Weirding Module on EVR 5/7


Weirding Module played on Radio Heart last night, followed by a DJ set by Alex and Michael. The complete show is worth checking out in its entirety, but I also edited down Weirding Module’s performance into a single mp3 file, available below.

Listen to Weirding Module + weirding module live on evr 5/7

Big thanks to Michael and Alex.

Interview with Tara Burke/Fursaxa

Over the past few years, West Philadelphia avant folk chanteuse Tara Burke has released multiple cassettes and CD-Rs on her own label Sylph, as well as a slew of other labels such as Jewelled Antler, Ecstatic Peace, and ATP Recordings, and toured under the name Fursaxa. I only recently discovered her work, and I’ve been listening to it non-stop. Her music- comprised of layered vocals, farfisa organ, flute, minimal percussion and acoustic guitar or mandolin- is atmospheric and mesmerizing. I was interested in hearing more about her approach, so I interviewed Tara over email.

Listen to Fursaxa + Tyranny

When and how did you start recording as Fursaxa? Where did you get the name?
I was playing with the band UN at the time and wanted to start doing my own recordings, and my roommate lent me his four track. I remember the first free day I had, I spent hours in my room recording and really enjoyed it. I got the name from Norse mythology. The name means “iron cutlass” and she was the god Thor’s lover. Oh no- that’s Jarnsaxa! Fursaxa is what my phone number spelled out in an old house I lived in in Philadelphia.

Your work has a distinctive stream of consciousness quality to it- I’m wondering if you can explain your songwriting process. Do you normally improvise? Do you write lyrics? Is it just intuitive? Where do you begin?
I usually begin by recording a track or two, and then listen back and hear what other instruments should be recorded. Sometimes this doesn’t happen though and I have one or two tracks that just lie dormant for many months until I finally figure out how to complete the song. The initial tracks are almost always instruments, and then I add some sort of vocals, sometimes writing lyrics, sometimes not.

You’ve played with many other musicians over the years- and were a member of UN. Your music seems to come from such a personal place, how does that experience differ from your past collaborations?
Yes, my music is coming from a personal place and I think it probably has something to do with the way I record. I always record in my own home and am surrounded by familiar objects and feel comfortable with my surroundings. Also, my music is an outlet for me, so certain events in my life are probably reflected in whatever I am recording at the time.

Your performances have a meditative quality to them. How do you set up that kind of interaction with the audience? Do you ever find it difficult, as one person, to translate your music to performance?
I still get nervous whenever I perform solo, so I think I am trying to get myself into a meditative state whenever I am on stage. And if it also has the same effect on the audience, than all the better. I think my live performances are much different than my recordings. That’s why I’ve released so many live CDRs over the years. It is difficult for me to be 4 people in 1, so I try and play 1 or 2 of the same instruments that I use in the recorded song, but not everything. Quite often when I practice I will try to play a recorded song and it sort of turns into something else. I guess what I am trying to say is that I start with a basic structure and make it more freeform, almost improvised.

Could you describe the general direction for your latest release Kobold Moon? It also features art work by Alain Valet- how did that collaboration come to be?
Well, I have been wanting to start my own label for a couple of years now, and I wanted the first Sylph release to be a Fursaxa record. I would have liked to have done LP records, but couldn’t really afford to do that, so I decided to do CDs. I am really into unique and beautiful album artwork, and wanted to release a product that combines music with art. One of the first things I remember about Alain is that he wanted to trade his art for some of my music, and he sent me this package in the mail and the envelope was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen; he had marbelized it. And then inside there was his beautiful work. I think that our aesthetics are quite similar in that we like handmade objects that are devoid of stuff like plastic wrappers and jewel cases and such.

What bands or records have you been listening to lately?
I think I have put the Fleetwood Mac’s “Bare Trees” on several times this last week. Its a good spring time listen. Just got the two new Time Lag releases, Joshua Burkett and Ilyas Ahmed which I really like. Kris Kristofferson has been on the turntable quite a few times lately as well.

Rua Studio

Here are some photos I took over the weekend of Donna Huanca’s open studio from her LMCC residency. It included a sound installation I made. On Sunday, we played music and I recorded the performance on a handheld cassette player- it’s really rugged and messy sounding, I like it. The original was almost an hour long, so I edited it down to 20 minutes.

Listen to mi or and the pedestals rua minx + april 27


Sound piece I made


Psychedelic Revolution (opening night)


Sticker Dude (opening night)

A Million Keys Muxtape


Now that Spring is here, I decided to make a muxtape documenting my favorite slow and sad songs from this past winter.

1. Linda Perhacs- Parallelograms
2. Book of AM- Dawn; Fire
3. Burning Star Core- I Wanna Make A Supersonic Woman Of You
4. Grouper- Black Out
5. Can’t – Lonely At Night
6. U.S. Girls- Lit Fire To This Life
7. Fursaxa – Nakondisi
8. Ksiezyc- Klepana
9. Demons – Self Possession
10. Salem- ?

