also, as in sound installations. Utilizing common- Of course this reproducibility is com- Lucier’s and many other sound instal- place, inexpensively procured materials, plicated by the inherently idiosyncratic lations, when we depart the space we Zimoun’s work grows out of the advanc- sonic quality of each object’s sound. perform a final bodily interaction as the ing popularity of DIY electronics. In 80 Thus, the exacting uniformity of the ma- sounds of the installation crossfade into prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, cardboard terial is partially undone by the subtle the sounds of the everyday.
Fig. 2. Alvin Lucier, Music on a Long Thin Wire, conceived in 1977. Realization for the filmNO IDEAS BUT IN THINGS—The Composer Alvin Lucier by Viola Rusche and Hauke Harder at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2011. (© Alvin Lucier. Photo © Viola Rusche and Hauke Harder.)
68 Rose, Translating Transformations Fig. 3. Zimoun, 80 prepared dc-motors, cotton balls, cardboard boxes 71×71×71cm, sound installation, 2011. (© Zimoun. Photo courtesy of Studio Zimoun.)
All three of these examples present Object-based sound installations exist in 8. S. Reich and P. Hillier, Writings on Music: 1965– attempts at new modalities of perfor- dialogue with the history of listening in 2000 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002) p. 32. mance by breaking away from the sonic the West as they seek to introduce sight 9. Reich [8]. hegemony of the recording studio and and body into the transformative possi- 10. A. Lucier, Music on a Long Thin Wire, CD Liner notes (New York: Lovely Music, 1992) p. 1. For a dis- into the realm of visibly embodied sonic bilities of the recording studio. cussion of this work, see also Hauke Harder, “Music objects. These works do not represent a on a Long Thin Wire,” On-Line Supplement, Leo denial of the recording studio as a tool Manuscript received 2 January 2013. nardo Music Journal 22 (2012):
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a b s t r a c t
Silencing and musicaliza- Dugal McKinnon tion, as defined by Douglas Kahn, are valuable means to call attention to the sonically liminal. They create a frame ilence in sound art assumes multiple roles Cage’s contribution to the emer- within which acoustic silence S can be attended to, either as and forms, which are not true acoustic silences but rather gence of soundscape composition sonic liminalities in both the perceptual and acoustic senses; and acoustic ecology is apparent a conceptual phenomenon or as the dead silence of sounds sounds that we can barely hear or of which we are not aware in the formal definition of the and soundmakers subjected to until alerted to them. Heard this way, silence corresponds to soundscape as “the sonic envi- ecological silencing. Through the best known of all silences in the arts, that of John Cage, ronment” [8], suggesting that all critical discussion of silence in which of course is not silent at all. As Cage put it, “There is sound constitutes the soundscape. Kahn’s writing on John Cage, as no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There well as in acoustic ecology and Silence is of course a component soundscape composition, an is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as of the soundscape and is under- outline of ecological silencing is we may to make a silence, we cannot” [1]. Cage’s repurpos- stood pragmatically within acoustic developed and applied through ing of the intentional listening of musical experience opened ecology and soundscape composi- the examination of environmen- up the sonic environment to the same aesthetic appreciation tion. In Barry Truax’s definition, tally engaged sound works by Sally Ann McIntyre of New that had until then been associated most strongly with music. a hi-fi soundscape is one in which Zealand and Katie Paterson of Cage’s silence was a provocative foray into the heterogeneity the sonic environment is acousti- Great Britain. of the sonic environment, extending from the Futurist fasci- cally transparent. It is one that is nation with urban-industrial sound (as Cage commented late comparatively silent, in that there in his life, “The experience of silence . . . almost anywhere in is a relative absence of ambient, or the world today, is traffic” [2]), and his work established the unwanted, sound in comparison to lo-fi soundscapes, which ground for the emergence of soundscape composition and are acoustically opaque, or noisy [9]. Given the green tone acoustic ecology, evident in the influence of Cage upon R. of acoustic ecology and soundscape composition, hi-fi sound- Murray Schafer [3]. scapes in that context connote the prized natural environment Cage’s silence is predicated on acoustic presence, however while lo-fi soundscapes are associated with the (debased) built marginal it may be. To experience Cagean silence (“ambi- environment. The sounds of the natural world, or pre-urban- ent noise”) is to give attention to what is already there to be industrial soundscape, are valued, while sounds associated heard—all sound [4]—and which is most often ignored or, with the built environment, such as Cage’s beloved traffic, are in a long obsolete sense of the word, overheard (as in over- not. This binary valuation has often been challenged in recent looked), by attention to what is supposed to be heard (mu- times, not least of all by Francisco López, who points out that sic and speech). Douglas Kahn critiques Cage’s silence for many natural environments are terrifically noisy [10]. its silencing of the polymorphosity of sound, reducing it—in Despite the foregrounded (if noise abatement–fixated) eco- a move kindred to Pierre Schaeffer’s écouteréduite—to sound logical concerns of these movements, Schafer and Truax ap- alone, which he argues makes it also a process of musicaliza- pear to adhere to an understanding of silence that, like Cage’s, tion. According to Kahn, Cage’s attention to all sound is little is based on acoustic presence and functions according to the different in intent from Schaeffer’s fixation on l’objet sonore, logic of silencing and musicalization. Acoustic ecology is open as musicalizing the everyday world of sound is also an act of to all sound in principle only. In practice some sounds and silencing social, political, ecological and other dimensions of soundscapes are desirable and valued while others are not. sound, just as Schaeffer’s need to create formally malleable The hi-fi soundscape is therefore concerned with silence in sonic materials required the stripping away of causal and a non-Cagean sense; it is (relative) acoustic silence, or quiet, semantic properties of sound [5]. More recently, Seth Kim- which serves as a frame within which esteemed sounds can be Cohen [6] has extended Kahn’s critique through his agitation readily auditioned [11]. Those sounds without musical value for noncochlear sound art, which attends to the nonsounding are to be silenced in the interests of the hi-fi soundscape, dimensions of the sonic, chiefly the conceptual, and the use while acoustic silence itself is to be increased so as to increase of these in sound art. Yet while it is apparent that Cage wanted the acoustic transparency of the soundscape and enlarge sound to be nothing more than itself (“I love sounds, just as its audible horizon. This means that acoustic ecology, while they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more” deeply concerned for the audible presence of select sounds, [7]), his calling attention to the sonically liminal reconceived is predicated on the acoustic silencing of others. This, how- the act of listening, and through the musicalization of all ever, is not only a tool in the kit of acoustic ecology. It is also sound, the aestheticization of the sonus mundus, he established a negative endpoint in audible ecologies: There are sounds a means by which silence could be heard. and soundscapes that are threatened with silencing or that have already been silenced. As the slogan has it, “Extinction Dugal McKinnon (sound artist, composer), Te Koki—New Zealand School of Music, P.O. Box 2332, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 71–74, 2013 71 in which they are enmeshed. This raises derstood as an ecological event. Indeed, deployed this image to mobilize public a question: To what extent is acoustic there’s very little discussion of silence per opinion against synthetic pesticides in ecology, and also Cage, concerned with se in Rachel Carson’s epoch-making en- the United States. The aestheticized, silencing in an ecological sense? It could vironmentalist text Silent Spring. Carson’s which is to say musicalized, sound-image be alleged that the silencing engaged in concern was not for silence itself, but si- of a silent spring, itself inspired by a line by both acoustic ecologists and Cage con- lence as a symptom of dangerous human from Keats’s poem La Belle Dame Sans tributes to sonic species loss, in terms of interventions into the natural world: Merci (“The sedge has wither’d from the reducing awareness of and openness to silence as an outcome of the effects of lake, / And no birds sing.”), is a means the diversity of the soundscape and the synthetic pesticides, DDT in particular, to sound out the real-world problem sig- heterogeneous nature of sounds them- on the biosphere. In the book’s opening naled by silence. selves. Certainly this resonates with the chapter, Carson describes a fictitious but For contemporary sound artists en- positions that Kahn and Kim-Cohen ad- typical mid-20th-century American town gaged with environmental matters in vance concerning the soundscape post- blighted by the effects of “a white granu- which silence plays a role, the question Cage; yet Kahn does not elaborate on lar powder [that] some weeks before had is: How to make dead silence speak? How ecological silencing in his discussion of fallen upon the roofs and the lawns, the to represent and deploy it meaningfully Cage [12], and Kim-Cohen is too busy field and streams.” The outcome of this and in ways that do not cloak it in the with the conceptual potential of sound dusting of pesticide is a “spring without habits of silence associated with Cage and to attend its ecological fate. The acous- voices. On the mornings that had once acoustic ecology? One of the most prob- tic ecology community, on the other throbbed with the dawn chorus . . . there lematic silences for both Cage and acous- hand, would be affronted by the notion was now no sound; only silence lay over tic ecology is the substitution of recorded that the sounds of things matter more the fields and woods and marsh” [14]. In for live sound [15]. The fear here, fol- than the things that make sounds. Yet it this context, aesthetic concern for silence lowing Jean Baudrillard’s theory of is the case that the loss or degradation itself sounds inappropriate. Silence, as a simulation, is that the recording silences of sounds and soundscapes themselves signal that all is not well in the biosphere, the living, sounding thing. This peren- is often emphasized in this community, is to be filled with the sonic abundance— nial concern, encapsulated in Schafer’s this in itself being a matter of concern noisiness—that signals a healthy ecosys- concept of schizophonia as an aberrant to acoustic ecologists: “Do we care about tem. The sonic image of a silent spring is technological phenomenon, is as old as sound primarily, or ecology?” [13] a powerful one, and as a pioneering en- recording technology itself. In contrast Ecological silencing is properly un- vironmental activist Carson successfully to this perspective, however, recording
Fig. 1. Sally Ann McIntyre, Collected Silences for Lord Rothschild (Heteralochaacutirostris, Sceloglauxalbifacies), sound/transmission art, 2012. Transmission at entrance to track 4, Waiorua Valley, Kapiti Island, 17 May 2012, 5:03pm, 25min. The broadcast of the recorded silence of mounted specimens of extinct species into their former habitat highlights ecological loss. (© Sally Ann McIntyre. Courtesy of the artist.)
72 McKinnon, Dead Silence Fig. 2. Katie Paterson, film still from Langjökull, Snæfellsjökull, Solheimajökull, three digital films, 1h 57m, 2007. Sound recordings of three Icelandic glaciers on records made of frozen meltwater from those gla- ciers are played until the records melt, mimick- ing the loss and silencing of their source. (© Katie Paterson. Cour- tesy of the artist.)
can be used to musicalize acoustic silence for Lord Rothschild (2012) (Fig. 1), which nified through the audible presence of as the horizon of the audible [16], bring- replicates Dashper’s move but with an living birds, is the silence of the extinct ing it into dialogue with Cagean silence ethical-environmental dimension: Huia, as the simple transcriptions and and, as we will shortly hear, creating a music box realization of these fail, po- Recordings of the mounted specimens powerful affective tool through which to of two species of endemic New Zealand etically and affectingly, to do anything address ecological silencing. birds, the Huia (Heteralochaacutirostris), more than gracelessly approximate a call The musicalization of acoustic silence and the Laughing Owl or Whekau (Scelo- known only through musical and textual is made possible by the intentional act glauxalbifacies) held in the collection of descriptions [21]. of recording that functions as a fram- The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa The schismogenesis of recording, a Tongarewa. Both these species were ing device for acoustic silence. This is a driven to extinction, partially through more productive conceptual cousin to Cagean move: the giving of duration to the actions of European collectors, in Schafer’s schizophonia, also plays a vital something that is without duration, just the early 1900s. They were both still role in environmentally engaged sound as 4’33” gives form to the silence of the recorded as alive during the twentieth art such as McIntyre’s. Schismogenesis, century’s first blossoming, after the in- place of listening, thereby calling atten- vention of recording technology, but in Stephen Feld’s use of the term (it- tion to what is acoustically present there. neither of their songs are on record [19]. self borrowed from Gregory Bateson), If nothing is acoustically present, or if the brings a new kind of sonic entity into thing being recorded cannot be acousti- Making dead silences speak may also being, which reveals aspects of its live cally present, then recording—and lis- be predicated not on acoustic silence source but is not the same as this source tening—draws attention to the acoustic but, taking a conceptual turn, by evok- [22]. This is a useful word for a familiar silence of that thing. Such a move can be ing the ecological silence of an extinct idea, much beloved by phonographists of conceptual, as in Yoko Ono’s Tape Piece III thing through sound. Another work by all kinds: Schismogenesis is what made [17] or artist Julian Dashper’s recordings McIntyre, Huia Transcriptions (2012), possible the soundscape analyses of the of canonic artworks of the 20th century uses “transcriptions to music box of one World Soundscape Project as well as the [18]. When the intention of the work of the few extant accounts of the calls of sonic discourse of Schaefferian musique is ecological, however, acoustic silence Huia (Heteralochaacutirostris), as notated concrète. Yet the recording does not and takes political form; the gap between by a Mr. H. T. Caver in the late 1800s,” cannot substitute for the absent source, the acoustic absence of silenced thing which are “played back in the early morn- despite the presence of its acoustic and the Cagean silence we hear around ing chorus into forest areas of Kapiti [Is- trace. In this way sonic schismogenesis it calls attention to the irrevocable loss land, NZ], amplified non-electronically has a melancholy ontology, a cousin to inherent in that heterogeneous silence. on the trunks of species of trees Huia the melancholy of the photograph as This is achieved in Sally Ann McIntyre’s would likely have climbed” [20]. What conceptualized by Roland Barthes [23], transmission arts piece, Collected Silences this allows us to hear, negatively mag- which always points to the loss or lack
McKinnon, Dead Silence 73 inherent in the photograph’s highly de- through the pushing of sonic schismo- Schafer, The New Soundscape (Toronto: BMI Canada, limited capture of the past in the form of genesis to an extreme: The silencing of 1969) pp. 43–47. chemical traces of light. As with photog- the sources, the glaciers, is played out be- 16. “Silence is the horizon of sound”: Don Ihde, Lis- raphy, recording is a time-binding tech- fore our ears and eyes, as their immensity tening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound, 2nd Ed. (Al- bany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, 2007) p. 55. nology [24] that, unlike photography, and protensity are condensed into finite 17. “Take a tape of the sound of snow falling. / This has protensity (continuation in time), size and duration that is brought to an should be done in the evening. / Do not listen to the but like photography can only point to end in the present, alerting the listener- tape. / Cut it and use it as strings to tie gifts with. / a past reality. Following Heidegger [25], viewer to the ominous future silence of Make a gift wrapper, if you wish, / using the same process with a phonosheet.” Yoko Ono, Tape Piece III it can be said that recording reveals, but the melting glacier. The immutable is (1963), in Ono, Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and an inescapable aspect of this revealing is muted. Dead silence. Drawings by Yoko Ono (New York: Simon and Shuster, to expose the limits of recording tech- 1964/2000). nology: The recording (or better, pho- 18. Julian Dashper, Outside Rothko Chapel (2001– References and Notes 2003): “Side 1, recorded from 5.30 pm 23rd Septem- nograph), like the photograph, points as ber 2001 Houston, Texas. Side 2, recorded from 5.30 much to what it cannot do as to what it 1. John Cage, “Experimental Music,” in Silence (Mid- pm 24th September 2001 Houston, Texas.” dletown, CT: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1961) p. 7. can do. Sounds can be captured and re- 19. Sally McIntyre:
74 McKinnon, Dead Silence World on a Wire: Sound as Sensual Objects a b s t r a c t
In the mid-20th century a new conceptual paradigm rose to Chuck Johnson prominence in the sciences that captured the imaginations of the burgeoning counterculture and its most forward-thinking artists. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, a branch of systems theory called cybernet- n the opening scene of Rainer Fassbinder’s dys- cybernetic thought. To be clear, I ics was presented as a way to I understand complex systems. topic 1973 sci-fi miniseries World on a Wire, a troubled com- enjoy making art with complex sys- puter programmer, Henry Vollmer, exclaims, “You are only tems and emergent phenomena. Cybernetic thought has contin- ued to exert a hegemonic, if someone else’s image of you.” Vollmer is expressing a senti- However, my research in this sub- unintended, influence in the field ment that is echoed by other characters, who begin to suspect ject has been inspired by a desire of experimental and technology- that their world may be no more “real” than the virtual reality to look honestly at how we are ac- driven arts. The author argues they have created inside a supercomputer. When I first saw the customed to interpreting systems- that the idealistic and techno- program in 2011 during its limited theatrical release in the utopian character of cybernetic oriented work. thought, including the holistic U.S.A., I was struck by its visual feast of kitsch and near-future What are the political and social view of emergence, does not modernism. But I found especially compelling its audacious implications of a practice that em- serve us in grave political and synthetic soundtrack—used to great effect by composer Gott- braces system design, indetermi- ecological times and suggests fried Hüngsberg to underscore the story’s critique of cyber- nacy and the axis between chaos new ways to understand emer- gence in sound art that are free netic thought. and control? Once examined, can of the ideological baggage of In the mid-20th century, against the backdrop of the Cold we say that these ideas (or perhaps cybernetic thought. War and the advent of computer technology, the branch of more importantly the attitudes systems theory known as cybernetics was presented as a way these ideas represent) serve us in to study control and communication within complex systems. grave political and ecological times? Although its origins are in mathematics and military engineer- Perhaps there is a better way to engage with the phenomena ing, this conceptual paradigm also captured the imaginations that we perceive as systemic behavior. The work of literary the- of the burgeoning counterculture and its most forward-think- orist Timothy Morton and others working in object-oriented ing artists. Central to cybernetic thought is the conception ontology provides a framework that avoids holism, reduction- of everything from organisms to organizations, from human ism, determinism and idealism. This view is in the lineage of minds to “nature,” as self-regulating systems that seek equilib- flat ontology, and it considers everything to be an object— rium, or homeostasis. electrons, smartphones, sound waves, planets, sonatas, dust According to Katherine Hayles, cybernetic theory, in its tra- particles, Republicans and so on. The lists of outrageously jectory toward posthumanism, has developed through three disparate objects that object-oriented ontologists are fond of distinct stages. She marks the stages in terms of a shift in focus making are also objects, as are the object-oriented ontologists from control and homeostasis toward autopoiesis and emer- themselves. gence and later toward virtuality and embodiment [1]. These Like Russian nesting dolls, objects may contain other ob- stages share a holistic view of systems that sees information as jects, but the whole doll is not greater than its parts. In an separate from matter—and in some ways more real than ma- object-oriented ontology, the parts are neither dispensable nor terial reality. Whether one claims that systems self-regulate replaceable, and they have autonomy and interconnectedness and seek stability via feedback or that they self-generate and with other objects. Objects have sensual experiences of other produce complexity, it seems to be assumed that the system’s objects, meaning that objects also have qualities that are with- behavior is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. Is it drawn and inaccessible to these relations. possible to understand complex behavior without believing For example: An audio speaker and the sound wave that that what we witness is greater than the parts generating it? excites it are undoubtedly in a sensual relationship. Yet the I am a musician and composer, and for the past 10 years waveform only experiences the specific range of the speaker’s or so I have worked with electronics, software and interactive movement that its frequencies excite. And the speaker only ex- technology. I have noticed that in my field ideas about emer- periences the spectra of the waveform’s harmonic content that gent behavior and intelligent systems are taken for granted, electronic circuitry can transmit. Each has qualities that are and the discourse for developing and critiquing this work withdrawn from the other, in spite of their interconnectedness. is shaped by the ideology we have inherited from strains of When we avoid the undermining of reductionism or the overmining of holism, we can hold the view that “the world is enough,” as object-oriented philosopher Levi Bryant puts it [2]. Objects are not defined by their relationships, because Chuck Johnson (musician, composer), 1428 Jackson St, Apt. 208, Oakland, CA 94612, the relationships between them are objects too, and so are the U.S.A. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 75–77, 2013 75 John Bischoff, I was reminded that the relatively simple audio circuits, designed of a piece, certain cybernetic-inspired social backdrop of his formative years was to elicit unpredictable behavior. process-oriented works by minimalist the upheaval of the late 1960s and 1970s The sonic result of Tudor’s work— composers tend toward stasis and stabil- and the specter of nuclear annihilation perhaps conceptually inspired by early ity as they seek out common tonalities [3]. The systems-theory inspirations of cybernetics—has a remarkable, living and resonance. the 1960s counterculture provided a quality. But when I listen to Tudor’s And virtuality makes its mark in the hopeful alternative to the monolithic works for live electronics I do not hear sonic arts even before the first experi- state and corporate entities that seemed the sonification of a closed system cor- ments of Jaron Lanier and his cohort, to be so fully in control of daily life. recting itself via feedback—far from it. as in Rich Gold’s late-1970s piece Terrain Media theorist Christina Dunbar- Tudor is the participant-observer, per- Reader, performed by Bay Area computer Hester notes that although artists like petually tweaking the circuits as he finds network ensemble the League of Auto- John Cage, Brian Eno, Bebe and Louis new ways to excite them into thumping, matic Music Composers. Terrain Reader is Barron, and Herbert Bruhn espoused the squealing, vocalizing, chattering—and, actually the 8-bit sonification of a virtual ideas of Norbert Wiener and other early yes, feeding-back. His pieces truly evoke terrain, as explored and translated into cyberneticists, the work of these artists characters and presences, or “sonic en- tones by a program Gold wrote on his spoke more clearly to the attitudes and tities,” to borrow a term from Bay Area KIM-1 microcomputer [9]. concerns of the second wave of cybernet- electronic musician Tim Perkis [7]. A League piece is configured as a net- ics [4]. Gregory Bateson and Margaret Tudor approached his practice with work, an open system that the members Meade refer to this stage as second- a quasi-spiritual rigor and is known for of the ensemble approach as an instru- order cybernetics, in which they recog- describing the systems he created—often ment. The players—all of them pro- nize open systems wherein observers are on the day of a concert through many grammers and circuit hackers to some also actors [5]. hours of improvisation and adjustment— degree—are first and foremost improvis- Returning to the mind-machine anal- as systems with inherent intelligence ing musicians. The recordings disclose a ogy in early cybernetics, consider the that had to be coaxed, and then allowed process orientation—the pieces begin work of Howard Odum—an early cyber- space, to emerge [8]. But the physicality mid-stream and end with little regard for neticist and founder of the field of ecol- of Tudor’s sonic entities problematizes a closure or resolution. ogy. At this time (the 1950s), the primary tendency in cybernetic discourse identi- Although at times sonically dense, concerns of cybernetics were developing fied by Hayles—the disembodiment of League pieces usually contain discrete an understanding of systems by means of information. voices—entities that overlap, playfully modeling and promoting the idea of the The customary way to read Tudor’s and violently collide, and trigger other mind as a network—and correspondingly work is to frame it in the language of entities—almost as if these sonic entities seeing “mind” in systems. Odum was tak- second-order cybernetics. And Tudor’s are themselves the “Automatic Compos- ing the analogy of the mind as a network interest in bringing out the immanent— ers” of the group’s name. On first listen, further by drawing schematic diagrams if withdrawn—qualities of his systems it is difficult to hear beyond the grainy of ecosystems, actually using the symbols does seemingly place his work within this 8-bit surface. With late-1970s computer and syntax of electronics to represent conceptual model. However, I think Tu- technology, resolution and timbral com- the pathways and processes within and dor’s sonic art may have foreshadowed— plexity had to be compromised in order among life forms. and can be read within the framework to generate and control sound in real The history of cybernetic thought was of—the more contemporary view of time. To my ear, however, the rawness of critically examined in a 2011 documen- object-oriented ontology. the sounds contributes to their unique tary series for the BBC by Adam Curtis What is a Tudor piece if not an inter- identities as sonic entities, and to a sense called “All Watched over by Machines connected “mesh,” to borrow Morton’s that one is having an encounter with the of Loving Grace,” which borrows its title term—a mesh of configurable objects in uncanny, as Morton describes encoun- from a wistfully techno-utopian poem sensual relationships with one another? ters with the strange stranger. by Richard Brautigan. The series posits Remove one object or add a new one and That artists might be fascinated with Odum’s work as one of many points dur- the piece is not the same—it may even indeterminacy, process and emergent ing the history of cybernetic thought in implode, or explode. A performance of phenomena should come as no surprise. which the theories of balance and self- his piece Toneburst famously ignited the Tim Perkis and John Bischoff were mem- regulation were uncritically codified as speakers of an old theater in Buffalo. bers of a community of electronic musi- scientific fact. When I saw images of Od- And these sonic entities—can we not cians affiliated with Mills College in the um’s schematic models in Curtis’s docu- view them as Morton’s “strange strang- 1970s and early 1980s who are widely ac- mentary I was immediately reminded of ers,” so-called visitors with whom we have knowledged as the first to employ micro- David Tudor—an artist whom Dunbar- an ethical imperative to engage on their computer and network models in their Hester does not mention but whose in- own terms? This is the ecological experi- work. fluence on subsequent generations of ence of a systems-oriented work, in my The generation of Bay Area sonic art- systems-oriented sonic artists cannot be opinion. ists that included Bischoff and Perkis, overstated [6]. Although I agree with Dunbar-Hester who were both members of the League When Tudor, known for his meticulous that much systems-oriented sonic art and later the Hub, has a unique place in work in preparing and scoring piano draws from the ideas attributed to Hay- this history. Bischoff studied electronic performances of Cage’s indeterminate les’s second wave, I would argue that music at Mills College and studied under compositions, transitioned into working all three stages are present in this field Tudor and Robert Ashley, among others. solely with electronics, he began to repre- and often overlap. While Cage’s inde- Bischoff and his associates are thus quite sent his own compositions as schematics. terminate scores and utilization of ran- directly connected to the Cage lineage— Tudor’s works for live electronics consist domness may have produced radically they are arguably the next generation in of complex, often recursive networks of different results with each performance the American experimental tradition.
76 Johnson, World on a Wire They also happened to mature as artists seen in the glorification of cutting-edge 4. Christina Dunbar-Hester, “Listening to Cybernet- at the same time and geographical place technology and the drive to appropri- ics: Music, Machines, and Nervous Systems, 1950– 1980,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 35, No. as the explosive growth of the U.S. tech ate new technologies as soon as they are 1, 113–139 (2010). industry seated in Silicon Valley, and only made available, with relatively little criti- a decade after the same part of the coun- cal discourse. 5. Stewart Brand, “For God’s Sake, Margaret: Con- versation with Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead,” try became the epicenter of the 1960s And yet, as every day brings new evi- CoEvolutionary Quarterly 10, 32–44 (1976). counterculture. dence of dire economic, ecological and As Bischoff and Perkis write in the political circumstances, it is now clear 6. See the special issue “Composers inside Electron- ics: Music after David Tudor,” Leonardo Music Journal liner notes to the League of Automatic that neither the Invisible Hand of the 14 (2004). Composers’ retrospective, released in market nor the free will of creative indi- 7. Tim Perkis, “Complexity and Emergence in the 2007: viduals nor a self-regulating Gaia/Space- American Experimental Tradition,” in J.L. Casti and ship Earth is capable of correcting the Anders Karlqvist, eds., Art and Complexity (Amster- In the air then there was a sense of new course. Morton suggests that a change dam: Elsevier, 2003) pp. 75–84. possibilities, and the feeling of the need to build a culture from the ground up. in thinking is required before real solu- 8. Conversation with John Bischoff, 28 October 2011. For music, specifically, this meant rede- tions can even be envisioned—what he fining everything about how it’s done, calls “Ecological Thought.” And I hope 9. John Bischoff and Tim Perkis, “The League of Au- from the instruments and tuning systems to discover some modest—if inconse- tomatic Music Composers 1978–1983,” liner notes, to the musical forms, venues, and social The League of Automatic Music Composers 1978–1983 relations among players and audiences quential—first steps in my re-listening to (New World Records 2007). See also Douglas Kahn, the experimental music that has had a “A Musical Technography of John Bischoff,” Leonardo [10]. Music Journal 14 (2004) pp. 74–79; Scot Gresham- formative influence on my development Lancaster, “The Aesthetics and History of the Hub: For Bischoff, theoretical inspiration as a practitioner, as well as in my own The Effects of Changing Technology on Network came from Bateson and the “synerget- systems-oriented work. Computer Music,” Leonardo Music Journal 8 (1998) pp. 39–44. ics” of Buckminster Fuller, and he was My electroacoustic project Blood enthralled with the self-sufficient hacker Wedding—a collaboration with Dan- 10. Bischoff and Perkis [9]. ethic that he encountered in the bur- ishta Rivero—has completed recordings 11. Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Cali- geoning Northern California tech cul- of two pieces that are inspired by Mor- fornia Ideology,” The Hypermedia Research Centre ture and while studying with Tudor at ton’s take on object-oriented ontology (1995);
Johnson, World on a Wire 77 a word of thanks
