Lateral Addition aspires to enrich dialogues among contemporary practices in sound — improvisation, computer music, “sound art,” etc. — and other areas of current media and visual art. In order to nurture the growth of these connections, it serves to further elucidate the often esoteric methodologies and thoughts of artists working with sound through original audio material.
Established in 2013, Lateral Addition releases sets of 4 audio and text contributions from an international roster of artists and writers on a bi-yearly schedule.
Lateral Addition on Library Stack
Remote Viewing (2019 - 2021)
Edited by Eric Laska / email
I’m drawn to the intimate and erotic relationship between the human body and technology in live performances. Starting in 2022, I began exploring the possibility of playing with microphone-speaker feedback and placing contact microphones within bodily orifices to amplify the sound of muscle movement, footsteps, and bone-conducted sounds. After a series of experiments, I started to sonically augment the body - by placing a customized speaker in my mouth to create feedback with a headset microphone and place a geophone sensor within my anus to amplify my body movements, and using a pair of Chinese bass drum sticks to play my body as a drum.
The in-mouth speaker plays back audio samples of gun sounds and is automated to create feedback at specific points in the performance. My mouth filters and mutes the playback samples and creates multiphonics and beatings when singing with the speaker's feedback tone.
The geophone sensor transforms my body into an instrument, incorporating the room into my acoustic body. My position in the performance space, the speaker’s volume, the muscle movements, and the room's layout all contribute to the sound-producing process and change the tone of the physical feedback system, which happens occasionally. The sound is conducted from the subwoofer on the ground through my body to the microphone. Because of these variables, the resulting sounds become intertwined with my relationship to the room through my choreography, which is improvised live. Thus, the audience in the room becomes physically connected with me through the haptic low frequencies.
The resulting solo performance consists of choreographed, ritualistic improvisations that build on ancient Chinese drumming traditions and explore body dysmorphia, self-harm, sexuality, spirituality, and mortality, linking sound, movement, and violence in divine ceremony.
The audio is an excerpt from my solo performance at E-Flux Bar Laika in NYC on January 31, 2024.
- QLL
[ the music of history ]
Tonkin was one of the 5 protectorates of the 'Union Indochinoise', to the northeast and with Hà Nội as its capital. On January 1st of 1882 the colonial governor opened the 'Manufacture d’Opium de Saigon' in order to control the entire opium production in the 'Union Indochinoise' and its sales, financing the colonial regime to a considerable extent. The french exploitation of coal in Tonkin began in 1884. Soon after, 1894 onwards, the private 'Société française des charbonnages du Tonkin' intensified the exploitation in the extended open-pit deposits of Hongay. On June 27th of 1908 Vietnamese nationalists attempt to assassinate French military of the Hà Nội garrison by poisoning their meals, the start of a general uprising in Tonkin to drive out the colonial regime. The strata of image and text in the postcards follow in their economy the economy of power, their 'truth' is a commodity. The postcard with the beheading scene seems to have as its source photographs signed with "Exécution capitale à Quan Yen Tonkin le 7 Mars 1905. (Coll. J. Chinh)" from which the postcard publisher produced postcards with a variety of legends, testing the sales market.
"For the historical index of the images not only says that they belong to a particular time; it says, above all, that they attain legibility only at a particular time. And, indeed, this acceding „to legibility“ constitutes a specific critical point in the movement at their interior. Every present day is determined by the images that are synchronic with it: each „now“ is the now of a particular recognizability. In it, truth is charged to the bursting point with time. (This point of explosion, and nothing else, is the death of the intentio, which thus coincides with the birth of authentic historical time, the time of truth.) It is not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation."
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project [N3,1]
- MW ( 2019 - )
These 12 minutes of sound are a combination of a recording of waves and wind at the rocky breakwater beach at Belle Côte in Cape Breton, Canada and a recording of me piling up wood on the porch on the following day in December 2023.
Sometimes we think that to live in the present with no memory is an escape, has a freeing quality.
To be so caught up in the sensuous now that we live completely, completely live.
Sound as sense beyond sense that keeps reminding us of its ongoingness. In and out as quickly as we hear it.
But what’s the way that sounds also maintain or hold us, suddenly point to themselves and to other things?
Everything is piling up.
Memory sifts time’s accumulations.
Sound piles are what must be left out so that we can make sense.
But our little bodies and lives are also records of these forgotten (and never even known) heaps.
Sounds accumulate around us, through us, in us. Neither pure narrative nor pure sensuousness.
There are the sounds we don’t and can’t parse but that still exist in us: a mass, a weight, an unwritable history. The frequency splatter of everydayness.
All around us, there’s this music of amassing, different densities of sound piling up, a relentless sound that is always there, will be there, has been there.