Soft Errs (2008) by Kabir Carter

I’ve mentioned Kabir Carter’s work – which uses sound as a medium in which to convey the social and psychological contours of architecture and space- on the blog before. Soft Errs was originally produced for an installation in an empty storefront, and was performed again this past January at LMAKprojects. I shot the video below from the piece’s second iteration.

Soft Errs is a temporary sound installation that was initially realized in an empty storefront. The work partially fills the acoustic and psychic vacuum left by defunct postwar consumer electronics outlets, and attempts to explore the invisible shape and language of private and public audio technology. A store as signal chain is assembled with pocket radios, a low power radio transmitter, analog synthesizer modules, malfunctioning CD players, and the live recitation of electronic messages using radiophonic code.

Disco Machines by Peter Sinclair

Disco Machine sculptures by artist Peter Sinclair. Click through for a sound sample. Sinclair developed these in the early 1990s while he exhibited a similar project, a mobile party van named the Cosy Disco.

Gitchii Manitou (12 Step Retrance Program For Troubled Dream Warriors)


I just picked up this release from Monopoly Child Star Searchers, a solo venture by Skaters member Spencer Clark.

Listen to Monopoly Child Star Searchers + Track 04

Listen to Monopoly Child Star Searchers + Track 06

The 8 track CD-R differentiates itself from the muddy terrain of the Skaters’ (and para-Skaters) monolithic catalog through its whimsical tranquility. Layered flutes and cheap synths chirp over the gentle hum of tabla-style drum loops and delayed vocals. It sort of sounds like Zero Kama, if Michael DeWitt conjured fairies instead of “the Great Goat.”

Listen to Zero Kama + Atavism Dream

Listen to Zero Kama + Starlit Mire

Recommended.

Led Er Est at Wierd

Pictures of Led Er Est from last night. So good!

Jeremy Boyle at Hudson Franklin

I went to Chelsea last week to check out Jeremy Boyle’s new solo exhibition at Hudson Franklin. I first became intrigued by his work after reading about his self-playing band on VVORK. His current show proposes to explore “the theme of circulation through pattern and recognition.” Coincidentally, Boyle was present in the gallery when I arrived, and he was on hand to discuss the work with me.


(self-playing) guitar (2008)

The guitar component of Boyle’s self playing band, pictured above, was one of the works included. Ten MIDI compositions, looped automatically, control the pneumatics which play the guitar.

The project is similar to the sound machines I mentioned in the blog a few weeks ago. Both scenarios use MIDI, a format which is often considered cold, to generate an organic sound. I was particularly impressed by the raw mechanics of the guitar- the exposed wires and tubes. Easily the most active work in the show- I thought it was interesting that he made its anatomy such a central focus. It goes against the historical course of design for consumer-oriented electronics, which is so intent on shielding and obstructing the interworkings of machines from view.


head of guitar


base of guitar

In distinct contrast to (self-playing) guitar, the wiring for Boyle’s handmade speaker sculptures were hidden almost entirely from view.


White Noise (2008)


Brown Noise (2007)

Set up as piles in three corners of the gallery, the color of the speakers correspond to the type of sound amplified- white speakers for white noise and brown speakers for brown noise. For each set, only about half the speakers emit sound, so the volume is surprising low in relation to their actual size. I found the formal identification of sound with color novel- as “white noise” and “brown noise” are rarely explicitly visualized as such. While the exhibition also included video and drawing, I felt it was Boyle’s maneuvering- between the expected materiality of the sound-producing object and the sound itself- to be the most effective articulation of the concept of circulation in the show.

SXSW Recap

Back from Texas. This past week/end was a whirlwind. I felt like I spent most of my time dealing with show-related logistics while trying to locate and meet up with friends from all over. That said, I somehow managed to get a tan.

I was really, really excited to see Naked on the Vague Thursday night. They’re a Sydney-based band that remind me of Primitive Calculators with Huggy Bear overtones. Our show was a few doors down at practically the same time, so I had to rush after their set, and missed the rest of the Siltbreeze showcase.


Naked on the Vague

I also got the chance to hang out with my old roommate and bud from my 90s zinester days Russell Etchen. He moved to Austin from Houston a week ago to open a second location for the contemporary art bookstore and gallery he started Domy Books. I got to peek around the space- it’s huge! I am so amped to see them grow.

I made it out to the showcase for Fanatic Promotion and Nail Distribution on Friday as well, and saw Clipd Beaks and Health finally. Health definitely won gold stars in showmanship. My bandmate Marc and I counted the number of pedals they had during their set- a grand total of 24! Whoa.