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a b s t r a c t Daniel Wilson This paper provides an overview of electrical pre-loud- speaker sound art in Victorian ound art has antecedents in the acoustical After this was granted in the au- music halls, focusing on key S figures, including one of the first wonder-working of the ancients and in the metaphysically ori- tumn of the following year [6], ented secret teachings of the Pythagoreans. However, it was Schalkenbach arrived in England. female performers of an electri- cal musical instrument. Control with the refinement of mechanics and electromagnetism in The patent illustrates an amal- of “acoustic incidents” separate the 19th century that sound art would mature as an art form. gamation of a reed harmonium, from the artiste and the employ- Sound art did not exist as a standalone art form as we know it a second smaller accordion-like ment of artful presentation to now; the aversion of the delicate Victorian ear to discords en- harmonium (known as a “har- create an aesthetic edifice— sured that clear distinctions were drawn between musical parts prerequisites of sound art—are moniflute”) linked to the main apparent in the entertainments of a performance and “descriptive” parts. Descriptive elements harmonium bellows, a row of bells, examined here. It is shown that encompassed the imitations, instrumental or otherwise, of tam-tams, triangles, drums, cymbals the issues of today’s sound real-world sounds within music. Percy Scholes wrote disparag- and whistle pipes—all operated by art (in reconciling science with ingly of this “cruder kind of ‘programme music,’” drawing at- keys or stops. The keys controlling art, the coveting of the “active principle,” etc.) were also a tention to its short-lived popularity in “uncultured circles” [1]. the drum parts were connected concern in these early sound It was, however, an anachronistic precursor to the 20th-century to beaters on springs, producing art ventures. Futurist Intonarumori [2] and Russian abstract industrial sym- drum-rolls. Whilst playing the har- phonies [3]. Certain artistes exerted considerable efforts in de- monium, the player would be able signing mechanisms for producing such descriptive flourishes, to control the percussion controls and the most pioneering was Johann Baptist Schalkenbach using the forearm or wrist. Additionally, any combination of (1824–1910) (Fig. 1)—an inventive acoustician who, in the harmonium keys could be temporarily locked down into po- 1860s, began employing electricity to remotely trigger descrip- sition to sustain their tones, allowing the player to perform tive effects placed on a par with the music itself [4,5]. These elsewhere simultaneously (Fig. 3). efforts occupied a Two large funnels were coupled onto the sound-holes of no-man’s land be- the harmonium, transforming the reed tones. The funnels, tween science, art respectively, contained a “tremolo valve” within the throat, in- and music that is terrupting the current of air flowing out, adding tremolo. This today designated valve was basically a hinged “clapper” that would periodically as sound art. shudder with the pressure of the harmonium’s sound-filled Schalkenbach exhaust. was born in Trier, One curious soundmaking feature was a hollow ball placed in what was then beside an air valve. Schalkenbach writes: part of the Prussian Rhineland, but When this valve is opened by means of a stop placed beside it, the air enters the ball (which turns freely on its axis) through a would spend most hole, and by this means, according to the position of the ball, of his adult life in sounds are produced which are sometimes like the whistle of a Britain. He stud- locomotive, sometimes like the raging of a storm [7]. ied music under Le Monde Illustré reported that the “Piano-Orchestre électro- Moritz Hauptmann Moteur” featured electromagnetic elements activated by nine at the Leipzig Con- buttons [8], yet the patent did not detail these electrical at- servatory before tributes (most likely employing solenoid-like mechanisms). traveling to France, The absence of electric elements in the patent was possibly and in 1861 he due to their constituting an infringement of an existing patent. filed a patent for An electrical method of remotely playing keyed instruments an instrument he Fig. 1. Schalkenbach in later life: music hall had been previously patented by Alexander Bain in 1847 [9], called the “Piano- postcard, circa 1900s. (Public domain. and designs for electric doorbells were also starting to appear. Collection of the author). Orchestre” (Fig. 2). The magician John Henry Anderson had used the same princi- ple to create spirit rappings in the 1850s [10] (Fig. 4). Another magician, Robert-Houdin, also employed electromagnetism, notably in an extravagant doorbell and door-entry system at Daniel Wilson (engineer, writer, researcher), 11 Thornbera Gardens, Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, CM23 3NP, U.K. E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 79–85, 2013 79 After the Polytechnic By May 1871 Schalkenbach returned to concentrate once again on developing what he now called his “Orchestre Mili- taire Electro-Moteur.” A long engage- ment saw the instrument supporting a minstrel troupe, during which time he integrated one of the spectacles seen at the Royal Polytechnic: the influence of the “Great Lightning Inductorium” (ca- pable of producing a spark of 27 inches [21]) is apparent in Schalkenbach’s ex- ploitation of “lightning” effects. Due to the complexity of the setup and Schalkenbach’s energetic perfor- mances (he was said to appear as if he had “twenty arms and as many legs, all performing at once” [22]), some review- ers had difficulty discerning between the effects electrically produced and those mechanically produced—an ambiguity Schalkenbach no doubt played upon. One of Schalkenbach’s sketches formed a descriptive musical fantasia: Fig. 2. The Piano- an Alpine village fete interrupted by a Orchestre, edited from the thunderstorm, with accompaniments U.K. patent by the author of “howling wind, pattering rain, and (© Daniel Wilson). flashing lightning.” The lightning is re- ported to have been “the genuine article, without the slightest adulteration, Herr have combined 26 instruments, upon variations of the famous talking head of Schalkenbach having in his new musical which he played selections from popu- Albertus Magnus, Charles Wheatstone’s machine an unlimited stock of the com- lar operas [12]. In late 1864, it was re- acoustic “telephonic concert,” and radi- modity on hand” [23]. ported that Schalkenbach was using 16 cal musical instruments. Another novel instrumental addition elements of zinc and carbon inserted Schalkenbach’s setup was installed at this time was the “Electro-Zither,” said into mercury bisulphate (this battery in the Polytechnic’s Great Hall and to be particularly effective during softer required cleaning and replenishing performed upon daily. This hall also passages, from which “long and sustained every 6 months). The battery poles contained an automaton called “The notes” were obtained “by electric agency” were connected to electromagnets and Automatic Leotard”—a life-size mechani- [24]. A review noted how “a very singu- brought into action by controls on the cal trapeze artiste—designed by Francis lar effect is produced by the continua- main instrument [13]. Descriptive, mili- Seraphicus Pichler [17], a colleague of tion of sound which is kept up by the taristic pieces were played, featuring Schalkenbach’s (and later his spouse’s agency of electricity upon the strings of remotely discharged pistols and many brother-in-law). Pichler was a Hungar- the instrument” [25]. This feature was other “startling effects.” It was said that ian harmonium-maker who provided ex- alluded to in other reports as the “Aeo- the instrument had a capacity beyond perimental acoustical apparatus for John lian Harp,” but it is uncertain how the all existing instruments in effectively Henry Pepper’s projects [18]. Schalken- effect was achieved. It would be futile rendering “destructive pieces” [14] and bach would often meet with Pichler at his to speculate, but electromagnetically also that a remotely played drum, sus- instrument shop at 162 Great Portland resonating a metal pianoforte string pended from the ceiling, was suggestive Street. In the creative and inspiring en- had been achieved in the 1840s by Au- of the Davenport Brothers’ spiritualist vironment of the Royal Polytechnic, and guste de la Rive [26]. It involved feeding séances [15]. with the close acquaintance of Pichler, a coil, in close proximity to the string, In December 1866 Schalkenbach ap- Schalkenbach was enabled to refine his with a pulse-train of current at an arbi- peared with his “Piano Orchestra with setup further. trary frequency. (If a similar system was Electric Motion” as part of the Royal Poly- Jeremy Brooker, in his study of the role employed, Schalkenbach’s electric instru- technic Institution’s Christmas season. of music at the Polytechnic, tentatively ment would approach nearer the defini- He became unofficial resident organist suggests that the “musical possibilities” of tion of an electronic instrument). here for about 4 years. Although the Schalkenbach’s instrument might have Polytechnic was renowned principally influenced the institution’s decision to “Magnetic Music of the for its visual exhibitions [16], there were purchase an in-house electric-action or- also many acoustical exhibits, including gan in 1868, manufactured by Bryceson Spiritual World” “whispering galleries,” advanced noises- [19], that Schalkenbach would also play In November 1873, Schalkenbach began off sound effects accompanying magic upon [20]. Indeed, Schalkenbach’s elec- a residency at the Lyric Hall on Great lantern projections, lectures on “Acous- tro-musical ideas frequently caught on, Portland Street, close to both the Royal tic Illusions” and musics of the world, as we shall see below. Polytechnic and Francis Pichler’s dwell-
80 Wilson, “Electric Music” on the Victorian Stage ings, where he was now lodging. Here, music hall. He had insured it for £900, of Mr. Cooke levitating in the air, “sur- Schalkenbach added controls for “bril- although he estimated its material value rounded by spirit flames,” accompanied liantly coloured lights” with “electrical to be £1000 [35]. Nevertheless, by No- by a “triumphal march” with remote effects which would put ordinary pyro- vember he had rebuilt the instrument bells, tambourines, etc. [39]. technic displays altogether in the shade” and was performing again (see Fig. 6). [27,28], all whilst keeping up a “complete Piano-Harmonic instrumental concert” [29]. Reports also Maskelyne and Cooke tell of a striking acoustic effect, possibly When Schalkenbach’s Egyptian Hall en- associated with the Electro-Zither: “dul- One of the most significant engage- gagement concluded in April 1877, he cet strains of peace” [30] emanating ments in Schalkenbach’s career was with obtained a patent for another ground- from different parts of the hall. the celebrated magicians Maskelyne and breaking acoustical innovation, the Schalkenbach developed dynamically Cooke at the Egyptian Hall, beginning “Piano Harmonic,” which specified that varied musical sketches to fully demon- late in December 1876 [36]. It is curious pedals could be added to pianos, en- strate the capabilities of the instrument. to note that in Schalkenbach’s afore- abling special damper heads to make For instance, the man-o’-war ship sketch mentioned advert he mentions “musi- gentle contact with strings at their nodal described a ship docked in port, the ar- cal boxes with electric arrangement for points to transpose any keyed notes into rival of the Navy, the departure, an ap- releasing of flywheel,” and some months their respective harmonics (he suggests proaching storm, a mariners’ prayer, the prior to his engagement, in August 1876, the octave, the fifth, the double octave ensuing relief at being out of danger, a Maskelyne and Cooke exhibited a Spirit and the third of the double octave) [40]. military parade on board, followed by Musical Box: a music box suspended As with his earlier patent, there are no sighting of the enemy, the battle climax, from the ceiling, playing songs on com- electrical aspects. It is not known to what victory and the finale [31]. Such scenes mand. There was also exhibited a “Mys- extent this was adapted to the Orchestre featured the bold tone combinations of tic and Oracular Tambourine”—placed Militaire, but its existence demonstrates the main instrument, along with “drums, among the audience in the center of the how sophisticated Schalkenbach’s ideas bells and clappers” electrically sounded, hall—answering questions by percus- were, and such an effect could easily mis- trumpets sounding in at least two places sive rapping [37]. Both are suggestive of lead an unknowing audience into believ- at once, “the distant roar of artillery,” “the Schalkenbach’s handiwork. ing an electrical agency was at work. clashing of cymbals” and “the shrill note Maskelyne and Cooke would often fea- ture musical-acoustic oddities on their of the ear-piercing fife” [32]. The instru- The 1880s ment also facilitated the firing of minia- bill. Schalkenbach had taken over from ture cannons from distant parts of the Thomas Manton who had previously Even more electrical additions were hall. The music was said to be composed been engaged playing a musical glass in- added to the instrument in its music hall by Schalkenbach himself [33], making it strument, the “Crystalophonicon” [38]. engagements in the 1880s. One press some of the earliest original scored mate- As well as playing between illusions, release enthused that the “Orchestre rial for an electrical instrument. Schalkenbach’s Orchestre Militaire also du Diable” (as it had been temporarily It is very interesting to note that, in accompanied illusions, including that restyled) “quite surpasses the telephone contrast to the occlusions of stage magic, Schalkenbach openly offered to explain Fig. 3. Schalkenbach performing before Emperor Louis Napoleon at the Château de Saint- all about the inner workings of his instru- Cloud [71]. (Public domain) ment in the summer of 1874. He issued an advertisement in The Era: In answer to many applications, Herr Schalkenbach is now ready to supply, or to give all necessary information for the construction of the various Electro- Musical Instruments and Appliances as used in his Entertainments during the last Fourteen Years, viz., Electric-String Instruments, Trumpets, Chimes, Bells, Cuckoo, Birds’ Song, Drums, Triangles, Castenettes, Tambourines, Sledge Bells, Slash of Whips, Bagpipes, &c. Instru- ments in direct communication with the keys of Piano, Harmonium, Organ; or, if desired, Musical Boxes with Electric Arrangement for Releasing of flywheel. Imitation by Electricity of Thunder, Rain, Roaring of Waves, Lightning, Marching of Troops, Galloping of Horses, Locomo- tive in Motion, Electric Cannon, Mitraile- usse, Pistols, Rockets, Optical Music with Vacuum Tubes, &c. &c. Instruction given in the use of all the above, be it for Solo Performance or in conjunction with the Orchestre [34]. In May 1875, Schalkenbach’s organ was destroyed by a fire at a Liverpool
Wilson, “Electric Music” on the Victorian Stage 81 Fig. 4. John Henry Anderson demonstrating electromagnetic “spirit rapping” [72]. (Public domain)
in its astonishing powers” [41]. By 1881, for sparks are flying round his head and Schalkenbach was experimenting with Mephisto (or, Stealing appear to be scattered from the ends of the feature of rigging bare wires on cer- Schalkenbach’s Thunder) his fingers, while his very eyes seem to tain seats in the audience, allowing him The 1880s saw many imitations of emit lightning” [45]. to shock unsuspecting members of the Schalkenbach’s work [44]. It was com- H.F. Juleene began his stage career audience at key moments [42]. mon for music hall acts to pirate other in the mid-1860s as a skater, later adopt- A review from July 1883 illustrates how acts—copycats were called “duffers.” ing musical and character skits [46]. His sprawling the Orchestre Militaire had One such copycat instrument sprang up adverts give a flavor of his repertoire: become: at Schalkenbach’s old stomping ground, performing as “German, Dutch, Swiss, the Egyptian Hall. This instrument was Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Round the theatre . . . connected by wires styled as the “electric and automatic Spaniard, Skating Market Girl, Man- with the instrument, are subsidiary musi- cal instruments, such as three German Orchestraphone,” but later renamed doline Soloist, and forty others” [47]. zithers fixed on one sounding board, “Maskelyne’s Automatic Orchestra,” Juleene’s real name was John Parsons (c. peals of bells, a number of trumpets, a without allusions to electricity (which 1842–1905); he was the son of a Warwick- small electric railway train carrying on would somewhat “give the game away” shire drysalter. the engine an incandescent lamp, a windmill, a church, a catacomb, and the in a stage-magic setting). All the key ele- Around May 1880, Juleene unveiled his warlike implements. . . . Not only a series ments of Schalkenbach’s act were pres- new entertainment, “The Musician, Poet, of martial airs were performed, with the ent, but it is possible that this derivation and Painter, and Enchanted Studio,” fea- accompaniment of the detached zithers, had Schalkenbach’s blessing, given his turing many songs and impersonations. bells, trumpets, drums and gongs, but previous involvement with Maskelyne He toured the music halls with this show guns were discharged, the mitrailleuse growled out its murderous vollies, a thun- and Cooke. for [a?] year—receiving lukewarm re- derstorm was simulated with torrents of By far the most interesting perform- views—before the actress and pianist rain and rushes of wind, the church was ers to have appropriated Schalkenbach’s Dot D’Alcorn was taken on as a notable struck by lightning, the catacomb thrown work suddenly appeared in Birmingham co-performer. By the summer of 1882, upon, disclosing a cross illuminated by an electric lamp, with a choir of angels in September 1884. It was presented un- Juleene and D’Alcorn were regularly chanting around it; and, finally, the der the name “Mephisto” by two younger billed together. D’Alcorn’s real name passing away of the storm clouds, giving variety hall serio-comics, H.F. Juleene was Susette D’Alcorn (c. 1859–1903), a glimpses of the moon and a triumphal and Dot D’Alcorn (Fig. 5), who had no daughter of the music publisher Henri illumination of the Orchestre Militaire. previous recorded dabblings in electric- D’Alcorn (who had likewise altered his The same review also gives a rare ity. Appropriately enough, both were name from George Henry Stannard All- overview of its electrical arrangements, skilled at impersonation. corn; he was noted as an expert in copy- involving “insulated wires, a bichromate The Mephisto title may originate from right law [48]). battery of twenty-six cells, four Geyselers a description of Schalkenbach himself: In early October 1883, Juleene and [Geissler] Vacuum tubes, with Rhumkorf In July 1883, one enthusiastic reporter D’Alcorn were featured together in coils, and a multiplicity of ingenious ap- had written, “[Schalkenbach] might be the same theater company as Schalken- pliances for their application” [43]. taken for an electrical Mephistopheles, bach—a significant convergence [49].
