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Tamar Harpaz Crazy Delay, 2018
‘The thought that every object is a potential black box is both thrilling and threatening. When sound hits an object, it causes that object to vibrate. Its motion is invisible to the human eye. The object becomes like a diaphragm in a loudspeaker, a witness capturing the latent vibrations of a crime. Everyday objects become potential storytellers of a past that has moved them. A voice’s echoes, distortions, delays, vibrations and tremulous are all a means of detecting their origin – to hear the place they came from. Tamar Harpaz manipulates perception using optical devices and cinematic mechanisms. Bringing ageing technologies to the point of malfunction, she uses their failure as a driving force in her work.’
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Nobuko Tsuchiya Brief History of Time, 2015
‘Tsuchiya’s precise, poetic works reflect her instincts as an artist and convey a sense of longing for the future that almost resembles a scene from a sci-fi novel. Her eccentric work not only seeks freedom from any rationale, but also rebels against restrictions that the world puts in front of her.’
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Christoph De Boeck timecodematter, 2009
‘In the interactive installation timecodematter the visitor enters an arena that is bordered with vibrating sheets of massive steel. The steel objects are pulsating with low frequencies and they react to the approach of persons. The acoustic energy in this installation is both penetrating and intangible: the resonant properties of twelve different steel sheets respond to the low frequencies and produce a conjuring effect.’
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Aernoudt Jacobs PHOTOPHON, 2014
‘PHOTOPHON is based on the photoacoustic principle that was discovered at the end of the 19th century by Alexander Graham Bell. According to this principle, a strong light source can be converted into an acoustic wave due to absorption and thermal excitation. Bell’s research shows that any material comes with a sonority that will be revealed by hitting it with a strong beam of light. The installation consists of different photophonic objects playing tones created by strong light beams through a rotating disc. With PHOTOPHON Jacobs intends to provide a certain kind of musicality, though in the form of an installation, not of a playable instrument.’
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Alona Rodeh Neither Day nor Night, 2013
‘Moving lights, synchronized with an adaptation of Erik Satie’s 1888 “Gymnopédie #1,” reveal a wooden stage and a gleaming curtain, resembling an old-fashioned dance hall or a deserted theater out of a David Lynch film. The conscious amalgamation of cinematic influences leaves the room laden with expectation. The viewer will decide how the scene unravels: Will the stage be left untouched, as an autonomous work, or will it become a platform for self-display?’
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Cinthia Marcelle TO COME TO, 2009
‘One JCB machine goes through the form of an infinite symbol transporting dirt from one side to the other and then repeats the movement from that side back to the other, like a kind of enlarged sand filled hour glass that never stops rotating.’
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Anne-F Jacques FLUID STATES, 2016
“Fluid States” is composed of a small population of contraptions and devices, put in motion by motors and interacting with one another. The said contraptions generate sound through friction, bouncing, acceleration and electrical vibrations. Anne-F Jacques is a sound artist based in Montreal, Canada. She is interested in amplification, erratic sound reproduction devices and construction of various contraptions and idiosyncratic systems. Her particular focus is on low technology, trivial objects and unpolished sounds. She is also involved with Crustacés Tapes, a postal sound distribution project.’
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Yann Leguay Test Tone, 2013
‘Brussels based sound artist. Yann Leguay is a true media saboteur. He seeks to turn reality in on itself using basic means in the form of objects, videos or during installations and performances involving the materiality of sound and data storage. His flagrant disregard for the accepted norms of audio behaviour appropriates industrial machinery and other DIY tools for the playback of audio media: using an angle grinder to perform the live destruction of an audio signal or to playback a CD at dizzying speed. His release activity is equally deviant, releasing a 7” single without a central hole and a record composed from recordings of vinyl being scratched by scalpel. His Phonotopy label proposes a conceptual approach to recording media and he curates the DRIFT series on the Artkillart label which overlays several grooves onto a single record, causing randomised playback.’
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Rolf Julius why pink, why yellow, 2001
‘why pink, why yellow is the installation of a five-channel music composition emitted from a floor arrangement of speakers, Japanese tea bowls, digital prints and small panes of glass. The speakers are placed under the glass and within the bowls, making their contents, red and black powder pigments and viscous pink hand soap, jump and shift with the vibrations. The music is comprised mostly of computer altered natural sounds played via an array of portable CD players, left exposed as part of the installation.’