Clipd Beaks


Health

We played in three separate locations on Saturday, and although the shuffle itself was a bit taxing, it was nice to get a full tour of Austin. One show was at the backyard of an unfinished restaurant, one was in this guy’s living room, and the other was at Spiderhouse, which is an immense bar/restaurant/venue. The Spiderhouse show was organized by New York Night Train, Cakeshop, and the Social Registry, so we were on the bill with a bunch of other Brooklyn bands, including Knyfe Hyts. I always considered them to be a somewhat silly party band, but then on Saturday they ended their set with “Smoke the Milk” which kind of blew everyone away.


S-S-S-Spectres at S-S-S-Spiderhouse

We spent the last night drinking Lone Stars from Austin’s drive through liquor store Party Barn at Russell’s house. It was fun to sit around, catch up and talk shop about music. Russell played me Josefus for the first time and there was a long discussion about Houston rap.

S-S-S-Spectres at SXSW


I’m going down to Austin tomorrow with S-S-S-Spectres, and hopefully I will have time to cover some of the events in the blog. We’ve been recording for the past few months, and will have a limited run CD-R available. Contact me for availability. We also put up a new song from our CD on the myspace page, “Black Malm.”

THURSDAY
Official Showcase
The Gibson Room at Maggie Mae’s
10:30pm S-S-S-Spectres
(with Knife World, The Black & White Years, Cougar Den, Stalkers, Kid Congo Powers, Donita Sparks + Stellar Moments)

FRIDAY
The Longbranch Inn
11pm S-S-S-Spectres
(with Finally Punk, Lozen, Model/Actress)

SATURDAY
Higher Publicity SXSW Showcase
West’s Art Music and Wine
1pm S-S-S-Spectres
(with Nrzs, KIT, The Mae Shi, Scary Mansion, Grouper & Inca Ore, Gowns)

Tweedy’s House (contact for location)
2:20pm S-S-S-Spectres
(with South Mouth, Ripe, IT LIVES, Hello Lovers, Shapes Have Fangs, CAVE DWELLER, The Gospel Truth, Sweet Lee Morrow, Poor People, Red X Red M, The Devil and the Sea, The Roller)

Spiderhouse
New York Night Train, the Social Registry and Cake Shop present 2008 SXSW New York Nimiety Party
5:30pm S-S-S-Spectres
(with The Minetta, Inoculist, Crystal Stilts, Hopewell, Tall Firs, Mike Bones, Doug Armor, Freshkills, Services, Pterodactyl, Knyfe Hyts, Shellshag, Bandit Teeth, Puddin’ Tang, Stalkers)

Brian McKenna- Modulated Zips (2008)

The above is an example of the analog video synthesis work by video and sound artist Brian McKenna.

McKenna is a member of a group of Canadian artists participating in the “Radio Broadcast Cabin” all this week at Mediamatic in Amsterdam. The cabin
is an outpost for the fictional country of “Canadia” and will function as a 24-hour transmission center for an “evolving audio collage” comprised of live and recorded material.

Fast Blue Air nr 1

I came across this video today via Loreto Martin’s blog.

Composer Elena Kats-Chernin wrote the score, entitled “Fast Blue Air”, for these sound machines. The robotics company Festo sponsored the manufacture and design of the quintet, which were originally presented at the 2007 Hanover Fair. The devices utilize pneumatic components to operate, and are divided into four “electric guitars” and one “drum.” Neat.

Viki- Cadillacs on Fire at East Village Radio February 2008

I screened loops off of Viki’s DVD Cadillacs on Fire at the East Village Radio studio in February 2008. I think it looked fantastic! See below for pics.

Official Tourist

My friend Jon sent these videos over yesterday. Official Tourist is a side project of artist Kamau Amu Patton, whose work I’ve been hunting for online ever since I read about his show at Machine Project last year. (They’re actually still hosting one of his videos, which you can view here. ) Patton does the video work and designs the costumes for Official Tourist. I’m amped to see his creations, but I’m still waiting for the day when more of his cult-inspired low budget infomercials go online. Official Tourist also produce a line of hoodies.




Official Tourist with Shingo2

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OESB Special Recap


Leopards

I was really, really impressed with the show Todd from Olde English Spelling Bee hosted last night on Radio Heart. He brought in an incredible collection of bizarre and amazing tracks. It was a treat. I thought it would be worth sharing the myspace links to a few of the groups, but I encourage those reading this to listen to the full show here

ImagineIam

Salem (first myspace page)

Salem (second myspace page)

8:*)

Leopards

Wicked Poseur

Sloop

Mi Or and the Pedestals- Sarah Lyddon Morrison 3" CD


Cover

Inside

Named after the author who produced several popular spellbooks in the 1970s and 80s, this is my first formal release for my solo project Mi Or and the Pedestals. All of the lyrics on the 3” CD are derived from love spells from Lyddon Morrison’s A Modern Witch’s Spellbook. With the album Sarah Lyddon Morrison, I aimed to transform kitsch into something surreal and eerie.

Lief Hall- Dog Melt (2006)

Creepy and bizarre computer animation, entitled Dog Melt, by Lief Hall, lead singer of the Mutators. The audio is especially effective.