82 Wilson, “Electric Music” on the Victorian Stage Evidently inspired by Schalkenbach, in whilst playing the electric keyboard, pro- various additions and improvements he 1884 they unveiled their Mephisto, un- ducing “hundreds of effects never before is continually making to his instrument, ashamedly billed as introduced on earth” fixed around the is still giving exhibitions. . . . [54] hall [53]. Juleene’s bombastic praises for all new and original. ELECTRICAL The next Mephisto advert brazenly re- MARVELLOUS MOTORS, MYSTIFY- D’Alcorn weren’t merely superficial ad- ING MORTALS, Manufactured by H. vertisements, but heartfelt encomiums, torted that “electricity, that master of all F. Juleene, who has travelled the world, as they were eventually married in June sciences, in the hands of JULEENE, has and brought together all that Art could 1889. accomplished more than was expected devise or Money command to make this A rattled Schalkenbach responded from an Englishman.” Ironically, Juleene, what it has proved, the greatest novelty who had adopted his foreign stage name on the surface of the earth [50]. by arranging for a message to be placed atop the next Mephisto advert published for exotic grandeur, was now compelled To their credit, the act derived some on 20 September 1884: to boast of his nationality. He announced originality from D’Alcorn’s role as possi- that the instrument had cost £2,500 to bly the first female professional “electric HERR J.B. SCHALKENBACH . . . The build, and ends with a parting shot at musician” [51] performer. To put this sole inventor, patentee, and only per- Schalkenbach: “there are a few dogs that into perspective, “electric musician” was former on the Orchestre Militaire growl, but we do not fear them” [55]. Electro-Moteur, frequently called “The a sensationalistic styling typically encom- Electric Organ,” takes this opportunity In another Mephisto advert Juleene passing mere illumination, as seen with of informing the musical world in gen- writes: the so-called electric musician Herr Tho- eral, and all whom it may concern, that len—a comic musician with an electric twenty-three years ago, and previous to Am not indebted to any foreign instruc- tor. Every foreign importation is im- light bulb affixed to his nose. Another in- his renowned performances before His Majesty the late Emperor of France, he proved upon in the hands of Old John stance is seen in the “electrical musical” invented and patented the above for Bull. I shall be pleased to give gratuitous interludes of singer Harriet Laurie (a.k.a. England, France, Prussia, Bavaria, Italy, information and instruction to any one “The Electric Star”), who was herself a Russia, North and South America, &c., wishing to learn the science of electricity, and not try to mislead them when com- pioneer with her electrically lit outfits that the patent rights have long since lapsed, and, in consequence, any person mencing operations [56]. but did not perform electrically actuated is at liberty to imitate the same. music. (Significantly, Laurie was also on Herr Schalkenbach, in the interest Above this advert appeared a stra- the same bill with Schalkenbach, Juleene of science and art (even against his own tegically placed notice by a colleague interest), has been, and is always ready, and D’Alcorn in October 1883.) of Schalkenbach’s—the champion The extraordinarily grandiose adverts to explain his system to those who are desirous of acquiring knowledge in this skater and swordsman Thomas Henry Juleene unremittingly submitted to The direction, and offers them the same fa- Crowther: Era were heedless of Schalkenbach’s life’s cilities he extended to others who have work. These adverts display high admira- asked permission to imitate some of his ELECTROMANIA. Managers would do tion for D’Alcorn: praised as “the only effects, and to whom he has given every wisely to remember the old proverb, “the instruction. biggest balloon when exhausted of gas lady electrician on the terrestrial orbit,” Herr Schalkenbach, having kept pace goes into a very ordinary hamper,” in a “brilliant vocalist,” etc. [52]. D’Alcorn with the progress of electrical and acous- reading advertisements of a certain elec- wore full Mephistophelian costume tical science, and manifesting this in the trofanatic, who can learn no more in this
Fig. 5. Dot D’Alcorn (in male garb) [73] and H.F. Juleene (right), postcard, circa 1870. (Public domain. Collection of the author.)
Wilson, “Electric Music” on the Victorian Stage 83 thunder, hail and rain storms, shipwreck and light-house, wind and water mills in motion, mocking birds and cuckoo, “Anvil Chorus,” “Musical Soup Kitchen,” an electric illuminated railway, the as- cent of a balloon and “electric shocks everywhere” (via seat electrification à la Schalkenbach) [63]. Juleene writes that a week of setting up and two tons of wire and machinery are necessary for Mephisto’s production, with, reportedly, 23 electromagnets, seven electro-motors, 23 contact-breakers, and three intensity coils (“the larger permitting a naked spark of ten inches”) [64]. Juleene and D’Alcorn’s Mephisto achieved much success, as they toured British “provinces” untrodden by Schalkenbach. They also embarked on overseas tours to the U.S.A. and to Aus- tralia—continents where Schalkenbach had not performed. There was one unfortunate incident in the U.S.A. when seats were electrified via the Mephisto instrument. An unlucky old soldier in one of these seats received a shock during a concert in Chicago and tried to sue both the proprietor and Ju- leene. However, the U.S. tour was, on the whole, successful, as they were offered another engagement by Thomas Edison, for the 1893 Chicago Exhibition [65]. Juleene and D’Alcorn continued tour- ing with Mephisto (mostly across Britain) for the rest of their career—up until the early 1900s—with the electrical center- Fig. 6. A detailed engraving showing the second incarnation of Schalkenbach’s instrument, piece variously styled as an “Orchestra post-1875 (after the original was destroyed in a music hall fire) [74]. (Public domain. Electrique Infernal” or “Orchestre In- Collection of the author.) fernale” [66]. Schalkenbach also continued touring, terrestrial orbit, but when acts, and not ties, a la Herr Schalkenbach. To be sold but failed in 1891 to obtain a new patent words, speak, has a very base public imi- for under one-fourth of the original cost, relating to pianos [67]. By 1895, it was tation. ELECTROMANIA. By permission including four octaves electric bells, gi- apparent his work was being superseded and assistance of Herr Schalkenbach. ant microscope, arc and incandescent by Maskelyne and Cooke’s apparatus at “Electromania” eclipsing nature herself. lamps, railways, church, windmill, scen- “Electromania” is in its thirtieth month ery, fitting with vacuum tubes, lightning the Egyptian Hall (played by Francois of preparation. Includes every phenom- tubes, magnets, several kinds of powerful Cramer); “the wonderful combination enon discovered, and several items never intensity coils giving 18 in. spark, batter- of instruments . . . is to Schalkenbach’s seen or imagined, and will be in readi- ies, tambourines, castanets, triangles, contrivance what the electric light is to ness for Pantomime of ’84–’85 [57]. bells, &c. In fact, only requires fixing up to be a first-class show. Price to an im- gas” [68]. At the same time, descriptive effects were falling out of favor as music Crowther had actually been prepar- mediate purchaser seventy-five guineas. T.H. CROWTHER [59,60]. grew more tonally complex [69]. Else- ing an entertainment of his own called where, sound reproduction technology Electromania—announced in November Meanwhile, Juleene and D’Alcorn be- developed apace. The use of electricity 1883 [58] (whilst Mephisto was also in gan stating that their act had been pat- onstage to create wonder was also mov- preparation). Of a similar age, and in the ented: “PATENTED. Argument flattened ing away from the use of wires, toward same orbits as Juleene, they were likely into oblivion. Can’t help it” [61] (starting wirelessly activated apparatus using prim- acquainted but evidently on less than in September 1884). Apparently, no at- itive coherers [70]. friendly terms. Crowther’s Electromania tempt had been made to patent Mephisto entertainment is not well documented, [62]; this was a deception typical of music and he is seen in the “For Sale” column References and Notes hall hubris. of The Era in May 1885, offering his own 1. P.A. Scholes, The Oxford Companion to Music (Ox- Mephisto was said to produce from a electrical apparatus shortly before his de- ford, U.K.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1938) pp. 757–758. single keyboard the effects of an organ, parture on a world tour with his sword 2. H. Davies, “The Sound World, Instruments and harmonium, “full orchestra,” seven brass and skating act: Music of Luigi Russolo,” Resonance 2, No. 2 (London: drums, castanets, bugles, silver tam- LMC, 1994). An elaborate and comprehensive ELEC- bourines, thirty silver bells, triangles, 3. A. Smirnov, Sound in Z (London, U.K.: Sound and TRIC EXHIBITION of working novel- torpedoes, Turkish cymbals, lightning, Music, 2013); M. Alarcón, Baku: Symphony of Sirens:
84 Wilson, “Electric Music” on the Victorian Stage Sound Experiments in the Russian Avant-Garde (ReR 23. Era (4 June 1871). 51. Era (29 November 1884). Megacorp [Broken Silence], 2008). 24. The Standard (9 May 1871). 52. Era (13 September 1884). 4. “Das elektrische Orchester des Herrn Schalken- bach,” Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau 14 (1893–1894) 25. Era (14 May 1871). 53. Era (11 October 1884). pp. 6–15. 26. A. de la Rive, “Des mouvements vibratoires que 54. Era (20 September 1884). 5. “Death of Herr Schalkenbach,” Era (16 April déterminent dans les corps, et essentiellement dans 55. Era (4 October 1884). 1910). le fer, la transmission des courants électriques et leur action extérieure,” Archives de l’électricité 5, No. 56. Era [53]. 6. Patent, J.B. Schalkenbach, Keyed Musical Instrument 17 (1845) pp. 200–232. GB 2676 (1861). 57. Era [53]. 27. The subheading of this section quotes Era (27 7. See [6]. In 1925, years after Schalkenbach’s death, April 1873). 58. Era (24 November 1883). his lone son Nicholas Frank (or “Franz”) Schalken- 59. Era (2 May 1885). bach emigrated to New York, where he patented a 28. Era (23 November 1873). storm-simulating instrument, shedding some light 60. Another flagrant Schalkenbach copycat was the 29. The Hornet (6 December 1873). on his father’s apparatus. See Patent, F. Schalken- enigmatic Herr Renier (appearing in 1887—pos- bach, Storm Simulating Device, US 1734446 (1929). It 30. The Morning Post (28 November 1873). sibly a purchaser of Crowther’s apparatus) with his is intricately mechanical, featuring bellows with J.B. “Grand Electric Orchestra Militaire.” In 1890 he Schalkenbach’s hollow “wind ball,” accompanied by 31. Era (8 February 1874). found himself stranded in Australia following an a controlled flow of buckshot rolling down channels unprofitable tour with a theater company. of various textures. He died soon after filing the 32. The Morning Post (15 May 1871). patent. 61. Era (25 October 1884). 33. The Morning Post [32]. 8. “Audition du piano-orchestre électro-moteur,” Le 62. Juleene did however patent a quack medicine Monde Illustré (22 November 1862) pp. 332–334. 34. Era (31 May 1874). in 1889 for treating “gout or rheumatism,” where ingredients were subjected to an electric current for 9. Patent, A. Bain, Improvements in Musical Instruments, 35. “Destruction of St. James’s Hall, Liverpool, By six hours (allegedly to improve their efficacy): Pat- GB 11886 (1847). Fire,” The Manchester Evening News (3 May 1875). ent, H.F. Juleene, An Improved Liniment or Embrocation, GB 10217 (1889). 10. J.H. Anderson, The Fashionable Science of Parlour 36. G.A. Jenness, Maskelyne and Cooke (Enfield, UK: Magic (London: self-published, c. 1855). self-published, 1967). 63. Era (30 May 1885). 11. J.E. Robert-Houdin, The Secrets of Conjuring and 37. Maskelyne & Cooke, the Royal Illusionists and Anti- 64. Electrical World 9 (1887) (New York: McGraw-Hill) Magic (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1878), Spiritualists (London: Egyptian Hall, c.1877). p. 182. translated from J.E. Robert-Houdin, Les Secrets de la Prestidigitation et de la Magie (Paris: Michel Lévy 38. Thomas Manton’s “Crystalophonicon” (a.k.a. 65. Era (3 December 1892). frères, 1868) “Crystalopeon,” or “Ophonic Crystal”) consisted of 32 empty glass goblets, chromatically tuned and 66. Various Juleene compositions (see especially The 12. The Standard (30 June 1863) (London). played with the fingers. Mephisto Gavotte) are featured in early numbers of The Musical Million (London: European Publishing 13. Newcastle Daily Journal (6 December 1864). 39. Era (25 February 1877). Company, 1887–1896).
14. Newcastle Daily Journal (26 December 1864). 40. Patent, J.B. Schalkenbach, Piano Harmonic GB 67. Patent (voided), J.B. Schalkenbach, Improvements 1326 (1877). in Pianos GB 12920 (1891). 15. See [14]. 41. Era (7 April 1878). 68. Era (18 May 1895). 16. B. Weeden, The Education of the Eye (Cambridge, U.K.: Granta, 2008). 42. Era (2 July 1881). 69. “Realistic Music,” The Spectator, Vol. 84, pp. 241– 242 (London: F. C. Westley, 1900). 17. A former assistant to Charles Wheatstone. 43. The Standard (3 July 1883). 70. R. Phillips, Ray Controlled Mechanism (London: 18. See siren, “piping bullfinch,” organ pipe nodal vi- 44. Although an early imitation is seen with “Pro- Percival Marshall & Co., 1933) pp. 70–74. sualizer, etc., in J.H. Pepper, Cyclopaedic Science Simpli- fessor Beaumont” (“The Royal Necromancer” a.k.a. fied (London: Frederick Warne, 1869) pp. 473–526. John Beaumont) in the mid-1870s. 71. Le Monde Illustré [8].
19. This instrument was an organ played by a re- 45. Era (7 July 1883). 72. Anderson [10]. motely situated pianoforte electric switchboard. 46. Juleene and Schalkenbach briefly shared an 73. Sheet music, We’ll Stick to the Colours: Miss Dottie 20. J. Brooker, “Paganini’s Ghost: Musical Resources agent in the early 1870s. D’Alcorn’s Great Song (London: Howard & Co., 1883). of the Royal Polytechnic Institution,” Realms of Light (Ripon, U.K.: Magic Lantern Society, 2005) pp. 146– 47. Era (26 January 1879). 74. “Orquesta Eléctrica,” La Ilustración Artística (27 154; J.S. del Campo Olaso, “La electricidad aplicada November 1893) 12, No. 622 (Barcelona: 1893) al órgano y la aportación de Aquilino Amezua,” 48. E.D. D’Alcorn, Henri D’Alcorn (Oregon, U.S.A.: Musiker 19 (Donostia: Eusko Ikaskuntza, 2012) pp. typescript, 1986). 15–174. Manuscript received 2 January 2013. 49. “Queen’s Palace of Varieties,” Reynolds’s Newspaper 21. A. Apps, The Great Lightning Inductorium (London: (7 October 1883). Also see advertisement in same Daniel Wilson is an award-winning electro- newspaper, 30 September without Juleene. Royal Polytechnic Institution, 1869). acoustic composer, instrument builder, broad- 22. Era (14 May 1871). 50. Era (6 September 1884). caster and writer based in Hertfordshire, U.K.
