View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Middlesex University Research Repository Associating Places: Strategies for Live, Site Specific, Sound Art Performance Tansy Spinks PhD submission CRiSAP, London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London 2014 1 2 Abstract Claims for originality in this thesis lie in bringing together many different disciplines in art, music, sound studies and performance. The methodology, contextually indebted to the dialogues of site specific art, performance, and sound improvisation, has emerged as a multi-disciplinary one, informed in part by the study of those artists from the 1960s onwards who actively sought to resist the gallery system. The practice has driven the thesis in developing and continuously testing the requirement to respond uniquely to chosen sites. By using relevant references, instruments, and sonified materials, a compulsion to convey something of the particularity of the site’s associations through sound, is performed on site. In the course of considering the wider implications of a site through both the sound performances and the critical writing, I propose that there are essentially three aspects to identify when working with sound on site. I define these as: the actual, the activated the associative The first aspect describes what is essentially inherent to the place, the second what can be encouraged to be ‘sounded’ through physical intervention, and the third outlines and forms what I have coined as the wider material of the site. This term draws on any relevant aspects of the social, physical, historical, anecdotal, and aural associations that a site may proffer. However, it is the notion of the associative that primarily informs the research by providing a methodology for the practice and in proposing a new paradigm of a live, site specific, performed, sound art work. The twenty or so works in the portfolio undertaken hitherto have existed not only as live performances but also in virtual and physical documentation, critical 3 analyses, and in the potential possibilities brought to the form by the response of others. By addressing this new taxonomy of approach in defining the actual, the activated and the associative as a kind of aural ground to the site (borrowing a term from painting), significant live sound art works have been developed to temporarily inhabit a space by exploring this latent material of the site. 4 Acknowledgements Acknowledgements go to my supervisory team at CRiSAP, the sound research unit at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London: Angus Carlyle, Cathy Lane, David Toop and all the other staff and visiting speakers in the sound art department, not least thanks to Ciaran Harte. I acknowledge particularly the opportunities to be involved in events, practice-based seminars, symposiums, exhibitions and publications throughout my time at UAL. Thanks to Thomas Gardner and Kersten Glandien for conversations, to all my fellow PhD students especially Phil Durant, Mark Peter Wright, Iris Garrelfs, Idit Nathan. Thanks also to Stephen Connor, then at Birkbeck for his initial encouragement to apply. I am grateful to Nick Rampley for his steady support (and reliable wielding, when required, of a video camera) and to Francesca and Josie Rampley, John and Jennifer Spinks. Thanks go to all my supportive colleagues in the Fine Art department at Middlesex University, notably from Head of Department Phil Healey in sponsoring my PhD, Peter Williams for sound technical advice, Fran Ross for video editing, Susan Lok for the chance to present at research events, John Dack and his Sonic Art lectures, Nic Sandiland and to Michael Bradley for his enthusiasm for violins and photography. Thanks also to my collaborator on the Seven Improvised Bridges and Seven Improvised Bows videos, Klega. Thanks to Jean Fisher, John Seth and Jefford Horrigan (now ex-Middlesex tutors) for first encouragements and at Central St Martins, Anne Tallentire for her midway vote of confidence and the valuable practice-led opportunities provided by the Sensingsite team of Susan Trangmar, Stephen Ball and Duncan White and the other student participants. Many thanks to Graham Treacher, who diligently read the whole thesis in messy draft form and Deborah Padfield for her years of support, to editor Emma Callery and Jenn Tomomitsu for helping to make the document look so credible and to James Gosling of Schein for (re) designing my website with a new emphasis and the appendix as a catalogue of sound art works. Michael Curran set me on this path by having the confidence to give me my first improvised performance opportunity at the Camden Arts 5 Centre in his event Fassbinder’s Jukebox, 2005 with the support of Jenny Lomax. I have been