Joe Merrell- Fire, San Bernardino (2005) at East Village Radio

Photographs of Joe Merrell’s Fire, San Bernardino at East Village Radio, January 2008

Growing- Lateral

Listen to Growing + Lateral

This is the title track off of Growing ‘s upcoming LP Lateral on the Social Registry, slated for release February 19th. Intensely beautiful.

Interview with Walter Branchi

Walter Branchi is a renown Italian electronic music composer. Since the 1960s, his contributions to improvisation and musical theory have been widely recognized. He’s founded and co-founded a variety of initiatives, including the Studio R7 in Rome, LEMS (Laboratorio Elettronico per la Musica Sperimentale / Electronic Studio for Experimental Music), the electroacoustic music association Musica Verticale and the conference Musica/Complessita. He was a member of the freeform group Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza for nearly ten years, and was also a member of the Gruppo Intercodice ALTRO from 1973 to 1977. He has performed and taught internationally over the span of his career.

During the month of January, Branchi will show five selections from his larger work Intero at the Brooklyn sound and intermedia gallery Diapason. Intero is a constantly evolving, unfinished composition which Branchi began almost thirty years ago.

Please explain what Intero is exactly.

“Intero” means Whole or Entire. It is the title of an on-going composition started in 1979 (while I was a visiting professor at Princeton University) and still going on. It is a huge composition, made up of many parts which may be performed separately but are not isolated from one another.

How does Intero fit into your larger approach to composition?

After almost thirty years of composing in the same musical dimension, I have to say that this way of composing is now deeply rooted in my way of conceiving music and I still find it exciting and full of surprises. But during the sixties and seventies I wrote many compositions for traditional instruments and for different ensembles. In those years I was also a member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.

How did the concept for Intero begin?

It began when I decided to start using an electrodigital “system of sound” and stopped using mechanical or electro-mechanical or even electronic systems of sounds (instruments) for my compositions. The electrodigital solution was the only one possible if I wanted to compose within sound and not with sounds.
The strength of a system of sound is that it permits the invention of forms by composing within sound, from inside. The principle difference between composing within sound and with sounds is the level of resolution that can be applied to the musical material; the passage is from an atomistic concept of music, in which the sound represents the smallest indivisible entity, to a sub-atomic concept, in which the creation of the sound is the aim of the compositional process.

How has the piece evolved?

I started organizing a virtual system of sound relationship. It means that I decided on a configuration of numerical proportions capable of regulating all the musical parameters of all the compositions that can be generated from that system. Practically, every composition I composed is a different face of the same system of sound. I think of my music as a single great composition formed of parts that can be performed separately but are not isolated from one another.

I think of my music as a whole (as an “Intero”) which will take my entire life to compose and which will never be completed. “Un grande canto” where every part includes the whole and is included by it. Every such part can be performed singly, in sequence or in counterpoint with the other parts of the whole. I think of my music as a contribution, a music of all music where every whole is part of an ever greater whole.

Can you tell me a little bit about the five pieces installed at Diapason?

The five pieces of “Intero” are five parts of the same generating system I just explained and the sequence I prepared for the Diapason Gallery is mainly based on the idea of small contrasts.

Have you presented Intero in this way before?

No. I presented Intero during the last “Ear to the Earth Festival”, but never in a gallery for sound and also the sequence was different.

Do you have any plans to present Intero in New York in the near future?

A very good friend of mine proposed to perform a part of Intero every time I am in New York.

Interview conducted via email on January 3, 2008

Untitled Sound Objects by Pe Lang + Zimoun


The above is a stunning collection of installation footage of untitled sound objects, an ongoing collaborative project between Pe Lang and Zimoun. See below for the artist’s statement.

In early 2004, Pe Lang and Zimoun began their collaboration “untitled sound objects”, a project in which physical materials are made to generate sound by vibrating them using computer controlled machines and robots. The artists focus on creating acoustic architecture with an organic feel, investigating the properties of sound, materials, resonance and generative systems. The work is presented as sound installations and as live performances.

These works are created by using small machines comprised of computer-monitored and programmed electromagnetic lifts, electromagnets and vibrating motors, in combination with different kinds of materials. Often the installations are used as a source for creating sounds as well as to continually evolve new acoustic spaces.

“We are interested in a selective mix between, on the one hand, living structures that are continuously generated or evolving by chance and chain reactions, and, on the other, a specifically delimited and contained space in which these events are allowed to happen. Our compositional intentions are manifested through deliberate containment and cautious monitoring. Thus, we are not preoccupying ourselves with chance factors and generative systems simply to discover unexpected results, but rather so that the compositions can attain a higher level of vitality.”

Interview with Jeff Talman

Jeff Talman is a sound and installation artist based in New York City. His work is a sensory meditation on the elementary sound of space. In his installations, he amplifies the background resonance of an environment by extracting and strategically redirecting ambient sound back into its place of origin. In so doing, he heightens the occupant’s aural perception of the surrounding area.