Wilson, “Electric Music” on the Victorian Stage 85 Call to Curators Leonardo seeks art|science galleries for print and on-line
Call for Leonardo Galleries The editors of Leonardo invite proposals for curated galleries for publication in Leonardo journal and on the Leonardo On-Line web site. Galleries should include an introduction by the gallery curator and showcase a number of art- ists working within a common theme or milieu falling under the broad rubric of art + science. Full call for galleries:
(© Michiko Tsuda) OnI-Lntrineo Sductiupplementon On-Line Supplement
Sound Art Theories Symposium
On a November weekend in 2011, some 150 people attended Chicago’s first Sound Art Theories Symposium. I organized the symposium for the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and it would not have happened without the support of the department’s faculty, staff and students, as well as the school’s Dean of Faculty, Lisa Wainwright. Additional support in the form of ancillary sound art events was provided by Experimental Sound Studio. During the 2-day symposium, 13 scholars presented papers with wide-ranging, deeply thought out and occasionally contradictory approaches to theoriz- ing sound as art and art as sound. Intentionally broad and nontopical, the symposium was, I think, what my opening remarks had hypothesized: an “enticing, provocative, messy and sub- stantive” pluralistic environment for thinking of, about and through sound and much more. And as the closing remarks by the invited presenters attested, it provided a much-needed, invigorating and supportive framework for a discourse that all would like to see (and hear) continued. So, at the invitation of Nic Collins, with the participation of several of the sym- posium’s presenters and through the indefatigable editorial assistance of Patricia Bentson at LMJ, I am pleased to extend the discourse a little further into the forehearable future with this on-line publication of seven of the papers presented in 2011.
Lou Mallozzi Organizer, 2011 Sound Art Theories Symposium E-mail:
Lou Mallozzi is a Chicago-based artist known primarily for his work in sound, often with a focus on dismembering and reconstituting language, gesture, and signification. His work includes performances, installations, music works, record- ings and radio works. In addition, his visual art practice includes drawing and other media. He has performed and exhibited extensively in the U.S.A. and Europe. In addition to his solo works, Mallozzi often collaborates with artists, filmmakers and musicians, including Sandra Binion, Michael Vorfled, Alessandro Bosetti, Michael Zerang, Frédéric Moffet, Antonia Contro, Jacques Demierre, Vincent Barras, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Charlotte Hug and many others. He has received several fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council and artist residencies through the Chicago-Lucerne Sister Cities Program, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study Center, Ragdale Foundation and Spritzenhaus Hamburg. He is an Adjunct Professor of the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Executive Director of Experimental Sound Studio. For more information, see
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 87–89, 2013 87 On-Line Supplement: Sound Art Theories Symposium
The following papers were originally not call for external frameworks of aesthetic.” As an example of this con- presented at the 2011 Sound Art Theo- legitimacy. Finally, some considerations tribution, the author analyzes Haroon ries Symposium (SATS 2011), organized are presented on “writing sound” as a Mirza’s Sick (2011), as it was installed by the Sound Department of the School layered construction and as the trace of in the Central International Pavilion of the Art Institute of Chicago, Novem- the experience that makes it every time at the 2011 Venice Biennale, focusing ber 2011. The symposium presented anew, gathered by the author while writ- especially on Bice Curiger’s curatorial papers on a wide range of approaches ing her book En abîme: Listening, Read- decision to house Mirza’s piece within to current theoretical work in the ing, Writing. An Archival Fiction (Zer0 a “para-pavilion” designed by Monika area of sound as art and art as sound. Books, 2012). Sosnowska, which also exhibited Abstracts from a selection of SATS 2011 photographs by David Goldblatt. The papers are presented here; full papers assemblage of Sick, Sosnowska’s para- can be viewed at
88 On-Line Supplement: Sound Art Theories Symposium Bergson to show that post-structural- Burden Bangs Joy: Sound Guattari), and by juxtaposing two dif- ist analyses may be of limited applica- Art and the Returns of ferent well-known permanent artworks bility. What is the significance of affect Rock and Roll (Bernhard Leitner’s permanent sound theory for the listener, whose experi- installation Sound Space and Max Neu- ence is tied not only to systems of mean- Seth Kim-Cohen, School of haus’s permanent sound installation ing, post-structurally conceived, but the Museum of Fine Arts, Times Square), the author aims to point also to the real-time analog in-folding Boston, MA, U.S.A. out how time, spatial destability, and and accumulation of sensory informa- E-mail:
On-Line Supplement: Sound Art Theories Symposium 89 Organised Sound
Editor Leigh Landy, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Organised Sound is an international peer-reviewed journal Organised Sound which focuses on the rapidly developing methods and is available online at: http://journals.cambridge.org/oso issues arising from the use of technology in music today. It concentrates upon the impact which the application of technology is having upon music in a variety of genres, including multimedia, performance art, sound sculpture and music ranging from popular idioms to experimental electroacoustic composition. It provides a unique forum for anyone interested in electroacoustic music studies, its creation To subscribe contact and related developments to share the results of their research Customer Services as they affect musical issues. An accompanying DVD is sent to in Cambridge: Phone +44 (0)1223 326070 subscribers annually. Fax +44 (0)1223 325150 Email [email protected]
in New York: Phone (845) 353 7500 Fax (845) 353 4141 Email [email protected]
Free email alerts Keep up-to-date with new material – sign up at journals.cambridge.org/register
For free online content visit: http://journals.cambridge.org/oso LMJ23 CD sound—or its absence Curated by Seth Cluett Leonardo Music Journal CD Series Volume 23
1. James Webb: Telephone Voice 2. Catherine Béchard & Sabine Hudon: The Circulation of Fluids I 3. Maia Urstad: Meanwhile, in Shanghai. . . 4. Tania Candiani: Sound Piece from Plataforma Sonora/Torre Reloj 5. Mendi + Keith Obadike: Automatic 6. Tetsuya Umeda: Spark, Bubble 7. Pascal Broccolichi: Espaces injectés 8. Hong-Kai Wang: The Broken Orchestra Live in Stockholm 9. Benedict Drew: Archive Tape from the Suffolk Concrete Music centre 1972 10. Nina Katchadourian: Telemarketing Indeterminacy
PRODUCTION CREDITS Curated by Seth Cluett Project Coordinator: Patricia Bentson Design: Peter Soe, Jr. Front cover art: Tania Candiani LMJ Editor in Chief: Nicolas Collins All recordings engineered and remastered by Tom Erbe,
Leonardo is a federally registered trademark of Leonardo/ISAST.
To subscribe or order additional copies of Leonardo Music Journal and CD, see
The LMJ CD Series The LMJ CD series offers an exciting sampling of curious and unusual, but eminently listenable, music from around the world. Independently curated and annotated by experts and aficionados, these CDs of- fer a feast for the ear and mind alike. See http://leonardo.info/lmj for more information and a listing of titles and artists. CD Companion Introduction
sound—or its absence
From the silence encouraged by the space of the gallery to the environmental immersion of earthworks and other site-specific interventions, sound—or its absence—often marks both the means of production and the condition of reception of the work of art. Whether putting pressure on the coded acoustics of the place of engagement (Broccolichi and Urstad), exploring the audible trace of language (Katchadourian and Obadike), the evocation of the acoustic-imaginary in conceptual art and music (Candiani, Drew and Wang), sound can be worked as material (Umeda), developed as medium (Webb) or function as support. Hailing from Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States, the artists represented on the LMJ23 CD are as diverse in their approaches to sound as they are in their geographic dispositions. These artists are rep- resentative not of the sound practices of their respective countries and communities, but of the breadth of approaches that must be reconciled to begin a discussion about sound in contemporary artistic practice worldwide. I have approached the curation of this CD from the perspective of an artist engaged in dialog with a growing community of practitioners less interested in the fact of a work’s soundfulness than in the space that sound opens up materi- ally, expressively and conceptually. Many of the recordings here are static documents of works intended to be experienced in situ, while others are at home in headphones. For an understanding of the current state of sound at any given time, a sensitivity to the sound-making properties of work outside the genre-limited discourse of sound art is becoming increasingly necessary. For convenience, the word sound has stood as a placeholder for a range of much more subtle characteristics: sound can be understood not only as a physical acoustic phenomenon, but also as the audible (semiotic) presence of the voice, conceptual and physical silence and noise, the subject of both interior and exterior hearing, and the object of attentive listening. The reduction to the single descriptor “sound,” has limited the hermeneutic potential of what is a rich and varied matrix of meanings while at the same time suggesting an intrinsic modernism that has only been amplified by the medium-specific rhetoric surrounding unified theories of “sound art.” In the work presented here, I have attempted to proceed with a mind attuned to the multi- modal experience of works that employ sound to varied ends from expressive means to physi- cal material, and from spatial signature to linguistic trace.
Seth Cluett LMJ23 CD Curator E-mail:
Seth Cluett is an artist, performer and composer whose work ranges from photography and drawing to video, sound installation, concert music, and critical writing. His research investigates the media history of the loudspeaker and the documentation of sound in art. His work has been presented internationally at venues such as MassMoCA, The Kitchen, GRM, Palais de Tokyo, STEIM and Dundee Contemporary Arts. Recent work is documented on Line, Radical Matters, Sedimental and Winds Measure recordings. The recipient of grants and awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Meet the Composer and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundations, he holds an M.F.A. in electronic art from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a doctorate in music composition with a graduate certificate in Media & Modernity Studies from Princeton University. In the fall of 2012, Cluett joined the faculty of Contemporary Arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey. For more information, see
92 LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, p. 92, 2013 © 2013 ISAST LMJ23 CD Co m p a n i o n sound—or its absence: Contributors’ Notes
Curated by Seth Cluett
See
Contact: E-mail:
When invited to submit an audio document from one of our sound installations for the LMJ23 CD, we chose The Circulation of Fluids, created in 2008–2009. This installation probes water’s ames ebb elephone oice J W : T V resonance: this liquid body is familiar to us mainly through Composed by James Webb. Voice actor: Adrian Galley. vision and aerial hearing, but its subaqueous echoes are still Contact: E-mail:
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 93–98, 2013 93 Maia Urstad: Meanwhile, in Shanghai. . . Stereo remix of site-specific sound installation created by the composer, 2011–2013.
Contact: E-mail:
Meanwhile, in Shanghai. . . is a site-specific sound installation that I have been developing since 2011. It was created for the European sound art network Resonance, and was exhibited in five European cities between 2011 and 2012. Each exhi- bition situation has been different in character and appear- ance—from an acoustically dry garage in a former tobacco factory in Riga to a reverberant, white space at Singuhr Sound Gallery in Berlin. The work has thus been adapted both visu- ally and sonically to each new space. The installation employs Fig. 2. Catherine Bechard & Sabin Hudon: The Circulation of Fluids dozens of portable radios, suspended on long steel strings I, sound installation of paper horns mounted to a wooden structure and each equipped with its own custom-sized loudspeaker, an ampli- from the gallery ceiling, each playing a multichannel sound fier channel and an ultrasound sensor, playing underwater record- composition consisting of recordings of radio transmissions ings made in lakes, rivers, ponds, a waterfall and barrels filled with from around the world. This audio is transmitted wirelessly water, 2008–2009. (Photo © Catherine Bechard & Sabin Hudon) via local FM transmitters to the radios, creating a rich spatial environment. The radios appear as personalities with stickers, stains and traces of different owners, and with a variety of de- dive into an antrum of a constantly changing fluid universe, signs, from 1960s transistor radios to 1980s square boombox revealing inaudible yet vaguely familiar worlds. The work acts marvels to the pocket radios of today—all the latest smashing as a network activated at different points in space; it is organic hi-tech wonders of the day they hit the market, ending up in and relational, prompting dialogue between the attending ele- ruins after 5 years of use. Each speaker gives a rich variety of ments—sounds, sculpture, visitor—that come together to cre- sound quality; upon entering the installation, the visitor comes ate a whole in its own right. Lines of force and listening paths into close contact with these properties, which reflect the re- are created, altered and replayed. lationships among technological development and physical Our relationship to sound within The Circulation of Fluids [1] movement, proximity and distance, and notions of globality is closely linked to the work’s materiality and its connection to and contemporaneity. space and time. To produce the audio document, we numeri- The title Meanwhile, in Shanghai. . . was inspired by the way cally captured variations in movement and distance generated that thought bubbles in comics describe illusory time—and by the 11 sonars placed near the horns. Since each sonar is as- place—movement; the title just as easily could have been: Si- sociated with a loudspeaker and an independent audio source, multaneously, in Baltimore. . . or Later, Somewhere near Cairo. . . . we have also recorded the sounds transmitted through the 11 For this work I collected radio clips referring to concrete paper horns. By using the same computer program as in the places and times: 23 Uhr in Deutschland, Cinco de la Ma- installation process, we have collected 11 audio tracks result- ñana en Madrid, or 7:00 in Nova Scotia. These clips are joined ing from the variations in volume produced by the sonars and to form a composition, along with recordings of other radio- mixed them in stereo. Through this technique, we created the specific, unintended sounds such as white noise, crackles and audio piece here, which represents, as far as possible, the dif- interference. The polyphony of voices, tones, buzz and noise fusion and listening context of The Circulation of Fluids. forms a backdrop for on-air specific explorations about time and place—a phonogram of a 24-hour cycle on the air. Note Fig. 3. Maia Urstad, Meanwhile, in Shanghai. . . , site-specific sound 1. For visual references of the installation, visit
94 LMJ23 CD Contributors’ Notes Contemporaneity is the thematic point of departure; our liv- ing contemporaneity is consciously invoked by the radio. The Fig. 4. Tania radio follows the day like a clock, where hourly news updates Candiani, Sound provide us with a shared routine that synchronizes the rhythm Piece from Plata- forma Sonora/ of everyday life [1]. Tuning between stations, this contempo- Torre Reloj, raneity changes with the world’s time zones, and each hour sound installa- has a distinct character. At any time, one can, from one’s local tion of 48 alarm space somewhere on the globe, tune into the daily rhythms of clocks recorded in a studio, with different time zones and visit all places at all times. Today, we 48 aluminum assume that the world lives in one global time in a universal trumpets, existence. But—economically as well as ecologically, we are 48 speakers, simultaneously connected to people who find themselves in 3 amplifiers and completely different daily realities and environments. metal structure, Condesa D.F., The installation invites the audience to move between the Mexico City, radios in the exhibition space, with the sound changing as one 2012. (Photo © moves. The track on this CD presents a stereo remix intended Tania Candiani) for headphone listening. It is thus a specific work for close- range listening—the experience of being inside the installa- tion is replaced with a pure auditory experience.
Reference 1. Media researcher Lars Nyre, “The Movement of Language in Radio—A Phe- nomenological Approach to Sound,” Norwegian Journal of Media No. 1 (1998).