In Derrida, Egyptian Peter Sloterdyk suggests the pyramid is a monument always already built to be a ruin.
"It stands in its place, unshakeable for all time, because its form is nothing other than the undeconstructible remainder of a construction that, following the plan of its architect, is built to look as it would after its own collapse."
A pile of monumental ruins built to be “as it would after its own collapse.” It’s the made unmade just at the edge of composition, improvisation, constructing a life, dying, forgetting.
To record piles of sound is to record nothing much and not do much but hear the sound of the falling monument, simultaneously forgotten and forever.
As I record the sound of moving wood from one pile to another pile, I want to listen to stored energy relayed from one place to another. Armload from the yard pile to the porch pile, from the porch pile to the fireside pile, to the fire, to the atmosphere…
As I listen to wind and breaking waves I want to listen to the meeting-point between air, water, and land, to where solidity falls apart in foam and scribble. Water, rock, sand gets moved. Waves like pyramids. Falling in the very act of their emergence.
I tried to escape composition with these piles—but can’t. I can only begin, and then begin again. No gesture but the poverty of means, of attention, of capability, of memory as a starting ground. Aimless gathering.
And in that?
- JM
As animals with smell, so are humans with voices1
– Anne Karpf
In the summer of 2012 I conducted an exercise called OWN VOICE, consisting of interviews on the perception of one's own voice. After gathering basic information, participants were asked three key questions:
1. Do you like your voice?
2. What do you like (or dislike) about it?
3. Can you describe your voice?
Most interviewees found it challenging to articulate why they liked or disliked their voice. The phrase "I don't know" was a common response. The following are excerpts from six interviews:
- Nataly (19, Spanish): "Yes. I don't know what to say about my voice. I think it's more high-pitched than low, I don't know what to say."
- Jean Carlos (17, Dominican Republic): "Yes, I like it. I don't know, I see it as normal. It's sensual... beautiful."
- Rejep (20, Turkey): "I like my voice. Because I like to sing... and... I don't know what else to say. Not so strong, normal, baritone, male voice... I don't know what to say."
- Paolo (54, Brazil): "Honestly, no. It seems a bit metallic. I don't know, it seems not very modulated, sometimes a bit monotonous."
- Gabriela (17, Spanish): "No (laughs). I don't know! I hear it is very weird. It's very serious (laughs). I don't know! It's very strong (laughs)."
- Alameda (16, Spanish): "Yes. I don't know how it sounds and all. I don't know, sometimes it sounds high-pitched."
After this exercise, questions arise: Why is it so complicated to talk about one's voice? What happens when we speak about our own voice? Why do we lack linguistic resources to describe the voice?
Thomas Trummer's2 statement provides a clue: "Our own voice is our own most trusted familiar, more trusted than our own appearance, for which we at least need a mirror. Although it appears to be so close to us, the voice is in a strange place surrounded by many other voices, and sometimes it gets lost there." And Haytam El-Wardany3 wrote in How to disappear (2013) "Your inner voice is the sound of the external world resonating within you."
The last of the interviews conducted for OWN VOICE was with Valentina, a woman who studied journalism, worked in Chilean radio, is an academic, and an artist. Even she had a bewildered reaction when suggested to describe her voice, and later reflected on it:
Valentina (38 years old, Chile)
1. Yes.
2. I don't dislike it. But the truth is, I've never really thought about what I like about my voice.
3. It's a soft voice, I would say. Mhmmm, yes, I can't think of more adjectives. It's difficult because one doesn't generally hear oneself speaking. I could describe other people's voices, but my own voice is different. The thing is, one doesn't really hear oneself when speaking, I believe.
Talking about one's own voice is a rhetorical peculiarity: it is both the medium and the material of analysis. Qualifying one's own voice is also listening to it cautiously, and in this process, there is something similar to what a signal delay in a phone produces, where the delay increases, and we hear ourselves a little after saying a phrase. Trummer introduces the Voice&Void exhibition catalog with the reflection: “The human voice can say something about itself, and therefore it is a vehicle for speech and, at the same time, its own-reflective commentary, because talking about the voice always takes place in and with the voice."
In Western culture, the process of socialization is mainly carried out verbally. We use the voice as a means of exchange; it is the instrument with which we shape our identity in relation to others, expressing our feelings through it. Guy Cornut4 explains that there are two links that connect the voice with someone's personality: 'the voice as an instrument of self-expression' and 'the voice as an instrument of self-assertion.' The first responds to the need to manifest emotions through crying, shouting, laughing, while the second is explained as follows: 'Every person who speaks tries, to a greater or lesser extent, to have an effect on their interlocutor. The more one seeks to obtain the listener's agreement, for example, to make them obey, convince them, or seduce them, the more a high level of energy is needed, which will translate into a modification of the various characteristics of vocal emission: intensity, tone, timbre, articulation, speed or slowness, associated gestures, etc.'