White Sound Down

His most recent project, entitled White Sound Down, is a temporary multi-channel sound field installation in a remote section of the Bavarian Forest. White Sound Down is only accessible by cross country ski trails, and will be up until January 6, 2008.

The majority of your work examines the ‘room tones’ of man made architecture- the existent soundspace of cathedrals and, in some cases, hotels. In the past few years, with White Sound Down, as well as Stream Space Lacing and Sentinel to the Wind, you’ve begun to work within the natural environment. Why is this domain increasingly a concern for you?

Without a balance of interior and exterior spaces my work would be lacking in reflecting two major types of places people inhabit. Both are entirely normal to us, but we rarely hear them, being focused on seeing and navigating them. I’m concerned with this sonic perception of space in my work.

Spatial sound acts as an envelopment. Large-scale spaces that exhibit this envelopment carry a powerful impact when compared to the human body. We don’t normally go into this, it is part of an overall effect of a place, in which vision takes precedence, except perhaps for the typical sound signals of the place (in a forest that would be the rustling leaves and branches, wind, streams, etc.). But the background of that fascinates me. It is that on which life and phenomena occur. When my installations re-constitute a background, for instance in the atrium of a hotel or in an office space, the enhanced envelopment makes the place somehow seem more like itself — and consequently, people seem to stop and look (and listen) further into where they are. They become aware of where they are. It’s a form of “stopping the world.”

Working outside, the effect is perhaps magnified, as the scale increases and no walls retain the sound. The stream piece can sometimes be heard floating above the hills several kilometers away, but it fades in and out as the winds shift. It’s not entirely tangible. But this is perfect, because sound, no matter how well we hear it has this entirely intangible, ephemeral sense as a phenomenon of space and time. As you leave the place, the sound leaves with you slowly and ephemerally.

It’s not so much that working outdoors is an increasing concern, more like I recognize that in presenting a fuller human consciousness in the work I need to keep exploring alternative means of expression, including situations for coming to the work. For instance, working underwater would be an ideal example of upping the ante, and so the experiential harvest of a new work.


Stream Space Lacing

Given the impact of global warming, would you say that in documenting natural sound, such as snow falling in the forest, you’re capturing an experience that is “endangered”?

Originally we had planned to put up the installation last winter — but there was not enough snow in the Bavarian Forest that season! Of course the impact of global warming is serious far beyond the tourist industry in the region, even more so beyond crazy artists who want to work with the sound of falling snow. Still, I was fully aware of the environmental problems and had them very much in mind when making the work, more so after waiting a year to see some of my Bavarian friends to mount the installation.

Similarly in Finland, my wind turbine piece, Hearing Curved Space, recognizes the dire need for increasing use of renewable and clean energy sources. If you are out in nature making work, it is all but impossible not to think about these things.

Also, the sound of snow falling is a really exquisite sound, far too tempting not to record and use again in some way. You’re right, this experience is endangered. But the raw field recordings I made, while perhaps capturing the experience, as they stand are maybe too literal for the poet in me. The act of making the installation is about transforming that experience and those raw files into a finished work, that hopefully offers an essence or distillation, such that the experience is enhanced in the telling.

By taking the peripheral sound of historical sites such as cathedrals as your central focus, you perform what could almost be explained as sound excavation. What compelled you to research and record cathedrals? Would you describe this interest as archaeological? In what ways does this investigation relate to White Sound Down?

Cathedrals, synagogues, temples, mosques and churches were built to be astonishing spaces and they serve that purpose perfectly. The visual is easy to understand phenomenally. We see it and get it almost immediately. But how much do we really hear the space? Sure, if there is chanting, singing or music the space is of paramount importance in supporting the sense of the sounds heard. But what about when there is no sound program and no tourists shuffling around?

With many trips to St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague in the mid-nineties, I was struck time and again by what I could hear when nothing was sounding. It is something like the wind only with certain bands of frequencies sounding. Some cathedrals exhibit it better than others, the Cathedral of Freiburg in Germany being a spectacular case in point.

The investigation led me to dozens of cities and religious spaces all over Europe. It wasn’t archaeological so much as phenomenal. The sound rooted me in the here and now of the place. It’s all about phenomena and perception as a gate to now. Of course I knew these buildings were ancient and revered among all others, and I couldn’t help but think of myself as a “church artist” in some senses, though the work is not religious. Still some have said that it approaches a metaphysical view regarding human existence. My interest in the experience of being would seem to bear that out.

Later a German art critic noted that it sounded as if the walls of the space were yielding up all of the supplications, entreaties, requests, joyful thanks and abject miseries that people poured out to their gods over the centuries. As I often work with wind-based sounds, in particular frequency ranges they sound like voices. The sounds aren’t static or locally repetitive. They broadly animate a space. Apply these concepts to an outdoor installation in the hushed quite of the Bavarian Forest, and you get a site that seems to be speaking about itself. The mountains and the forest are already mystical in aesthetic senses that relate to beauty and any number of other subjective experiences. The sound that was already here is an underscore, I’ve just shaped it as a plastic art material which hopefully reflects what I experience.