Maia Urstad is an artist working at the intersection of audio and visual art, predominantly with sound installations and performances. The research processes of Tania Candiani take as starting point lan- She was educated at the Bergen National Academy of the Arts and guage, text and the political implications of the domestic. Her trans- also has a background in rock music. Her recent work interrogates the lation strategies among systems—linguistic, visual, phonic—and history and methodology of communication technology: from Morse practices generate associations where there is a constant nostalgia for code and other long-range signals to digital terrestrial networks and the obsolete that makes us consider the discursive content of artifacts the use of fiber optics. Radio is a central theme in her work, in that and our former projections of the future. She has gathered interdis- the authority of the medium opens up visual and conceptual possibili- ciplinary work teams to achieve poetic intersections between art and ties. Urstad’s solo and collaborative work has been presented at spaces technology. Candiani’s work is in private and public collections at the such as Singuhr Sound Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Reina Sofia Radio, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the San Diego Museum of Madrid, Spain; Bergen Art Museum, Norway; Johannesburg Art Gal- Art; the Mexican Museum, San Francisco; Deutsche Bank; INBA, lery, South Africa; Prefix ICA in Toronto, Canada; Mamam do Patio, Mexico; among others. Her most recent exhibition at Laboratorio Arte Recife, Brazil; and Electrohype at Malmö Konsthall, Sweden. Urstad Alameda (LAA) in Mexico City will be followed by a comprehensive re- curates and produces art projects through her company Maur Projects, search book on the project. She was awarded a fellowship by the Guggen- and she is one of the founders of Lydgalleriet Sound Art Gallery in heim Foundation and a grant by the National System of Art Creators Norway. She is a member of the international sound art collective of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts of Mexico (FONCA). freq-out, curated by CM von Hausswolff, and her soundworks are Her project “Five Variations on Phonic Circumstances and a Pause” published by Touch Music [MCPS]. received the Award of Distinction in the category Hybrid Arts in the 2013 Prix Ars Electronica.
Tania Candiani: Sound Piece from Plataforma Sonora/Torre Reloj endi eith badike utomatic Forty-eight alarm clocks recorded in a studio, with 48 alumi- M + K O : A num trumpets, 48 speakers, three amplifiers and metal struc- Contact: E-mail:
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LMJ23 CD Contributors’ Notes 95 They make visual sampling feel personal. This sound piece is one in a series that we made around 2000 that both referenced the work of other artists directly and attempted to carve out a personal sound. Stereo and multichannel versions of this project have been presented in the past. Automatic was first presented as public sound installation in 2000 and has since been presented in concert and broadcast on radio.
Mendi + Keith Obadike make music, art and literature. Their work has been commissioned by The Kitchen, Rhizome/The New Museum; The NY African Film Festival with Electronic Arts Intermix; Northwestern University; Bucknell University; the Yale Cabaret; Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. They have released two albums on Bridge Records and a book of poetry with Lotus Press. They have two artists’ books scheduled for release in 2013 through 1913 Press. Their sound installation American Cypher was exhibited March–June 2013 at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and their opera-masquerade Four Electric Ghosts is touring. For more information, see
Tetsuya Umeda: Spark, Bubble Performed and recorded by Tetsuya Umeda at almost music, Osaka, 2012. Mastered by Nishikawa Bunsho.
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Tetsuya Umeda is one of the leading artists in Japan working with sound installation and performance. Umeda employs minimal elec- tronic means to produce sound from everyday objects, such as balloons, Fig. 6. Pascal Broccolichi, Espaces injectés, recording session at the fans, tin cans and dog whistles, in a transparent process that takes BASF factory, Lyon, France, 2010. (Photo: © Pascal Broccolichi) place before viewers’ eyes. His self-created sound tools retain their par- ticular histories and operate by reflecting the surrounding conditions of the space: temperature, shape, airflow and the motion of people. The resulting effect is that of an experimental sound laboratory that exposes Pascal Broccolichi: Espaces injectés viewers—as both witnesses and partners—to the entire process of sound Phonographic environment created by using recordings made production and to the surprising discoveries that ensue during each in 2010 at various industrial sites of the chemistry valley near unique event. Umeda is based in Osaka, Japan. Lyon, France. Co-produced by the Centre d’Art Plastique de Saint-Fons avec l’aide du pôle Arkema de Pierre-Bénite, Bluestar Silicones France SAS, and BASF Performance Prod- Fig. 5. Tetsuya Umeda, Spark, Bubble, schematic of sound perfor- mance, 2012. (Illustration © Tetsuya Umeda) ucts, France. Phonography created and produced by Pascal Broccolichi, Studio Son Villa Arson, Nice, 2012. Mastering by Norscq, Paris.
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Text by Thierry Davila: Made in 2011 on the occasion of a mono- graph show organized at the Centre d’Arts Plastiques in Saint- Fons, outside Lyon, Espaces injectés is based on a number of recordings made by Broccolichi on the strip of chemical plants that runs alongside the River Rhône for about 15 kilometers. This is an historic industrial site, bound up with the indus- trial revolution and vital to the economic activity of the region and, in particular, the city of Lyon. The valley emerged as an industrial center in the late 18th century, when the chemical industry began to develop, following the silk industry. In the 19th century a number of chemical processes and substances were developed (the Lumières brothers had a factory there, which is where they used the acids they made to develop their films) that provided the foundation of the fortune made more recently by groups such as Rhône Poulenc. Today, parts of this “chemical corridor” have fallen into disuse, making them the living memory, or palimpsest, of the past, albeit abandoned
96 LMJ23 CD Contributors’ Notes or partially destroyed. Broccolichi used the appropriate tools to dip into the current acoustic identity of several zones in this region by capturing some of these resonances, aiming at a kind of phonographic portrait of the territory. To do this, he used (among other things) an acoustic antenna capable of picking up sounds as much as a kilometer away (this kind of equipment is often used by ornithologists because it is both precise and discreet). Climbing up the chimneys of a factory, he picked up the general mood—the drone, as the technical term goes—of the valley. He also explored the old BASF fac- tory that once made magnetic tape and now lies abandoned and empty. There he made numerous sound recordings and met former employees who gave him a unique account of these personal and collective industrial memories (the build- ings were demolished shortly afterwards). Psychologically, this experience had a powerful human and aesthetic impact on the artist as the experience of an emotional memory, of em- bodied memory, of its beauty and fragility, the suffering and Fig. 7. Hong-Kai Wang, The Broken Orchestra Live in Stockholm, sound performance, 2013. (Photo: Hong-Kai Wang) dramas that it evokes. The acoustic material gathered by Broc- colichi was not reworked: the sound plates were mixed but not treated, so as not to add complexity to complexity. There is process-driven approach to production. Her work spans performance, nothing baroque, therefore, about this sound capture. It is a workshop, text and installation, and is concerned with listening and readymade sampling of a world of vibrations that no longer has sound as forms of perceptual, cognitive organization and questions a functionality, without any industrial effectiveness (at least as of relation and harmony. Wang has presented her work internation- far as the BASF factory is concerned), one that comes across ally at Iaspis, Stockholm, 2013; Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna, with great clarity. It is the record of a relic. 2013; Kunstvlaai Inexactly This, Amsterdam, 2012; Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, 2012; Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Developed within several different disciplines, the work of Pascal Broc- Montreal, 2012; DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, 2012; colichi is based on listening and, more specifically, on sound envisaged Taiwan Pavilion, the 54th Venice Biennale, 2011; IMO, Copenhagen, as a vocabulary of forms that lend themselves to the creation of instal- 2011; Festival Eletronika, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 2011; Casino Lux- lations. As a framework for his research, the artist has developed a embourg—Forum d’art contemporain, Luxembourg, 2010; Interna- network of multiple environments connected by ongoing relationships tional Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, 2009; La Casa Encendida, between one work and the next. By scattering the customary principles Madrid, 2008; La Noche en Blanco, Madrid, 2007; 2006 Taipei of certain acoustic laws and their fields of technological application Biennial: Dirty Yoga, among others. around the exhibition art space, Broccolichi coordinates the typology of sounds with our capabilities for perception. Benedict Drew: Archive Tape from the Suffolk Concrete Music Centre 1972 Hong-Kai Wang: The Broken Orchestra Contact: E-mail:
LMJ23 CD Contributors’ Notes 97 Nina Katchadourian: Telemarketing Indeterminacy Contact: E-mail:
I was teaching at Brown University in 2004 when I sat in on a class that was being guest taught by Alvin Lucier. Telemarketing Indeterminacy was made for our final class recital. Lucier talked a lot about John Cage’s Indeterminacy (1959) in the class, which has always been one of my favorite sound works. I decided to take Cage’s format (the 1-minute spoken story) to be the guiding structural principle for Telemarketing Indeterminacy, and I combed Cage’s piece for words and sounds that I could piece together into a 1-minute telemarketing infomercial for Indeterminacy itself. In a few exhibitions, this piece has been put back into context by collecting phone numbers that are later called with the recording, either played live or delivered Fig. 8. Benedict Drew, Archive Tape from the Suffolk Concrete Music to voice mail. Centre 1972. (Illustration © Benedict Drew) Nina Katchadourian was born in Stanford, California, and grew up spending every summer on a small island in the Finnish archi- A strange side effect of this dabbling in the ritual was that pelago, where she still spends part of each year. Her work exists in a the trees started to mutate into what could only be described wide variety of media including photography, sculpture, video and as modern sculpture and large breast-like structures emerged sound. Her work has been exhibited domestically and internationally from the earth. at places such as PS1/MoMA, the Serpentine Gallery, New Lang- According to the little information that I could find, he ton Arts, Artists Space, SculptureCenter and the Palais de Tokyo. In claimed that this tape was produced from inside of him, and January 2006 the Turku Art Museum in Turku, Finland, featured a solo show of works made in Finland, and in June 2006 the Tang that during one of these rituals it had ruptured his stomach Museum in Saratoga Springs exhibited a 10-year survey of her work and wriggled out of him in a wormlike fashion. and published an accompanying monograph entitled “All Forms of Attraction.” The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego presented Benedict Drew (b. 1977) works across video, sculpture, music and their a solo show of recent video installation works in July 2008. In Febru- associated technologies. Recent solo exhibitions include The Onesie ary 2010 she was the artist in residence at the Dunedin Public Art Cycle, Rhubarba, Edinburgh; Now Thing, Whitstable Biennale; This Gallery in Dunedin, New Zealand, where she had a solo show entitled Is Feedback, Outpost, Norwich; Gliss, Cell Project Space; and The Per- “Seat Assignment.” She is currently at work on a permanent public suaders, Circa Site / AV Festival, Newcastle. Group exhibitions include piece, commissioned by the GSA, for a border crossing station between While It Lasts, Eastside Projects, Birmingham; Is That All There Is? the U.S.A. and Canada. Katchadourian is represented by Catharine Import Projects, Berlin; Long Live The New Flesh, ICA, London; Re- Clark gallery in San Francisco and is an assistant professor at NYU’s volver Part 3, Matt’s Gallery London; Young London, V22, London; Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Paraproduction, Boetzelaer|Nispen, Amsterdam; Containing the Pos- sible, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery; There Is Not And Never Has Been Anything To Understand!, ACS Gallery; Things That Have Interested Me, Waterside Contemporary; and Soundworks, ICA, London. Drew completed an MFA at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2011. He has frequently collaborated with a diverse mix of artists and musi- cians and has made many works for radio, including the series Unter Radio for Resonance FM, and most recently Concrete Decent Transmis- sion for Writtle Calling. He was lead artist for Chisenhale Gallery’s Propeller Project (2012) and a LUX Associate Artist (2011/12); and in 2012 he was shortlisted for the prestigious Jarman award. Drew is represented by Matt’s Gallery, London.
98 LMJ23 CD Contributors’ Notes 2013 Author Index Leonardo Volume 46 and Leonardo Music Journal Volume 23
ABELES, KIM V. “Shared Skies (13 global Elizabeth Edwards, Leonardo 46, No. BARBER, JOHN F. Review of Radio: Es- skies),” Leonardo Special Issue: SIG- 3 (2013). says in Bad Reception by John Mowitt, GRAPH 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: BAETENS, JAN. Review of Cybertext Poet- Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 ics: The Critical Landscape of New Media BARBER, LLORENÇ. “A Music out of (2013). Literary Theory by Markku Eskelinen, Doors,” Leonardo Music Journal 23 ACHITUV, ROMY. “Algorithms and Leonardo 46, No. 2 (2013). (2013). Structural Metaphors: Reflections of BAETENS, JAN. Review of Diane Arbus’s BATCHELOR, PETER. “The Intimate the Digital-Cultural Feedback Loop,” 1960s: Auguries of Experience by Freder- and the Immersive in Grids: Multi- Leonardo 46, No. 2 (2013). ick Gross, Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). channel Sound Installations,” Leo- “ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist BAETENS, JAN. Review of High Society: nardo Music Journal 23 (2013). Award for Lifetime Achievement in Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Cul- BÉCHARD, CATHERINE, and HUDON, Digital Art: Manfred Mohr,” in Leo- ture by Mike Jay, Leonardo 46, No. 2 SABIN. “The Circulation of Fluids I,” nardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH 2013 (2013). LMJ23 CD Contributor’s Note, Leo- Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art Gal- BAETENS, JAN. Review of The Invention nardo Music Journal 23 (2013). lery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). of Heterosexual Culture by Louis-George BEHRENS, ROY R. Review of The Color AHN, YONG-YEOL, and AHNERT, SE- Tin, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Revolution by Regina Lee Blaszczyk, BASTIAN. “The Flavor Network,” in BAETENS, JAN. Review of The Right to Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). Special Section “Arts, Humanities and Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality by BEHRENS, ROY R. Review of Graphic Complex Networks,” Leonardo 46, No. Nicholas Mirzoeff, Leonardo 46, No. Design Process: From Problem to Solution 3 (2013). 1 (2013). by Nancy Skolos and Thomas Wedell, ALAYAN, AMAL. “Small Molecules BAETENS, JAN. Review of Transforma- Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Count Too: Creativity and Change tive Beauty: Art Museums in Industrial BEHRENS, ROY R. Review of Taliesin Di- Post Arab Spring,” Leonardo 46, No. Britain by Amy Woodson-Boulton, Leo- ary: A Year with Frank Lloyd Wright by 3 (2013). nardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Priscilla J. Henken, Leonardo 46, No. ALBRIGHT, THOMAS D. “The Veiled BAETENS, JAN. Review of Under Blue 5 (2013). Christ of Cappella Sansevero: On Art, Cup by Rosalind E. Krauss, Leonardo BERGHAUS, MARC. “Three Environ- Vision and Reality,” in Special Section 46, No. 2 (2013). ments,” Leonardo Music Journal 23 “ArtScience: The Essential Connec- BAETENS, JAN, and TRUYEN, FRED. (2013). tion,” Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). “Hypertext Revisited,” Leonardo 46, BERTACCHINI, FRANCESCA, ET AL. ANDO, HIDEYUKI; YOSHIDA, TO- No. 5 (2013). “Toward the Use of Chua’s Circuit in MOFUMI; and WATANABE, JUNJI. BAKER, CAMILLE C. “MINDtouch: Em- Education, Art and Interdisciplinary “‘Save YourSelf!!!’—An Externalized bodied Mobile Media Ephemeral Research: Some Implementation and Sense of Balance,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 Transference,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 Opportunities,” Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). (2013). (2013). ARIAS, RICARDO. “Rakes, Live Deaths BALAJI, S. “Biomorphic Presentation of BIRRINGER, JOHANNES, and DAN- and Modified Cassette Players: Three Proteins: Artistic Science or Scientific JOUX, MICHÈLLE. “The Sound of Contemporary Sound Artists from Art?” Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). Movement Wearables: Performing Colombia,” Leonardo Music Journal 23 BALAJI, S., and NEELA, S. “Protein UKIYO,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). (2013). Kolam: An Artistic Rendition of Mo- BLASSNIGG, MARTHA. Review of A ARIKAN, BURAK. “Network Intelligence lecular Structure Data,” in Special Boatload of Wild Irishmen, directed by for All,” in Special Section “Arts, Hu- Section “ArtScience: The Essential Mac Dara Ó Curraidbin, Leonardo 46, manities and Complex Networks,” Connection,” Leonardo 46, No. 1 No. 3 (2013). Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). (2013). BLOW, MIKE. “Solar Work #2: A Solar- ARNOLD, WILFRED NIELS. Review of BALIT, DANIELE. “From Ear to Site: On Powered Sound Artwork,” Leonardo Science and Conscience: The Life of James Discreet Sound,” Leonardo Music Jour- Music Journal 23 (2013). Franck by Jost Lemmerich, translated nal 23 (2013). BOGART, BENJAMIN DAVID ROBERT, by Ann M. Hentschel, Leonardo 46, BARBER, JOHN F. Review of The Fu- and PASQUIER, PHILIPPE. “Context No. 3 (2013). ture Was Here: The Commodore Amiga Machines: A Series of Situated and AYCOCK, JOHN. “@TransforMitt,” Leo- by Jimmy Maher, Leonardo 46, No. 2 Self-Organizing Artworks,” Leonardo nardo 46, No. 5 (2013). (2013). 46, No. 2 (2013). BAETENS, JAN. Review of Borges and BARBER, JOHN F. Review of Missions for BOYLE, COLLEEN. “You Saw the Whole Memory: Encounters with the Human Thoughtful Gamers by Andrew Cutting, of the Moon: The Role of Imagination Brain by Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). in the Perceptual Construction of the Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). BARBER, JOHN F. Review of The Oxford Moon,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). BAETENS, JAN. Review of The Camera as Handbook of Sound Studies, edited by BREAKER, JANINE. “The Complexion of Historian: Amateur Photographers and Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld, Two Bodies. Part One: Nuance Drawn Historical Imagination, 1885–1918 by Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). Out,” Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013).