For Cornut, voice intonations are acts of self-affirmation. The act of 'having an effect on one's interlocutor' is a way of confirming one's presence in a specific place and with a specific person. By expressing through the voice, we reaffirm ourselves in the present, leaving evidence of our connections with others and the environment. This opens the door to considering that the occurrence of human communication (through the voice) circulates in deeply intimate implications, activities that go far beyond the transmission of concepts. Anne Karf writes about the human voice:
'The voice isn’t just a conduit for language, information, and mood: it’s our personal and social glue, helping to create bonds between individuals and groups.'5
That the voice has the power to create bonds between the individual and their community has been exploited in various political and mass communication applications.
However, we also utilize it in personal and ordinary use: every small detail of the voice functions as a link in the everyday seduction between two people.
In 2006 I did an experiment which essentially involved staying silent. I set this goal on a Monday, wanting to see how many days I could go without uttering a single word. At that time, I was studying at the University of Buenos Aires, and this location facilitated the experiment: a foreign city where nobody knew me. The plan was as follows: always carry the exact change to board the bus, arrive a bit late to class, leave as soon as it ended to avoid exchanging words with classmates or the teacher. Bring a snack and eat in the park. Coffee: from a machine, as ordering it would require speaking at the cafeteria. Return home with exact change. Don't answer the phone, only respond to text messages. If I had to leave the house for another reason, do so with headphones on. On the first day, I felt relieved, immersed in an egocentric sensation, yet still content and satisfied. The second day brought difficulties: I began to experience the desire to communicate, to say at least a "good morning," so I started writing: everything I wanted to say went into a notebook. I realized that, although I was not contradicting my initial plan, I was engaging in a dialogue. While writing, I heard my own voice dictating what remained on paper. I also started singing internally and formulating speeches in the way I speak... I mean that, while thinking, I was listening to myself speak, as I usually don't compose my ideas the same way I construct speech; instead, I do it through images, isolated words, some phrases, abstract elements, clusters of sensations. The third day was truly challenging; I started to lose the enjoyment, feeling like an excluded woman. I continued writing in the notebook, and the writing style became more introspective and boring. On the fourth day, Thursday, I broke the rule. I remember how it happened: I was on the bus back home, and a lady sat next to me; winter was just giving way, and that day the sun was setting on Rivadavia Avenue. She said, "Look, what a beautiful day!" Although that statement wasn't a question, and there wasn't much to respond to, I couldn't stay silent. I remember feeling great relief when I heard that lady's voice because, even though her words weren't directly addressed to me, she assumed that I was her listener, her interlocutor; it was a way of including me in her world, in a snippet of her life. That final realization was the most valuable takeaway from the experiment, contrary to what I initially thought I would achieve: a Vipassana meditation-style introspection, where I could enhance inner tranquility. Instead, the result I ended up with was truly different; those three days of remaining silent made me think that speech is an almost necessary human action for perceiving oneself in the social world, evidence of synchrony and nowness.
- APS
—
OWN VOICE was carried out in the summer of 2012 in Barcelona at the Center for Studies and Documentation MACBA. And re-edited in January 2024 for Lateral Addition.
Acknowledgments: Anna Ramos, Lina Bautista, Laura Llaneli, Renato Souza, Valentina, Rejep, Paolo, Jean Carlos, Alameda, Luiga, Rosa Ángela, Joao.
The text is an excerpt from The Softest Voice: an approach to the human voice from the radio voice. Thesis of the Master in Sound Art from the University of Barcelona, directed by Dr. Carmen Pardo, published in 2013 by the author.
1 Karpf, Anne (2006) The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent. Londres: Bloomsbury Press. p.11
2 Trummer, Thomas (2007). Voice and Void. At Trummer, Thomas (Ed.) Voice & Void (1a ed., pp. 6-27). USA: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. p.11.
