Re: [-empyre-] Thursday, 19th: Hearing and Listening
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hi all, To my mind, a most basic condition of art is for something to be revealed, though what that/those thing/s are will never be singular. I don't believe there is something essential about what sound art/audio art/ music can reveal, but the conditions of expression and experience in sound and vibration, within the convergence of techné, politics, economics, culture, history, the immediate environment, etc, do offer something specific (though not necessarily unique). To segue a bit from yesterday's questions towards todays's, it's an interesting point Seth raises about the status of a sound 'work' or an art 'work' for that matter. I create work, and I do think of it as work, not because I can actually bracket it off from the rest of the world under my name, but because it is about labour, personal risk, instability, and yes, intention. I seek situations to be personally affected, and work to amplify/modify/express/transmit this onward. Perhaps especially because I work with transmission systems that are very prone to influence by all sorts of conditions, I am constantly made aware of the instability of the situation-- how little control I as an artist/maker have, how immediately I lose that illusion of control, how fragile the relationships between people and between people and things are, and how little I know or perceive of those relationships at any moment. But whether I'm working on a concert, a pirate radio broadcast, a site-specific installation, or an audio file on soundcloud, one thing I do consider is that every part is listening, including me; everyone is a listener, in the broadest sense of being effected by vibration and electric signals. In this way things and people are not so different. In this way, I hope and seek modest if cumulative revelations. Anna Friz radio * art * sound * research Wavefarm/free103point9.org transmission artist steering member, Skálar Centre for Sound Art and Experimental Music nicelittlestatic.com ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] response to Anna Friz
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thanks for your thoughts Christoph and Ryan, Ryan, Colin Stetson is exactly the kind of example I could make for someone who succeeds at being a very unique and powerful performer, while finding the potential in technology that is already (widely) available. Stetson crafts a sensibility, a meeting between self and things, rather than showcasing a technical mastery. The technology is not what's in focus of his innovation, it's the relationship he enables between breath, voice, saxophone, microphones, spatiality, etc. In so doing, he is able to deeply implicate the materiality of various bodies into his music, which as a listener and audience member I find very moving. I should say that I'm not against all forms of innovation, of course, but as someone who tends to work with the common or the trailing edge of technology, I'm more interested in what presence can be created, sustained, experienced, and expressed in cahoots with technology rather than explaining why my approach is so terribly avant, or how I think I'm reshaping the genre or field. When recently applying for a production grant, I realized that this pernicious focus on 'innovation' has come to occupy the top spot of the granting criteria, and in addition to valorizing new technical forms over interesting approaches or concepts, as Christoph points out, it also suggests that as a sound artist my body of artistic work should be evolving according to a particular (as I understand it, linear) narrative, where each piece somehow exceeds or breaks with the previous one/s, rather than be iterative, or express a deepening of a particular approach. The innovation bug is not limited to new fancy digital forms -- it's an issue whether people are coding Supercollider or building modular synths. The DIY scene is filled with people showing off new instruments at shows, but few people continue play them for 20 years after they build them. Chicago sound artist Eric Leonardson is a good example of someone working with self-made instruments who really intimately knows and collaborates with his creation (the Springboard). best Anna ____ Anna Friz radio * art * sound * research free103point9.org transmission artist steering member, Skálar Centre for Sound Art and Experimental Music nicelittlestatic.com From: Ryan Alexander Diduck To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2014 10:15:53 PM Subject: [-empyre-] response to Anna Friz Hi Anna, and everyone; Yours is a great question. Some colleagues of mine, though, have found the opposite -- where new technological innovations are frowned upon within more traditional academic musical and artistic spheres -- and have difficultly accessing grants and other kinds of committee-dependent resources. At the moment, I am studying the cultural history of MIDI, and am often surprised when I hear tell of digital instruments and tools viewed as somehow less legitimate than 'pen and pencil' instruments. There are cases on either side of this argument: artists doing profoundly status-quo work with "innovative" technologies; and others expending what is possible with more traditional instruments. An example from the latter camp that comes to mind is Colin Stetson, the Montreal-based horn player who makes unexpected and incredible noises with minimal technological intervention. Is Stetson's the kind of innovation you're hoping to see more of? Best, Ryan -- @ryandiduck --empyre- soft-skinned space-- ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] start of week 3
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hello everyone, and thanks to Jim for inviting me to join this stellar group of discussants for this week. One strategy for curating multiple sound works is to present them in conversation with one another, quite physically, rather than trying to maintain their status as totally discrete pieces. I had a very fruitful experience last year doing a show in Chicago with the duo Coppice, where we each installed an audio work at the art and media space TriTriangle, with the idea that the pieces would function as a kind of ecosystem. My work was a multi-channel transmission piece using suspended radio receivers and transmitters, while Coppice's piece used small speakers attached to the walls near the floor. The works literally and figuratively overlapped, occupying different strata in the space. It was especially interesting to experience each work in the context of the other; how they were reframed by this meeting, which sounds were clearly of one or the other work, which sounds were composite or could belong to either. Obviously this sort of solution is not appropriate to every situation, but I see much potential for this approach both practically and theoretically. all the best, Anna Anna Friz radio * art * sound * research Wavefarm/free103point9.org transmission artist steering member, Skálar Centre for Sound Art and Experimental Music nicelittlestatic.com___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