assisted by many people over the years and thanks are due to particularly to sound assistants Mike Skeet for the Sonic Triangle recording, Dave Hunt for the Max patch, Emanuele Cendron, for all his patient assistance with sound editing (and making), and to enthusiastic fellow performers Antoine Bertin, Jan Hendrickse, Greta Pistaceci, Vaida Kidykaite, Sunil Chandy, Aurélie Mermod, curators Kate Ross, Hayley Dixon. I am indebted to David Morris for his poetic reflections and to all those who contributed such valuable anecdotal responses. Inspiring conferences were devised by: Michael Gallagher, Experimenting With Geography (Edinburgh University), Marcus Leadley, Space: the Real and the Abstract (Wolverhampton University), Ansa LØnstrup, Audiovisuality (Aarhus, Denmark), The Global Composition (Darmstadt-Dieburg, Germany), Christian Wissel, Goldsmiths’ Engaging Tactics, Revealing Secrets (stream for the British Sociologists Association annual conference), Cathy Lane, Hernoise symposium (Tate Modern & LCC), Supersonix conference, South Kensington museums, Sounding Space (Chelsea College of Art), The Engine Room (Morley College’s Cardew festival), the Acts Re-Acts residency and festival of performance at Wimbledon Space, (alongside Iris Garrelfs), and Marcus Orlandi’s event Prop and Proposition, the Body as Sculpture (Pitzhanger Manor), all of which assisted in the formation of my ideas. Tansy Spinks, 2014 6 Table of contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 5 Preface 11 Practice contents page 15 Chronology of works 17 Outline of chapters 23 Introduction to my practice 25 Chapter One: Sounds and sights Fontana and musical shadows 31 Neuhaus, Vostell and sound Installation 38 Phillipsz and everyday spaces 44 Cardiff and narrative sound 48 Space and geographies 51 Conclusions 56 Chapter Two: Site specificity and hearing spaces Beyond the white cube: Duchamp’s on-going legacy 59 Site specificity as critique 60 Framing theories of site specificity 64 LaBelle and the conditions of site 70 Hearing spaces 74 Live and recorded 76 Echo and affect 79 Dislocating sources 83 Without walls 86 7 Chapter Three: Associations and evocation The material of the site 91 Approaching a site specific sound work 92 Description and analysis of Silent Zone, 2012 93 Locations and site visits 94 The material 96 A description of the event 96 The significance of the texts 98 The sounds made 98 Examples from the ‘sounds heard’ log 99 Summarising the material of the site 100 Evocation and the mimetic tendency 101 The mimic 102 Defining my Three Terms of Association 106 ‘It is by Imitating that we Invent’ 110 Compositional mimesis 115 Chapter Four: Sound, method and form Transcription: the material of the site into sound 119 List one: an inventory of materials 124 List two: an inventory of places and sounds 124 Perpetuation as a compositional and metaphorical device: defining the loop 127 Contexts of the loop 130 The role and uses of rhythm (with reference to Lefebvre) 134 Rhythm and implication 137 Take a Space, Make a Sound In It 138 8 Chapter Five: Method, process and presence ‘How do you want it to sound?’ 147 Overview of methods, sounds and compositional parameters 148 ‘Experimental’ 152 Melody? 154 Challenging conventions 156 The instrument and amplification 159 Extension, disruption and materiality 164 Activations 167 Improvisations 170 Performing place 172 The uses of liveness 179 What is liveness? 180 Liveness and the interruption of space 180 Liveness and physical presence in performance 184 Liveness in relation to recording 190 Liveness as engagement 192 Liveness as improvisation 194 Liveness and place 196 Concluding liveness 199 Conclusions 201 Introduction to appendix 207 Bibliography 209 9 10 Preface Preface In commencing the research and practice for this study, I have undertaken a comprehensive journey through the histories and theories of an area wholly new to me. It is not art, nor music, but instead a fascinating synthesis of both that draws on many forms and discourses. It encompasses listening, as both a sense and a discipline of awareness, sound production, performance, a greater sense of place, and has the elusive and constantly shifting definition of - for now - Sound Art. The many people I have come across over the six-year period have naturally formed a valuable part of this process. This includes the wide- ranging spread of interests and expertise across the six London art schools of the University of the Arts PhD community, and the greater and more unexpected personal journey of the research, along with the many diverse conversations this has engendered. I have had encounters with geographers, sociologists, librarians, writers, local historians, local site regenerators, software designers, other