St. James Cathedral, Chicago. Site for “Event Horizons” and “Absolute Elsewhere”

In your writing, you describe the aural backdrop of our lives as inhabiting the “negative space of memory”. But like all memories, there’s clearly an emotional dimension, and this is a notion you’ve successfully considered in your project Event Horizons. I recently visited Las Vegas and I was immediately struck by the overwhelming symphonic cacophony of slot machine bells. The sound of the casino was at once disorienting and almost sublime. I wondered why the casinos intentionally used sound in this way to impel visitors to gamble, and how they contributed to a sensation of a “non-place”. Your project In Transit reflects on the resonance of these spaces. What correlation, if any, do you see between these examples of contemporary sonic spaces and those of cathedrals? How are our emotions manipulated by the sound of these spaces, and to what end? Is this a concern for you?

Space – non-space, these seem to me not so distinguished. We could look at the internet and say “non-space,” as well as the casino or the hotel. But we inhabit them in some sense, perhaps mentally, by interaction with others or content retrieval or by avatar, or perhaps physically-corporally, though we are impeded by the means and any overwhelming generics. I’m no expert in telematics theory, and I’ll refer you to my good friend Eddie Shanken regarding the latest there, but I believe the case is made for experience; the question is what it means to inhabit. A generic contemporary space, a 7-11 for instance, is not inhabitable metaphorically as it is essentially reproduced thousands of times with whatever superficial construction discrepancies might exist. A casino and a hotel are similar. But we do live in these spaces and they have factual data that our bodies receive, whether we acknowledge it or not.

But we are so not connected to our bodies, and the generic spaces more than others seem to do all that they can to keep that disconnect in place. Events like overwhelming slots can do this. Of course, in the states it is all about sales. The focus is on the sale of the space as a sale of whatever is in it for sale. You could think of a cathedral as similar — except that a cathedral is “selling” existence. It is trying hard to make you aware of your existence (yes, for the eventual glorification of a god, but first you have to be aware of yourself before you can give thanks for being alive — so the first mission is “selling” the fact of your existence to you — and here we are not even going to begin to get into prestige and the builders of the cathedral and what THEY were selling, that’s a whole other sales department).

So the similarities between the then and now spaces are that they have missions and they effect these by the best manners they can find. The difference is in what they offer. As an artist who works with fundamentals of perception, in some senses the cathedrals are overkill — they already exhibit what I try to make more manifest. Still, people don’t seem to realize the process, though they are drawn to these spaces. That’s where I come in. The cathedrals are perfectly suited for bringing sonic perception of space and the resultant sense of self to the fore. When I enhance the sonic mechanism, I believe these senses really jump out. I’ve been told over and over that this happens.

By transposing these sense enhancements to neutral, generic spaces, particularly places of business, there is a subversion of mission. The work is more attuned to “selling” existence via phenomena, rather than selling casino chips or hotel rooms. But like a spa in the basement, my brief hope at exposing a moment of sonic-spatial phenomena and their resulting experiential aftermath becomes co-opted as a “service,” so has an acceptable business usage. It’s a funny way to co-exist, because a subversion so essential as “existence” becomes another “event” that is subsumed by the original sales message. But we’re Americans damn it, we should have it all!

Regarding the sound of spaces and emotional contact: this is a key concern, but maybe the hardest to approach — because it is subjective. It gets into the experience and memory of the perceiver. Places are powerful. They signify the past, continuity and the now. From the point of the immediate that is already overwhelming. Places such as cathedrals are built to be emotional. Historically the scale of self-sound in these interior spaces is huge, unlike any other spaces, except perhaps caverns — to which I believe they are very much related in some primal sense. We register this and it overwhelms us depending upon our degree of sensitivity and emotional range.

I have personally experienced agoraphobia only once in my life. It was just after I completed my first large-scale installation. I had just been told that I was being considered to put up a work in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. I went to the space and almost immediately had a severe panic attack based on the scale of the space, the overwhelming volume of space and what I perceived as something like the depth of sensibility and capacity for magnification that the space presented. Sure, it was too soon for me to look at a place like that with the idea of putting up work and I hadn’t slept for days while completing the previous installation, but it was more the confrontation with my own limitations within that spectacular framework. Because I really had to confront the space, in an instant I was shocked by my own complete finiteness.

I had a similar feeling, though not panicked, moving stones on the Island of Kökar in the Åland Archipelago. The flesh giving out after lifting and carrying hundreds of stones hundreds of meters for days; walking across the stone, the red granite island, I felt immeasurably finite.

So you could say there is a profound sadness and longing to these spaces, and the sound brings that forward as much as it does the power of the places. It’s paramount that we shouldn’t forget that humans made the cathedrals and the longing of the people that made them still sings every day. That longing is also in the forest, and paradoxically, and very sadly, it’s in the hotels and casinos, too. We can’t escape it.