3 El-Wardany, Haytam, Cómo desaparecer (2013) ñ Press, Mexico City.
4 Cornut, Guy (1983) La Voz. Spain: Fondo de Cultura Económica. P. 70 5 Karpf, Anne. Op. Cit. p.2
5 Karpf, Anne. Op. Cit. p.2
The kernel of ?M Fra* is a set of files that were generated by Marco Pasini’s musika software from a dataset of audio files by Ian M Fraser and myself. Like teratomas — rare tumors that can sprout fully formed teeth, hair, bone, or other somatic structures — the output of this system featured familiar musical figures jutting haphazardly out of a more primitive, inchoate sonic mass. They register less as hybridizations of Ian’s work and mine than as para-musical found objects: stylistic markers from the corpus of royalty-free techno music used to train musika are audible, distended and compressed by the opaque compositional logic of the generative adversarial network, while the timbral dimension was characterized by a fuzzy indefiniteness that gave the impression of distance, that the sound was partially inaccessible due to the interposition of some occluding medium, never fully present but merely overheard in its state of virtual elsewhereness. These files were subjected to various source separation tools, each of which imposed its own spectral gestalt. Although the term source separation implies a genealogical protocol, a retrograde movement toward earlier, antecedent elements, the encounter between the musika products — a sonic object generated holistically rather than by summing discrete instrumental tracks — and the source separation algorithms yields novel entities, false histories ontologically posterior to that of which they are the putative “source.” By recombining stems from different source separation methods, the pattern recognition function of the various machine listening paradigms is subverted: new patterns emerge as a result of the juxtaposition of non-complementary stems, while reciprocal regions are riddled with gaps and spectral remainders.
- RMF
musika by Marco Pasini
demucs by Alexandre Défossez
RAVE by Antoine Caillon
Mastered by A.F. Jones
No Please Stop Don’t
No please stop don’t
please stop no please
stop no don’t stop
please no stop please
no stop don’t no
please stop no stop
don’t please no
stop please no don’t
stop please stop no
please no stop
don’t stop no please
stop please stop
stop no stop don’t
no don’t no stop
don’t please don’t
no stop don’t no
please no stop no
don’t please no stop
stop please don’t
no please no
stop no don’t no
please stop no
please no don’t no
don’t no stop please
no don’t please no
stop please stop
don’t no please no
don’t stop please no
stop no please don’t
stop don’t please no
please stop don’t
please don’t no stop
stop don’t please
no stop please no
don’t please no
stop please don’t no
no don’t no stop
please don’t stop
no please don’t
no please stop
stop don’t please
stop no don’t
please don’t no
no stop don’t
no please don’t
please stop
don’t stop please
don’t no please
please no
don’t no stop please
stop no don’t stop
don’t please stop no.
Need Some Bright Turn
Need some bright turn
turn need some bright
turn need some
some bright need
need turn bright
turn bright some need
some bright some turn
need turn some
some need some bright
some turn need turn
bright need turn bright
bright turn need some
need bright
turn some bright
need bright turn some
turn some need
some turn some need
some need some
turn some turn
bright turn
need turn need
some bright turn
need some bright need
some need some
need turn bright some turn
need bright need
need turn bright
some bright some
need some turn
bright need some
some need
bright need
bright some need turn
turn need bright
turn need
turn bright some need
bright need turn some
bright some bright turn
turn need some turn
some bright
need turn
some bright need turn
some turn
need turn
need bright need turn
need some need turn
turn some
turn
bright some bright
bright turn need
need some need
some need turn bright.
Upon Looking At It
Upon looking at it
it at upon looking
at looking it upon
it looking at
it at looking
upon at looking it
it at
it upon it
looking at it
looking at
upon at it looking
at looking upon
upon it
upon it at looking
upon at looking
it looking at upon
upon looking
at it looking
at it upon
at upon at
at it
it looking
upon it upon
at upon looking
looking upon
upon it at upon it
looking it at upon at
it upon looking at
at it at upon
it looking at upon at
at upon it at
looking upon it at upon
upon looking at
it looking upon at it looking
looking upon at upon it
at looking
it looking it
it looking
it upon
looking at it upon
at it upon looking at
looking it looking
at looking it at
upon it looking
upon looking upon it
at upon it looking it
looking at upon at looking
looking upon at upon
at it upon it
upon it looking it
at it looking upon
at looking.
Yes You Have To
Yes you have to
have you to yes
to yes have you
you yes to
have yes to have
you yes to you
have you yes
have yes to
you yes have to
yes to you have
have yes you to
you yes to have
you to have yes
yes to you have
to you to yes
yes have yes
to you have you
yes you to you
have to you
to have to you
yes you yes to
have you yes
you have to yes
have you have yes
have yes to
you yes to have
you have yes
to you to
have you to have
have yes you
to have to yes
yes you to
have yes
to have yes
to you to
yes you have you
yes have
you yes to you
have yes have
yes you to you
have to yes you
have you have
yes have yes you
yes to you have you
yes have to you
to have yes
to have you
have to yes
you to you have
yes have to yes to
you have
have yes you to.