© 2013 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, pp. 99–103, 2013 99 BROCCOLICHI, PASCAL. “Espaces injec- Participatory Engagement,” Leonardo GRANT, JANE. “Soft Moon: Exploring tés,” LMJ23 CD Contributor’s Note, 46, No. 1 (2013). Matter and Mutability in Narratives Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). D’HUY, JULIEN. “Neural Correlates of and Histories of the Earth-Moon Sys- BÜCHLER, MARCO; CRANE, GREGORY; Myths in Which an Image Becomes tem,” Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). and HEYER, GERHARD. “Historical Alive,” Leonardo 46, No. 2 (2013). GRANT, JANE, and MATTHIAS, JOHN. Relevance Feedback Detection by DOOVE, EDITH. Review of Captain Cap “Plasticities and Ghosts: Relation- Text Re-use Networks,” in Special Sec- (Vol. 1) by Alphonse Allais, Leonardo ships between Stimulus and Memory tion “Arts, Humanities and Complex 46, No. 5 (2013). in Noisy Networks,” Leonardo Music Networks,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). DRAYSON, HANNAH. Review of When Journal 23 (2013). BURNHAM, BRIAN. “Three Dimen- Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the GRAUBARD, ALLAN. Review of The Art sional Visualization of Complex Technology of Identity by Shoshana of Cruelty: A Reckoning by Maggie Nel- Environmental Data Sets of Vari- Amielle Magnet, Leonardo 46, No. 2 son, Leonardo 46, No. 2 (2013). able Resolution,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). GRAUBARD, ALLAN. Review of Looking (2013). DREW, BENEDICT. “Archive Tape from for Bruce Conner by Kevin Hatch, Leo- CANDIANI, TANIA. “Sound Piece from the Suffolk Concrete Music Centre 1972,” nardo 46, No. 1 (2013). Plataforma Sonora/Torre Reloj,” LMJ23 LMJ23 CD Contributor’s Note, Leo- GRIFFIN, DAVID. “Ut Pictura Poesis: CD Contributor’s Note, Leonardo Mu- nardo Music Journal 23 (2013). Drawing into Space,” Leonardo Spe- sic Journal 23 (2013). DYKE, PHIL. Review of The Universe in cial Issue: SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Papers CASCELLA, DANIELA. “‘Something Zero Words: The Story of Mathematics as and XYZN: Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo Missing’: Notes on Writing Sound as Told through Equations by Dana Mac- 46, No. 4 (2013). Landscape and Mise-en-Abîme,” On- Kenzie, Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). GRIGAR, DENE. Review of Debates in the Line Supplement Abstract, Leonardo ENG, MICHAEL. “From an Aesthetics Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew Music Journal 23 (2013). of the Real to the Reality of the Aes- K. Gold, Leonardo 46, No. 2 (2013). CAZABON, LYNN. “Junkspace,” Leo- thetic: Rancière, Sick, and the Politics GRIGAR, DENE. Review of Digital_Hu- nardo 46, No. 5 (2013). of Sound Art,” On-Line Supplement manities by Anne Burdick, Johanna CHOI, YONGSOON; PARSANI, RA- Abstract, Leonardo Music Journal 23 Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd HUL; ROMAN, XAVIER; PANDEY, (2013). Presner and Jeffrey Schnapp, Leonardo ANSHUL VIKRAM; and CHEOK, EVANS, T. BRANDON. “A Sympathetic 46, No. 3 (2013). ADRIAN DAVID. “Light Perfume: A Resonance: Sound, the Listener and GRIGAR, DENE. Review of Virtuality and Fashion Accessory for Synchroniza- Affect Theory,” On-Line Supplement the Art of Exhibition: Curatorial Design tion of Nonverbal Communication,” Abstract, Leonardo Music Journal 23 for the Multimedial Museum by Vince Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). (2013). Dziekan, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). CLUETT, SETH. “CD Introduction: FAN, YUAN-YI, and MINNEN, DAVID. GROND, FLORIAN; OLMOS, ADRI- sound—or its absence,” Leonardo Mu- “Move That Sound There: Exploring ANA; and COOPERSTOCK, JER- sic Journal 23 (2013). Sound in Space with a Markerless EMY R. “Making Sculptures Audible COHEN, T.J.; KERMOD, S.K.J.; and Gestural Interface,” Leonardo Music through Participatory Sound Design,” LEGGETT, MIKE. “Ten Trenches: A Journal 23 (2013). Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). Science-Art Collaboration,” Leonardo FITZGERALD, PATRICK; LUNK, DAN- HALPERN, MEGAN K., and ROGERS, 46, No. 1 (2013). IEL; CHERRY, LEE; MARTIN, JIM; HANNAH STAR. “Inseparable Im- COLEMAN, GRISHA. “Listening as the and MARTIN, DWAYNE. “Long pulses: The Science and Aesthetics of Land Talks Back: Ecology, Embodi- View,” Leonardo Special Issue: SIG- Ernst Haeckl and Charley Harper,” ment and Information in the Science GRAPH 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Fictions of echo::system,” Leonardo 46, Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 HAN, YOON CHUNG, and HAN, No. 3 (2013). (2013). BYEONG-JUN. “Digiti Sonus,” Leo- COLLINS, NICOLAS. “Sound Art,” Leo- FOSTER, CHRIS. “One Color—A White nardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH 2013 nardo Music Journal 23 (2013). Asbestos (Chrysotile) Painting,” Leo- Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art Gal- CONSTANTINI, GIOVANNA L. Review nardo 46, No. 2 (2013). lery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). of The Berkshire Glass Works by William GEE, ERIN. “Repetition as Radical Re- HARLE, ROB. Review of Computers and J. Patriquin and Julie L. Sloan, Leo- ferral: Echo and Narcissus in the Creativity by Jon McCormack and nardo 46, No. 1 (2013). Digital Index,” On-Line Supplement Mark d’Inverno, Leonardo 46, No. 5 CONSTANTINI, GIOVANNA L. Review Abstract, Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). of Hiroshi Sugimoto: Memories of Origin, (2013). HARLE, ROB. Review of Open Access by directed by Yuko Nakamura, Leonardo GINGRICH, OLIVER; RENAUD, ALAIN; Peter Suber, Leonardo 46, No. 2 (2013). 46, No. 3 (2013). and EMETS, EUGENIA. “KIMA—A HARLE, ROB. Review of To Life!: Eco Art DAL FARRA, RICARDO. “Can the Arts Holographic Telepresence Environ- in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet by Help to Save the World?” Editorial, ment based on Cymatic Principles,” Linda Weintraub, Leonardo 46, No. 5 Leonardo 46, No. 2 (2013). Leonardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH (2013). DAMJANOV, KATARINA. “Lunar Cem- 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art HARRIS, YOLANDE. “Presentness in Dis- etery: Global Heterotopia and the Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). placed Sound,” Leonardo Music Journal Biopolitics of Death,” Leonardo 46, GOLDFARB, DORON; ARENDS, MAX; 23 (2013). No. 2 (2013). FROSCHAUER, JOSEF; and MERKL, HEO, YUNSIL, and BANG, HYUNWOO. DAVIES, SARAH R.; SELIN, CYNTHIA; DIETER. “Comparing Art Historical “Cloud Pink,” Leonardo Special Issue: GANO, GRETCHEN; and PEREIRA, Networks,” in Special Section “Arts, SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Papers and ÂNGELA GUIMARÃES. “Finding Fu- Humanities and Complex Networks,” XYZN: Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, tures: A Spatio-Visual Experiment in Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). No. 4 (2013).
100 2013 Leonardo and LMJ Author Index HIRSCH, TAD. Guest Editorial, in Leo- on a Mobile Platform,” Leonardo 46, ment: Deconstructing Perceptions nardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH 2013 No. 3 (2013). of Modern Technology,” Leonardo 46, Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art Gal- KIM-COHEN, SETH. “Burden Bangs Joy: No. 3 (2013). lery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). Sound Art and the Return of Rock and LOMBEYDA, SANTIAGO V. “Expressive HOLLERWEGER, FLORIAN. “The Roll,” On-Line Supplement Abstract, Maps,” Leonardo Special Issue: SIG- Sound Installation 24/7: Aestheticiz- Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). GRAPH 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: ing Everyday Sound and Rhythm,” KIRKE, ALEXIS; MIRANDA, EDU- Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). ARDO; CHIARAMONTE, ANTO- (2013). HOOPER, MICHAEL. “Collaboration NIO; TROISI, ANNA R.; MATTHIAS, LONG, HOYT, and SO, RICHARD. “Net- and Coordination in the Creation JOHN; FRY, NICHOLAS; and MC- work Science and Literary History,” in of New Music,” Leonardo 46, No. 1 CABE, CATHERINE. “Cloud Cham- Special Section “Arts, Humanities and (2013). ber: A Performance with Real Time Complex Networks,” Leonardo 46, No. HSU, WUN-TINE, and LAI, WEN-SHU. Two-Way Interaction between Sub- 3 (2013). “Readymade and Assemblage in Data- atomic Particles and Violinist,” Leo- LUTYENS, MARCOS; MANNING, AN- base Art,” Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). nardo 46, No. 1 (2013). DREW; and MARIANANTONI, ALES-
IONE, AMY. Review of Deadline Every Sec- KOBAYASHI, HILL HIROKI. “Tele Echo SANDRO. “CO2morrow: Shedding ond: On Assignment with 12 Associated Tube,” Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Light on the Climate Crisis,” Leonardo Press Photojournalists, produced by Ken KOBLIN, AARON. “This Exquisite Forest,” 46, No. 2 (2013). Kobré and John Hewitt, Leonardo 46, Leonardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH MALINA, ROGER. “In Praise of Hybrid- No. 2 (2013). 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art ity: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary IONE, AMY. Review of The Idea Factory: Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). of the Birth of Frank J. Malina,” Edito- Bell Labs and the Great Age of American LAFAYETTE, CAROL, ET AL. “SEAD: rial, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Innovation by Jon Gertner, Leonardo The Network for Sciences, Engineer- MALINA, ROGER F. Review of The Vi- 46, No. 1 (2013). ing, Arts and Design,” Leonardo 46, sioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists IONE, AMY. Review of The Loving Story, No. 2 (2013). Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnolo- directed by Nancy Buirski, Leonardo LAI, WAN-YING; WU, MING-CHANG; gies, and a Limitless Future, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). and SHIH, SHEN-GUAN. “Spatial Hy- 46, No. 3 (2013). IONE, AMY. Review of Pairing of Polarities: perlink,” Leonardo Special Issue: SIG- MALLOZZI, LOU. “Introduction to The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport by GRAPH 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Sound Art Theories Symposium On- Terri Cohn, Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 Line Supplement,” Leonardo Music JENSENIUS, ALEXANDER REFSUM. (2013). Journal 23 (2013). “Some Video Abstraction Techniques LAMBERT, NICHOLAS; LATHAM, WIL- MCKAY, ELSPETH. “Global eMuseum for Displaying Body Movement in LIAM; and LEYMARIE, FREDERIC System (GEMS): Building an Inter- Analysis and Performance,” Leonardo FOL. “The Emergence and Growth national Sense of Collaborative Com- 46, No. 1 (2013). of Evolutionary Art—1980–1993,” munity History,” Leonardo 46, No. 5 JOHNSON, CHUCK. “World on a Wire: Leonardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH (2013). Sound as Sensual Objects,” Leonardo 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art MCKINNON, DUGAL. “Dead Silence: Music Journal 23 (2013). Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). Ecological Silencing and Environ- KANE, CAROLYN. “The Electric ‘Now LANGLITZ, NICOLAS. Review of Are You mentally Engaged Sound Art,” Leo- Indigo Blue’: Synthetic Color and Experienced? How Psychedelic Conscious- nardo Music Journal 23 (2013). Video Synthesis Circa 1969,” Leo- ness Transformed Modern Art by Ken MCMEEL, DERMOTT, and SPEED, nardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH 2013 Johnson, Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). CHRIS. “Dynamic Sites: Learning to Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art Gal- LEGGETT, MIKE. Review of The Self- Design in Techno Social Landscapes,” lery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). Made Map: Cartographic Writing in Early Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). KATCHADOURIAN, NINA. “Telemarket- Modern France by Tom Conley and The MEEKS, ELIJAH. “Modeling Transpor- ing Indeterminacy,” LMJ23 CD Contrib- Face of the Earth: Natural Landscapes, tation in the Roman World: Implica- utor’s Note, Leonardo Music Journal 23 Science and Culture by SueEllen Camp- tions for World Systems,” in Special (2013). bell, Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). Section “Arts, Humanities and Com- KAWAI, STEPHEN H. “Mobiles, Mol- LEGRADY, GEORGE; PINTER, MARCO; plex Networks,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 ecules and the Coalescence of Pro- and BAZO, DANNY. “Swarm Vision,” (2013). cesses,” in Special Section “Art- Leonardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH MEYER, MIRIAH. “Designing Visualiza- Science: The Essential Connection,” 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art tions for Biological Data,” in Special Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). Section “Arts, Humanities and Com- KEATING, BARBARA MARY. “Rhumb LIN, YU-RU; LAZER, DAVID; and CAO, plex Networks,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 Lines,” Leonardo Special Issue: SIG- NAN. “Watching How Ideas Spread (2013). GRAPH 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Over Social Media,” in Special Sec- MILANOVIC, VESNA. “Women in Per- Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 tion “Arts, Humanities and Com- formance, Resistance and Exile dur- (2013). plex Networks,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 ing the Yugoslav War 1991–2000,” KEEFE, DANIEL F. “From Gesture to (2013). Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). Form: The Evolution of Expressive LLOBERA, JOAN; BLOM, KRISTO- MLICKA, AGNIESZKA. Review of Paint- Freehand Spatial Interfaces,” Leo- PHER J.; and SLATER, MEL. “Tell- ing with Architecture in Mind, edited nardo 46, No. 1 (2013). ing Stories within Immersive Virtual by Edward Whittaker and Alex Lan- KIM, MEEHEI; WOO, SUNG JU; and Environments,” Leonardo 46, No. 5 drum, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). YEO, WOON SEUNG YEO. “Sound (2013). MONACCHI, DAVID. “Fragments of Sketchbook: Synthetic Synesthesia LOCK, SIMON. “Anachronistic Enact- Extinction: Acoustic Biodiversity of