Interview conducted via email on December 29, 2007.

Interactive Muzak


Augmented Architectures is the experimental research team of architect Nancy Diniz and computer scientist Cesar Branco. Their approach to space centers around the variable and evolving interaction between person and physical surround. Described as “Situated Living Pieces”, Nausea Transformer is one of three projects comprised of fabricated “skin” operating in direct response to exterior stimuli. Their inventions “feel” the environment via the input information from movement, light, and sound sensors. This data is then translated by a genetic algorithm, which regulates adaptive corollary behavior. Nausea Transformer is specifically attuned to sonic conditions and it is programmed to output an ideal sound environment, which is “...defined by low amplitude (not very loud) and by a small difference in frequency between two consecutive samples averaged for a number of samples”. The machine indicates a disturbing direction for the next generation of muzak, where sound is no longer a cloak for unwanted noise but rather a strategic tool used to placate and conform surroundings toward a controlled environment. The indications of responsive sonic surveillance take on a ominious quality when considering the recent commercial use of ultrasound waves in public space as well as our oblivious adjustment to interruptive technology.

Deaf Deaf As A Post



Deaf Deaf, Teen Dream

Imagine Les Georges Leningrad, Flipper, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and a snake charmer shaken up in a tin can. There you have it: Deaf Deaf

Listen to Deaf deaf + Doomed

Insane Music

As anyone reading A Million Keys for the past few months can gauge, I’m increasingly fixated on early industrial, minimal synth, and new wave cassette labels. I recently discovered Belgian ’80s cassette label Insane Music and I’m quite impressed. I came across it while researching the group Bene Gesserit, whose track “Kidnapping” on Roger Aristotle’s compilation series The Anesthetic’s Wearing Off blew me away.

Listen to BENE GESSERIT + Kidnapping

Alain Neffe, of Bene Gesserit (as well as Human Flesh, M.A.L., and Pseudo Code), started Insane Music in the early 1980s, primarily to release recordings of his own projects. He also produced two prolific decade-long compilation series Insane Music for Insane People (24 volumes) and Home Made Music for Home Made People (8 volumes). Both are incredible representations of the enormous European output produced in the early to mid ’80s within and between those scenes. A few recognizable names include: The Legendary Pink Dots, Portion Control, Colin Potter, DDAA, Mark Lane, and Front Line Assembly. However, these compilations are distinct in their stunning assortment of seemingly hundreds of unknown groups.

Listen to Die Bleichgeischter + Old shatter hand (Extract)

Listen to Human Flesh + Angel With Fragile Face

Listen to Individual + Piece C

Listen to Pseudo Code + Watoo-Watoo

Listen to Berntholer + Toys

(I wish I had all the compilations available, but in fact, I only have a small handful. I was unfortunately unable to find a resource for the full series.)

Public Image

In their video installations, Andree Korpys and Markus Loffler undermine the staging of media events by shifting the focus to periphery, seemingly insignificant moments. They reveal the logic and construction of intensely charged displays of power, such as political press conferences, economic summits, and diplomatic visits, by documenting the trivial details of these settings. Their videos of traffic, bored onlookers, bodyguards, circling helicopters, and grass accentuate the fabrication and transience of official presentation. The structure housing their work built inside Secession’s gallery, pictured above, is emblematic of their overarching mission to make the exterior a focal point, and by doing so, deflate the mesmerizing hold of the mass media’s carefully scripted images.

View Korpys/Loffler’s current show at Secession

Joe Davis and Katie Egan- Audio Microscope (2000)

Joe Davis and Katie Egan’s Audio Microscope was exhibited at Ars Electronica in 2000. This fascinating project translates the microacoustic signals produced by plants into audible sound.

Full description by Joe Davis below

Part of my installation at Ars Electronica is undertaken in collaboration with Katie Egan and pertains to a question about two “singing plants”. At a point in time now almost exactly two years ago, a young pre-med student approached me with an interesting question. She had recently returned from South America where she had carried on field work in the Ecuadorian rain forest. There she had encountered a Native American brujo or “medicine man”. The brujo had told her that a given species of plant in the mountains sings a different song than the same species of plant in the valley. The student wanted to know if it was possible to “listen” to plant cells.

All acoustic phenomena, including “sound”, are the result of mechanical movements of physical objects within or upon the surface of a solid, gaseous, or liquid acoustic medium such as steel, air, water, etc.. In the case of the acoustic phenomena we call “sound”, the movement of physical objects occurs at or close to audio frequency so that the resulting waves or pattern of waves passing through an acoustic medium do so at audio frequency. When these audio frequency waves impinge on the human listening apparatus (the inner ear) the result is that “sound” is perceived in the human brain.