I’m So Very Mad
I’m so very mad
so mad I’m
mad so I’m very
very I’m so very so
mad I’m mad
I’m very so mad
very mad so I’m
mad very so
so mad I’m very I’m
mad I’m so very
very so
I’m so I’m
so I’m very I’m
mad so
so very mad
mad I’m so
so I’m mad very
I’m mad so I’m so
so very I’m very so
so I’m so very so
mad I’m mad so
I’m very
mad I’m so I’m
so mad I’m mad
very mad so
I’m very so
very so I’m
so mad very
very I’m so I’m
so mad so
so very mad
so very so I’m mad
I’m so mad so very
I’m very mad so mad
I’m mad
so I’m mad
I’m very so I’m
mad so
mad very
I’m very
so mad I’m very
so very I’m so very
mad I’m very so
so I’m
I’m
very so mad am very
very mad I’m very so
so very mad very I’m
mad I’m mad I’m very
mad I’m so mad so
very so very
mad so very I’m so.
Have Been Going Again
Have been going again
going again been have
been have going again
have been have going
been going have going
again going have been
been have going been
going been going have
have going have been
going have been have
going been again have
have again been going
been have going have
have been have been
been going been have
been going been going
going have going have
have going been
been have going again have
going have been going
been have
going again have been have
again have going again
been again going
again going again been
again having been going again
have been going
going again have again
have going again going
again been have again
been again have
going been again
have been
have going again been
again going have going been
been again have going
going again
have again going been have
going been going been
been
going have
going been
again going been have
have
have again been
have again going been again
again have been
again going have again
going again have going
been again going have
again going have going
have been again.
What happens when the ear is presented with ten independent melodic lines? Or twenty? Or a hundred? In a series of sonic-perceptual experiments over the past few years, I’ve found that beyond about eight independent melodic lines, we lose the capacity for perceptual discrimination and begin to hear nothing but mush. But if we go further still (between about 20 to 50 lines) one of two things happens: either we hear more mush (I.e., noise), or something clicks and the ear begins to gestalt things into groups. Et voilà: melodic-like shapes begin to emerge from the morass.
Our auditory systems are constantly doing this kind of analytical work. They do it every time we hear a phoneme or a note, for example, by fusing the many spectra into a cognizable thing. We also do it when we listen to music, separating out the various layers (drums, bass, guitar, and voice in rock music, for example).
Even so, I am surprised every time it happens: when going beyond about 20 lines yields something new, something with a kind of cognizable shape. Usually in a way that’s quasi-improvised (and using some kind of pitch set or simple harmonic motion), the shift from ten incoherent lines to the uncanny popping Gestalts of 40 lines takes my breath away. When it happens. It often does not, and I end up with something ragged and ugly that I erase immediately. Part of what I’m working on now is understanding what works and what doesn’t. The little audio piece in this Lateral Addition issue was my first ever attempt with this compositional process. (I recorded it in my lockdown living room on the 2nd of April, 2020.) Since then, I’ve done many other pieces, and I have advanced the process quite a bit, but there’s something about the freshness of this first attempt that I still find perceptually thrilling.
In the version here, I’ve attempted to make something out of the little fragment of 20+ independent melodic lines. My friend and collaborator Jim Sykes plays wonderfully chaotic drums over the thing.
I see this attempt as part of an approach to music composition (and to music generally) that I call perceptualism. The claim of perceptualism (and I will elaborate on this soon in various places) is that Western music has historically been divorced from questions of perception. This is so both in terms of making music (composition, performance, etc.) and theorizing music. But what do I mean when I say that music is divorced from questions of perception? Surely musicians care about nothing other than how the sound they produced is perceived? And surely academic types do nothing but try to explain how music is perceived and how it affects listeners? To some extent, yes, these assumptions are true. But we also know that historically Western music has had a deeply idealist or even mathematical thrust. Pythagoras’ hammers were merely abstractions rather than sounding bodies. The birth of “modern” instrumental music ca. 1800 also traded primarily in abstractions: of pure and organic form. The listener is often less than an afterthought.
I propose a perceptualist music: an approach to music making that engages questions of auditory perception directly.
I said that Western music has historically been divorced from questions of perception. What I have in mind can be expressed if we split that history into several trajectories.
If we take these three trajectories as broadly paradigmatic of the main poles of Western music history, we see that perception is not an issue.
There was a moment in the 1960s and 70s when Western music took a near perceptualist turn. Buoyed by ethnographic analyses of non-Western music (especially East African and Indonesian music), the composer Steve Reich, the music ethnographer Gerhard Kubik, and the psychologist Albert Bregman simultaneously and independently developed Gestalt (or Gestalt-like) theories of perceptual grouping in music. Similar ideas, perhaps less ethnographically-oriented, are evident in work by Maryanne Amacher and James Tenney.
My compositional work takes stock of this moment in music history, trying to recuperate it and radicalize it. All I really want to do, at least at this stage, is to make music that sounds genuinely interesting. No theorization can produce interesting-sounding music, but at the same time I feel that we have tried too long to make interesting-sounding music without sufficient theorization. Beginning on a perceptualist footing is, I believe, a step in one possibly fruitful direction. We have many possible places to look in the past to help us, should we wish to. If not, we can continue making music that either offers itself nakedly, or is totally indifferent, to the listener. (The third option, which I believe is possibly the one taken by many interesting composers today, is to intuitively find some middle-ground. But intuition may have run its course.)