2013 Leonardo and LMJ Author Index 101 Primary Rainforest Ecosystems,” Leo- mations: Object-Based Sound Instal- Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 nardo Music Journal 23 (2013). lations,” Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). MULDER, JOS. “Sound Resources: En- (2013). THOMPSON, JESSICA: “Mobile Sound vironmental Installation,” Leonardo ROSENBERG, RANDY JAYNE. “Nature’s and Locative Practice,” Leonardo Music Music Journal 23 (2013). Toolbox: Biodiversity, Art and Inven- Journal 23 (2013). MURRAY-BROWNE, TIM; MAIN- tion: Curator’s Statement,” Leonardo TIERNEY, THÉRÈSE F. “Positioning Loc- STONE, DI; BRYAN-KINNS, NICK; 46, No. 1 (2013). ative Media: A Critical Urban Inter- and PLUMBLEY, MARK D. “The Ser- ROTH, TIM OTTO; SEMBACH, KEN; vention,” Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). endiptichord: Reflections of the Col- NOTA ANTONELLA; and STAUDE, TROSHANI, FLUTUR. Review of The laborative Design Process between BENJAMIN. “From the Distant Past,” Alphabet and the Algorithm, by Maria Artist and Researcher,” Leonardo 46, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Carpo, Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013). No. 1 (2013). ROWLAND, JESS: “Flexible Audio Speak- TROSHANI, FLUTUR. Review of Inter- MUTH, CLAUDIA; PEPPERELL, ROB- ers for Composition and Art Practice,” acting: Art, Research and the Creative ERT; and CARBON, CLAUS-CHRIS- Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). Practitioner by Linda Candy and Ernest TIAN. “Give Me Gestalt! Preference RUBIN, CYNTHIA BETH; MENDEN- Edmonds, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). for Cubist Artworks Revealing High DEUER, SUSANNE; HARVEY, ELIZ- TWOMEY, ROBERT. “Drawing Machine,” Detectability of Objects,” Leonardo 46, ABETH; and FISHENDEN, JERRY. Leonardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH No. 5 (2013). “Traces: Plankton on the Move,” 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art NAPPI, MAUREEN. “Drawing w/Digits_ Leonardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). Painting w/Pixels: Selected Artworks 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art UMEDA, TETSUYA. “Spark, Bubble,” of the Gesture over Fifty Years,” Leo- Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). LMJ23 CD Contributor’s Note, Leo- nardo 46, No. 2 (2013). SCHOFIELD, TOM. “Null by Morse: His- nardo Music Journal 23 (2013). NEEDHAM, JAY, and LEONARDSON, torical Optical Communication to URSTAD, MAIA. “MEANWHILE, IN ERIC. “Instruments of Tension: Smartphones,” Leonardo Special Is- SHANGHAI. . . ,” LMJ23 CD Contribu- Gramophones, Springs and the Per- sue: SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Papers and tor’s Note, Leonardo Music Journal 23 formance of Place,” Leonardo Music XYZN: Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, (2013). Journal 23 (2013). No. 4 (2013). UTTERSON, ANDREW. “Early Visions OBADIKE, MENDI, and OBADIKE, SEEVINCK, JEN. “Concepts, Water and of Interactivity: The In(put)s and KEITH. “Automatic,” LMJ23 CD Con- Reflections on Practice,”Leonardo 46, Out(put)s of Real-Time Computing,” tributor’s Note, Leonardo Music Journal No. 5 (2013). Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). 23 (2013). SHORTESS, GEORGE. Review of 3D VAN DEN OEVER, A.M.A. “The Medium- OUZOUNIAN, GASCIA. “Recomposing Displays and Spatial Interaction, Vol. 1: Sensitive Experience and Paradig- the City: A Survey of Recent Sound From Perception to Technology by Barry G. matic Experience of the Grotesque, Art in Belfast,” Leonardo Music Journal Blundell, Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). ‘Unnatural’ or ‘Monstrous,’ ” Leonardo 23 (2013). SMITH, BRIAN REFFIN. Review of Alien 46, No. 1 (2013). OX, JACK, and LOWENBERG, RICH- Phenomenology: Or, What It’s Like to Be a VAN DER HEIDE, EDWIN: “Radioscape: ARD. “What Is the Challenge of Art/ Thing by Ian Bogost, Leonardo 46, No. Into Electromagnetic Space,” Leo- Science Today and How Do We Ad- 2 (2013). nardo Music Journal 23 (2013). dress It?” Editorial, Leonardo 46, No. SMITH, BRIAN REFFIN. Review of Com- VAN ECK, WIM, and LAMERS, 1 (2013). puting: A Concise History by Paul E. Ce- MAARTEN H. “Hybrid Biological- ÖZCAN, OG˘ UZHAN, and O’NEIL, MARY ruzzi, Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Digital Systems in Artistic and Enter- LOU. “Invisible Navigation (or Im- SMITH, BRIAN REFFIN. Review of Trade tainment Computing,” Leonardo 46, possible?),” Leonardo 46, No. 1 (2013). of the Tricks: Inside the Magician’s Craft No. 2 (2013). PARIKKA, JUSSI. Review of Remodeling by Graham M. Jones, Leonardo 46, No. VAN RIJSWIJK, ROB, and STRIJBOS, Communication: From WWII to the WWW 1 (2013). JEROEN: “Sounds in Your Pocket: by Gary Genosko, Leonardo 46, No. 1 SPECTOR, TAMI I. “Leonardo Art and Composing Live Soundscapes with (2013). Science Evening Rendezvous (LA- an App,” Leonardo Music Journal 23 PARK, MALCOLM. “Brunelleschi’s Dis- SERs): Bringing Artists and Scientists (2013). covery of Perspective’s ‘Rule,’” Leo- Together,” Editorial, Leonardo 46, No. VOEGELIN, SALOMÉ. “Sonic Pos- nardo, 46, No. 3 (2013). 3 (2013). sible Worlds,” On-Line Supplement PENG, CHENGZHI, and PARK, ADAM. STJERNA, ÅSA. “Aspects on Duration: Abstract, Leonardo Music Journal 23 “Mapping Interstitial Urban Spaces The Vulnerability of Permanence (2013). through Performing the City,” Leo- in Site-Specific Sound Art in Public VOSS-ANDREAE, JULIAN. “Unraveling nardo 46, No. 5 (2013). Space,” On-Line Supplement Abstract, Life’s Building Blocks: Sculpture In- PEPPER, ANDREW. “Pseudo Architec- Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). spired by Proteins,” Leonardo 46, No. ture: Holographic Monument,” Leo- STOCK, MARK J. “Four Mountains,” 1 (2013). nardo 46, No. 3 (2013). Leonardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH WAMBSGANS, COLIN: “Musical Pho- PETERSEN, STEPHEN. Review of Beyond 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art nography: Upending Listening Ex- the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). pectations,” Leonardo Music Journal 23 Arts after Cage by Branden W. Joseph, STONE, LYNDEN. “Re-Visioning Real- (2013). Leonardo 46, No. 2 (2013). ity: Quantum Superposition in Visual WANG, HONG-KAI. “The Broken Orches- POLSON, SIMON. “(Demolishing) Con- Art,” Leonardo 46, No. 5 (2013). tra Live in Stockholm,” LMJ23 CD Con- crete Music,” Leonardo Music Journal SZABO, VICTORIA. Gallery Introduc- tributor’s Note, Leonardo Music Journal 23 (2013). tion, in Leonardo Special Issue: SIG- 23 (2013). ROSE, ETHAN. “Translating Transfor- GRAPH 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: WEBB, JAMES. “Telephone Voice,” LMJ23
102 2013 Leonardo and LMJ Author Index CD Contributor’s Note, Leonardo Mu- Work of J.B. Schalkenbach,” Leonardo ZORAN, AMIT. “Hybrid Basketry: Inter- sic Journal 23 (2013). Music Journal 23 (2013). weaving Digital Practice within Con- WELKER, CÉCILE. “Early History of XU, REBECCA RUIGE, and ZHAI, SEAN temporary Craft,” Leonardo Special French CG,” Leonardo Special Is- HONGSHENG. “Visualizing Federal Issue: SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Papers sue: SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Papers and Spending,” Leonardo Special Issue: and XYZN: Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo XYZN: Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, SIGGRAPH 2013 Art Papers and 46, No. 4 (2013). No. 4 (2013). XYZN: Scale Art Gallery, Leonardo 46, ZORAN, AMIT, and BUECHLEY, LEAH. WESTON, MARK. “Water Columns,” No. 4 (2013). “Hybrid Reassemblage: An Explora- Leonardo Special Issue: SIGGRAPH YOON, JOONSUNG; SONG, KWANHO; tion of Craft, Digital Fabrication and 2013 Art Papers and XYZN: Scale Art and KIM, INSUB. “Digital Mandala: Artifact Uniqueness,” Leonardo 46, No. Gallery, Leonardo 46, No. 4 (2013). The Post-Virtual as Meditation of Im- 1 (2013). WHITTAKER, EMMA: “Listening to permanence or a New Reality,” Leo- ZWEIG, KATHARINA ANNA. “Naviga- Locative Narratives: Illusion and the nardo 46, No. 5 (2013). tion in Complex Networks,” in Spe- Imaginative Experience,” Leonardo ZILBERG, JONATHAN. Review of The cial Section “Arts, Humanities and Music Journal 23 (2013). Routledge Companion to Literature and Sci- Complex Networks,” Leonardo 46, No. WILSON, DANIEL: “‘Electronic Music’ ence, edited by Bruce Clark and Manu- 3 (2013). on the Victorian Stage: The Forgotten ela Rossini, Leonardo 46, No. 3 (2013).
2013 Leonardo and LMJ Author Index 103 Leonardo Network News
The Newsletter of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology and of l’Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences
Leonardo Affiliates Rendezvous (LASER) venues. In the inaugural event at UCSC, Leonardo Affiliates are top-ranked universities, independent artists, scientists and scholars laid the foundation for the series nonprofits and corporations engaged in research and creative by speaking about the intertwining of art and science. Ques- activities at the intersection of the arts, sciences and technol- tions such as “why art and science” and “why now” provide ogy. We are pleased to feature three of our Affiliates: context for the series as a local forum for presenting art and The Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of science projects underway throughout the University of Cali- Chicago offers a unique M.F.A. program in the creative use of fornia, the Bay Area and beyond that are creative, original and sound that goes well beyond the boundaries of a typical pro- interdisciplinary in nature. gram in visual art, music or multimedia. Students may pursue UCSC is the third new LASER venue added this year. Since the creation and recording of audio work; the composition its inception, the program has grown across the U.S. with LA- of music in numerous genres; live performance, improvisa- SERs now hosted at the University of San Francisco, Stanford tion and audio installation; the integration of sound in other University, UCLA, UC Berkeley (sponsored by the Minerva media, such as video, film, performance and web-based art; Foundation) and a New York studio, in addition to UCSC. It designing and building software and hardware instruments; has also sparked a sister event series in Washington, D.C., called live and recorded electroacoustic music; and the use of dis- DASER. The LASER series was first conceived and organized tribution technologies such as radio, Internet and others. See in San Francisco in 2008 as a forum for artists and scientists to
104 LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 23, p. 104, 2013 © 2013 ISAST EDITED BY ESTELLE R. JORGENSEN Philosophy of Music Education Review features philosophical research in music education. It includes articles that address philosophical or theoretical issues, reform initiatives, philosophical writings, theories, the nature and scope of education and its goals and purposes, and cross-disciplinary dialogue relevant to the interests of music educators.
PMER is the only journal internationally in the field of music education devoted exclusively to the examination of philosophical questions in music education. Such questions are of enormous consequence for a field that addresses public policy matters relating to cultural development. Estelle Jorgensen, Professor of Music (Music Education), Indiana University
PUBLISHED SEMIANNUALLY eISSN 1543-3412 pISSN 1063-5734 Available in electronic, combined electronic & print, and print formats
SUBSCRIBE http://www.jstor.org/r/iupress For more information on Indiana University Press http://www.iupress.indiana.edu Leonardo, The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology
Mission Statement: The critical chal- Publications lenges of the 21st century require mo- Print Journals: The Leonardo journals are scholarly peer-reviewed journals of bilization and cross-fertilization among record. Leonardo, published bimonthly, is the official journal of Leonardo/ISAST. the domains of art, science and tech- Executive Editor: Roger F. Malina. Leonardo Music Journal with CD is published nology. Leonardo/ISAST fosters col- annually. Editor-in-Chief: Nicolas Collins. laborative explorations both nationally World Wide Web: The Leonardo On-Line web site (www.leonardo.info) and internationally by facilitating inter- publishes organizational information, the Leonardo Electronic Directory and disciplinary projects and documenting more. Managing Editor: Patricia Bentson. and disseminating information about Electronic Journal: Leonardo Electronic Almanac (leoalmanac.org) is an elec- interdisciplinary practice. tronic journal dedicated to providing a forum for those who are interested in the realm where art, science and technology converge. Editor-in-Chief: Lanfranco Aceti. Leonardo/ISAST Headquarters Co-Editor: Ozden Sahin. 211 Sutter Street, Ste. 501 Leonardo Reviews: The Leonardo Reviews Project, through a panel of reviewers, San Francisco, CA 94108, U.S.A. publishes reviews of books, journals, electronic publications and events. Reviews Tel: 415-391-1110 are published on the Web (leonardo.info/ldr.html), and selected reviews are Fax: 415-391-2385 published in Leonardo Electronic Almanac and in Leonardo. Editor-in-Chief: Michael Punt. E-mail:
Collaborations with Other Organizations Affiliate Members Leonardo/ISAST frequently collaborates with other Leonardo/ISAST invites organizations and corporations organizations on topics of current interest by collaborating working at the intersection of art, science and technology on conferences or workshops and by publishing special to join the Affiliate Membership Program. Visit
Special Thanks Leonardo/ISAST gratefully acknowledges the special efforts of the following: Seth Cluett, Lou Mallozzi, Tom Erbe, Peter Soe CLASSIFIED ADVERTIS ements
participant in the Data Ecologies workshop series (2010–2011) G E T T H E conceived by Tom Corby, University of Westminster; “The politici- zation of climate data, whilst potentially dangerous, offers oppor- W O R D O U T ! tunities for us to re-think our relationships to science and develop discussion around interdisciplinary art/science approaches to Announce a job opportunity, new project, publication our changing environment.” Tom Corby, 9 August 2010
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