To begin with, it seemed to me that the problem wasn’t that cells are naturally “mute”. Many of them – and their flagella, cilia, pili, etc., – are normally at least partly engaged in activities that appear to occur at audio frequency. Further, no non-dormant living organisms are known to exist in vacuum or otherwise outside of an acoustic medium.

At the time, there were to my knowledge no existing microphones of sufficient sensitivity to register microacoustic signatures of individual (microscopic) cells. The function of conventional microphones generally depends on the mechanical motion of crystals or diaphragms that react to impinging sound waves. Sound waves generated by individual cells or microorganisms are simply too weak to effect such movements in mechanical listening apparatus.

Conventional microphones translate audio frequency sound waves into audio frequency electrical (electromagnetic) signals. These electrical signals may then be routed through amplifiers, equalizers, and other electronic audio equipment and eventually into speakers or earphones where electric signals are transduced back into “sound”. At the speaker, sound is created when a electromagnetically-driven diaphragm or crystal produces corresponding sound waves in surrounding air .

At the turn of the last century Alexander Graham Bell built what was probably the world’s first optical transducer of sound waves. He called it a “photophone”. Instead of translating sound into electrical signals, Bell built an apparatus that turned sound waves into audio frequency pulses of light. He also built “detectors” that would convert audio frequency pulses of light into electrical signals that could then be converted into sound. To construct my audio microscopes I also used optical detectors and specially illuminated stages and microscope slides that allow only light reflected from the surfaces of specimens to enter the objective lens of microscopes . These optical signals are then transduced into electrical signals via detectors mounted on the microscope eyepiece. The electrical signals are subsequently routed through more or less conventional audio equipment so that they may then be perceived as sound in the ear/brain of the user/observer.

At early stages of this work I was surprised to find a wide range and diversity of information in the microacoustic world. At lab we find organisms on almost a daily basis that we have never seen or listened to before. We therefore now routinely listen to organisms for the first time. Different organisms make different sounds in the way that say, the sounds of horses are perceived as different than the sounds of sheep. My experiments with spectrum analysis tend to reinforce that notion. I found that slightly different acoustic signatures corresponded to slightly different species of microorganisms. Paramecium multimicronucleatum for instance, has a slightly different audio signature than Paramecium caudatum. The signatures of a given species however tend to be uniquely distinct to that species. So as it turns out, the two plants of the same species must indeed “sing the same song”, unless perhaps the Ecuadorian brujo knows of some exceptional organism unlike those we have observed to date. “

Operations of Sound


the Old Operating Theater


Tim Wainwright, Bonewax boxes from Harefield Hospital

Sound artist John Wynne and photographer Tim Wainwright debuted their new work FLOW yesterday at the Old Operating Theater in London, an original 19th century operating theater and museum. Inheritance Projects, a curatorial agency programming site-specific contemporary art projects in heritage museums, commissioned the piece specifically for the exhibition and event program Operations of Sound. FLOW incorporates both video and audio documentation from Wynne and Wainwright’s artist residency at the Harefield Hospital in Middlesex, a leading center for lung and heart transplantation. The artists spent the duration of their residency capturing the intricacies of the surgical environment and its impact on transplant patients and their families. They maintained a blog throughout, which can be found here. FLOW is installed in the room housing the museum’s collection of antique surgical equipment. Inheritance Projects will also use the theater to screen ITU, a surround sound and video piece filmed in the hospital’s Intensive Treatment Unit.

Operations of Sound will be on display until December 15th.

Michael Yonkers Band- Microminiature Love

I picked this up at Aquarius Records last weekend and this record could easily be one of the most amazing releases I’ve come across all year. The Michael Yonkers Band was the creative front for the Minneapolis-based guitarist and songwriter Michael Yonkers. Locally known in the late 1960s for his handcrafted guitars and effects, Yonkers used his creations to cultivate a distinct variety of darkly warped and jagged garage rock. His raw, simple and off kilter song structures often veer in pleasantly unexpected directions. “Boy In the Sanbox” clangs along with a bassline that is both slightly out of tune and out of sync until it swerves sharply into an avalanche of distortion. The lyrics, which narrate the life and death of a soldier in Vietnam, add a deeply ominous feel to the song. The deceivingly more upbeat “Microminiature Love” is irresistible throughout. But, like all of his music, the uncertain and slightly melancholic wavering of his voice bring it down, reminding me of Jonathan Richman or Mark Edwards. Michael Yonkers recorded Microminiature Love in 1968 for a release on Sire Records. However, due to a mysterious fall out with the label, the album was never put out. A few years later, Yonkers suffered a crippling accident to his spinal cord while working in an electronics warehouse and the incident severely limited his ability to play. The album remained in obscurity until 2003 when it was rediscovered and issued by De Stijl on limited edition vinyl and on CD by Sub Pop. In the overpopulated realm of garage rock reissues, Microminiature Love is singular.

Listen to Michael Yonkers Band + Boy In The Sandbox

Listen to Michael Yonkers Band + Microminiature Love