I don’t think I have succeeded in any very substantial way with this study, and I recognize the mismatch between the grandiose claims of this text and the slightness of the music. That said, perceptualism is not one thing, and I see this LA posting as an invitation to further creative exploration in this area.
- GS
The following audio-work is my first attempt of a sound (or tuning in) meditation, without using verbal language. I have been looking for ways to reduce discursive elements as much as possible for such a practice, as I am in an environment where most of the people around me have a different mother tongue.
I also think a sound meditation is both an empirical and intimate experience, and I often struggle to find the right terminology conveying my own auditive experiences.
This piece is called « Tuning In » as it is meant to be an introduction to a solo violin program I am releasing as an album next year. Before the music starts I wanted to propose a moment for the listeners at home to « clean their ears »* from daily life’s rumble (I am speaking from a city-life perspective), so they can be receptive to music again.
At first, I wanted to use sea sounds entangled with violin fragments. But two « technical » issues occurred to me : I don’t live close to the sea, and I am not a skillful field recorder.
I then tried to recreate a seascape with tools I felt comfortable with: a violin, a bow and a laptop.
*I recommend listening to this track with headphones, taking the time to adjust the volume as necessary.
- CL
In 2019 I began composing a series of pieces based on permutations of musical pitches. Starting with eight numbered pitches, I created a few simple rules and began sketching out “riffs” or — if you want to be fancy about it — “tone rows”. There are two voices and the music is primarily in octaves, although at certain points the “algorithm” flips and new pitch relationships are established. Eight pitches allow for 40,320 possible sequences. An alternate version of this piece might be to play through every possible permutation. It would take some time to get through them all, so it might be better to just imagine it. The present recordings were made with electronic oscillators, but this music could theoretically be performed on any two instruments.
- NH
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wood, water, stone, metal
some questions:
working with objects in states of transformation, something moving or being moved slowly toward becoming something else, how do we listen to industrial and elemental entanglements?
places understood as nature are often sites of intervention. when and where does an ethical aesthetics of intervention begin and end?
in a coastal forest after it burns, at an oxygenated lake being overgrown by algae,
outside a cement plant at the edge of a quarry, what sense of duration do we perceive?
what changes occur when we listen within and when we listen without?
a note:
a background in percussion and improvisation informs my approach to field recording and working with sounding objects. this work is both documentation and interaction.
kevin corcoran, 2022
In March 2021, after two silent years of pandemic, I began collecting chants from around the world for my new acousmatic work. Exhausted by the long period of isolation and lack of contact, my artistic goal with this project was to bring together the voices of people from different countries, cultures and religions and unite them in my musical composition. In the promotional video I posted on my social media channels, I asked for audio recordings with a smartphone and received 26 songs that I used as source material for the piece. The audio files ranged from intimate solo recordings made in a bedroom, to polyphonic folk songs and chants professionally recorded in a studio, to songs accompanied by various instruments. As I listened to the recordings, I realized that my task as a composer was to find ways to connect the voices that were recorded in different acoustic environments, with different keys, tempos, and languages, and to create a sound world in which they could all coexist. Considering the time in which the recordings were made and the work was composed, I consider this piece a collective prayer, hence the title ლოცვა (Lotsva).
The first version of the piece premiered in Oslo on September 9 and subsequently toured other Norwegian cities and international festivals. In the meantime, I kept receiving new recordings, so I added a new contribution from a different country at almost every performance. The final version of the piece was presented at Kulturkirken Jakob as an 8-channel sound installation as part of VoxLAB VårFEST.
- MG
Mastering: Balint Laczko
Format: 2D Ambisonics / Binaural
Duration: 16 minutes
Year of composition: 2021
Commissioned by Ny Musikks Komponistgruppe
Contributors:
Annie Björkman, Sweden
Aine Eva Nakamura, Japan
Heidi Skjerve, Norway
Line Souza, Brazil
Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad, Norway
Nigar Gahramanova, Azerbaijan
Åshild Hagen, Norway
Katy Pinke, Israel
Supriya Nagarajan, India
Zosha Warpeha, USA
Silva de Waard, Netherlands
Zoe Perret, France
Verena Merstallinger, Austria
Diego (surname anonymous), Argentina
Tamo Nasidze, Georgia
Falk Rößler, Germany
Ensemble IALONI, Nino Naneishvili, Georgia
Elvic Kongolo Birkebein, Congo
Małgorzata Olejniczak, Poland
David Zurabiani, Georgia
Sajidah Ahmed, Bangladesh
Andrea Silvia Giordano, Italy
Balint Laczko, Hungary
Marija Astromskaitė, Lithuania
Diana Serrao, Portugal
Christopher Manning, US
this computer generated sound is the simulation of something i don't know
- TU
During the month of November pantea and Leonie engaged in a daily conversation. The artists never met each other in person, but had gotten an impression of one another during a presentation and short conversation online.
A one-hour track traveled back and forth between Tehran and The Hague - the artists took turns adding audio fragments to fill this hour. Bits of conversations, field recordings of the surroundings, special moments and the mundane regularity of daily life, thoughts that cross their minds. pantea underlined these elements with the Tar, and Leonie with a Fender Stratocaster and an original 1950s National Slide Guitar. The track could be filled in chronologically or out of order, vertically or in layers horizontally, in order to produce a tapestry of daily life.
November
Act 1: Roggeveenstraat 180, The Hague, Kitchen
Act 2: Soundwalk, from Golshandoust to Fadak Park, Tehran
Act 3: Community Garden “Het Welpje”, The Hague
Act 4: Construction site in Narmak and home in 92nd Square, Narmak, Tehran
Act 5: Suezkade, The Hague
Act 6: Fadaiyane Eslam Park soundwalk with Sonic Tehran group, Tehran
Act 7: Tram 1 from the Peace Palace to Delft
Act 8: Delft Station
Act 9: Gardening in Lavasan, close to Latyan dam lake
Act 10: Apartment Roggeveenstraat 180, The Hague
Act 11: Driving from Pasdaran Street to Narmak, Tehran
Act 12: Corner Roggeveenstraat/Van Spijkstraat, The Hague
Each act represents a place or path in each city where the narrative was recorded. The locations are visualized in these maps: Tehran, The Hague
In 2017 I wrote a piece called Constructed Objects. The piece was the first in an ongoing project of imagining composing or making music as a sort of non-linear sculptural/conceptual project. I wanted to envision sounds as if they were material concepts (even found objects) in space that interrelate, resonate, and co-mingle in rooms. I have both ideas of assemblage or montage here as well as modular constructions.
I then revisited this idea in 2020 with Correspondences. In that project, I wrote a very simple text score based on the concepts I was thinking about in photographic assemblage sculptures I was creating. Each object type in my sculptures was imagined as a rough concept, and each concept would have a hypothetical/theoretical corresponding sound. I then sent the score out to some collaborators to create both sonic and visual realizations. Correspondences helped me realize that I needed all my visual works to have a corresponding sound world and vice versa.
This piece I’m now presenting is the continuation of that whole project. As this venue for sharing is a place for text and sound, I developed a simple text score similar to Correspondences and now have the opportunity to realize the concepts with words and sound rather than objects or images.
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And so the stories here are the real objects. They are performative, a form of verbal art. Attention to their formal properties entails a kind of ethnopoetics—not in the usual sense of analyzing the poetics of a non-Western culture, but rather those of a strange mirror, reflecting and distorting the dominant discourses imploding inside an empire.
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Once even a private memory circulates—as utterance, narrative, discourse—it becomes social. It escapes ownership and becomes a living, growing, changing thing. Then even those who didn’t have the original experience can still take in and “have” the memory, absorb it as a kind of inner speech—and can alter it, transform it, let it express new, latent meanings that outrun and distort the transparent sense of the original experience.
It is completely discouraging to hold a word in sight, and see it spin around, pair with others, join a constellation, like a string of beads; in fact it escapes you like a ball on a playground; others play with it cheerfully, but what are they playing at, what’s their game? It’s a mystery.
An implied space of permutation. To fashion a space out of lines of thread. Rotating the object time and again to reveal the same object in different orientation. Rolling the thread object like dice to see what results. If the cuboid is rendered via thread, it can even be folded to permit further permutations and renderings.
The Lushei, neighbors of the Mara, believe that earthquakes are caused by the people who live in the lower world shaking the ground to see if anyone is still alive up here. When an earthquake occurs, the Lushei run out of their houses and shout, “Alive! Alive!” so that those below will know, and stop the shaking.
Libraries.
Rivers of living water are to be poured out over the whole world, to ensure that people, like fishes caught in a net, can be restored to wholeness.
Noise has an inchoate shape like weather does – we may measure it but its movements extend beyond any identifiable cause. Noise exceeds its own identity. It is the extreme of difference. Noise is the non-knowledge of meaning, the by-product of economies.
a rock false mansion immediately evaporated in fog which imposed an edge to infinity IT WAS stemming from stellar IT WOULD BE the worst CHANCE Falls the feather rhythmically suspended from the accident to bury itself in original foams not long ago as far as his frenzy leapt to a top withered by the same neutrality of an abyss NOTHING of the memorable crisis or it was the event
There is a beach in Empire, Michigan; one of many. The sand of the beach has been eroded away in recent years by strange weather and different water levels. Now on the beach there is an exposed wall of pure gray clay. The erosion of these beach faces makes room for ‘wildly-out-of-place’ tree species like Mountain Ash or White Cedar.
Senga Nengudi’s Water Compositions.
In terms of image-repertoire, the Photograph (the one I intend) represents that very subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis): I am truly becoming a specter.
In the plain weave, this intersecting of warp and weft takes place in the simplest possible manner. A weft thread moves alternately over and under each warp thread it meets on its horizontal course from one side of the warp to the other; returning, it reverses the order and crosses over those threads under which it moved before and under those over which it crossed. This is the quintessence of weaving.
Tarkovsky’s concept of time-pressure is like a meteorological time-front that propagates from shot-to-shot and throughout the film, or a cardiopulmonary time-pulse that thrust against the arterial walls of the scenes, bringing temporal oxygenation to the shots and overall meaning to the film-form.
For his book, The Americans, Robert Frank took over 20,000 photographs. 83 were published for the book.
The Robert Venturi designed house known as the Vanna Venturi house (built for his mother) was built between 1962-1964 in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia. The house is an early example of what would come to be known as post-modern architecture. Within the architecture is housed a sort of ‘unity of duality’. Venturi writes: “I like elements which are hybrid rather than "pure," compromising rather than "clear," distorted rather than "straightforward."... I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitur and proclaim duality.”
The lithium mines in the Atacama desert in Chile provide a quarter of the world's lithium market. The stark mines provide an image of both grid and gradient amongst an arid landscape. The reason of so-called human ‘needs’ are juxtaposed upon an irregular pattern of pools of changing color. The extraction process uses immense amounts of water which lead to a shortage amongst indigenous communities as well as significant biodiversity loss.
Fernand Deligny created a commune for and spent a good deal of his life working with autistic children. He developed a practice of tracing their movements through their lived environments. These tracings were recorded by members of the commune and were eventually dubbed ‘wander lines’.
Due to our visual orientation toward the solid, we often forget, neglect, or dismiss the fact that the eye has a profound biological, historical, and cultural relationship with the liquid. The eye is, like the rest of the human body, made up primarily of water. The mechanics of sight depend on two liquid humors: the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor, which, respectively, nourish the eye and help it maintain its shape.
- MEW
for four gourd instruments and EBows
For over ten years I’ve been designing self-built devices to produce my own experimental soundworlds. These instruments often re-purposed found materials and used contact microphones or magnetic pick-ups as their primary form of amplification. The focus of these instruments was often on producing micro-sounds and sustained tones that were an acoustic equivalence of electronic oscillators.
A few years ago I was on a fellowship at Harvard University and had some limited access to a wood-shop – which happened to be run by Walter Stanul, who had a lifetime's knowledge of building and playing acoustic instruments. One of the things I was interested in developing was moving away from electronic amplification to see if I could make instruments which used the principles of analogue modular synthesis but were realised in the acoustic domain. Inspired by the work of composers Walter Smetak, Tony Conrad and Eliane Radigue – I imported a number of dried large gourds from California and experimented with different methods of converting them into sound objects by attaching different strings, membranes and cavities. What I ended up with was a family of nine instruments – some of them using traditional strings re-purposed from a cello or sitar and others using non-conventional “found” materials like tomato slicers, springs or metal tines. The instruments are then placed on custom stands and activated with ebows and “preparations”. A concert for these incredibly quiet instruments involves several of them, played with ebows; building up microtonal chords and modulations affected by the resonance of the space and preparations which I place on the surface of the instrument. In "Necropolis", I invited my long-time collaborator and friend Richard Youngs to play the gourds with me outdoors, in preparation for an upcoming solo concert I had been invited to play in Rome. I wanted to test out how these instruments would sound when played and recorded outdoors but was afraid that due to their low volume their audibility would be masked by the general hum of the city. We chose carefully then, a place and time, where we hoped for not too much external interference. In this recording you hear pretty much everything that took place that day. Recorded around ten am on a Sunday morning at Glasgow's famous necropolis, sitting on top of the city, we were pleasantly surprised by the balance we managed to achieve between the voicing of the instruments and their surroundings.
Richard did a very minimal "actuality" edit of the proceedings -intentionally revealing our discussion and the clunky sounds of us “searching” for chords (all by ear and experiment). Rather pleasingly the recording also features the sounds of “chance” interventions; sounds that would not ordinarily be present in a typical studio environment. One observes the jet engines of passing aircraft, the footsteps of dog walkers and the comments of passers-by; including one local who said to Richard- "not trying to listen out for the deid are you?"
July 2022
- LF