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Gaëtan Rusquet Back and forth, 2018
‘At first Back And Forth appears to approach the balloon in all of its innocence as a game develops between Rusquet and the increasing number of squeaking, twisting and floating forms. Soon a suggestion of the human body, of limbs and organs, of the inside popping out, shapes the performance and something altogether more unsettling is achieved.’
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Lawrence Malstaf Nemo Observatorium, 2015
‘Styrofoam particles are blown around in a big transparent PVC cylinder by five strong fans. Visitors can take place on the armchair in the middle of the whirlpool or observe from the outside one at a time. On the chair, in the eye of the storm it is calm and safe. Spectacular at first sight, this installation turns out to mesmerise like a kind of meditation machine. One can follow the seemingly cyclic patterns, focus on the different layers of 3D pixels or listen to its waterfall sound. One could call it a training device, challenging the visitor to stay centred and find peace in a fast changing environment. After a while the space seems to expand and ones sense of time deludes.’
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Dominique Petitgand Quelqu’un est tombé, 1993
‘Inside the abbey, Petitgand layers a collection of sounds across three rooms for Quelqu’un est tombé, 1993/2009. Four speakers in the first and largest room play an irregular progression of short, loud noises, while the second, much smaller room echoes with long phrases of music. In the third room, the only one that is fully soundproofed, five different voices are heard. “Je marche, je trébuche, je tombe” (I walk, I trip, I fall), one of the young voices repeats. Another calls out, “Quelqu’un est tombé.” The narrative, like the melodies elsewhere in Petitgand’s work, is unresolved but rich with allusions to shared expressions, emotions, and actions.’
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Davide Tidoni EXAGGERATED FOOTSTEPS, 2015
‘This is me walking through different rooms of the same building. I compare the acoustic response of each room by means of a pair of metal plates that I attached to the sole of my shoes.’
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Katerina Undo Creatures Cluster, 2014
‘Creatures Cluster is an endless combination of living members, composed by miniature robots that live autonomously, receiving their energy from solar cells and generating a variety of soft sounds and tiny movements. The Creatures are developed with two simple analogue oscillator circuits, inspired from the nervous system of organisms. Every module is special and unique and it is impossible to build exact equal. According to the interaction that occurs between them, clusters/systems are developed that organically interact with each other in a reciprocal way. The sculptural and auditory nature of the synthesis — radiation of the chaotic — refers to the functioning of a nervous system, as well as to systems of social cooperation and alliances.’
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Christian Skjødt The Receiver, 2019
‘Functioning as a live observatory, The Receiver is a new site-specific sound installation situated in an abandoned silo at the harbour front of Struer. The installed radio telescope (Ø:3m) consists of a specialised antenna and receiver, operating in the microwave region of the radio frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The telescope follows the Sun, as Earth rotates around it, and receives electromagnetic radiation that has traveled the 150 million km from the Sun to planet Earth. This energy is the source material of the immersive sonic environment created in the silo. Herein the frequency spectrum of the sound can be experienced when travelling upwards in the 45 meter tall building, moving from low to high frequency, as crossover filters split up the sounds, covering and slightly exceeding the lower and upper limit of the hearing capacities of humans. Ranging from infra- to ultrasound, the material is conveyed by custom made loudspeakers optimised for the specific frequency range.’
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Lyota Yagi Vinyl, 2020
‘Lyota Yagi produces music records out of ice to be played on a turntable, allowing the audience to experience the transformations of sound and shape as they melt.’
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Haroon Mirza reality is somehow what we expect it to be, 2018
‘Involving smart sampling, sometimes through collaboration with other artists, Mirza’s practice overall is characterised by a knowing eclecticism and sheer physical impact. His (mis)understanding of the nature of human perception – of what and how we see and hear – is demonstrated and combined with countless possibilities of meaning, and so his aesthetic proposition is more to do with messages received than those transmitted, circumscribed by our constitutions, testing the limits of what we can experience and what we think we know.’
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Stephen Cornford Binatone Galaxy, 2011
‘An installation for used cassette players which looks on their obsolescence not as an ending, but as an opportunity to reconsider their functional potential. Superseded as playback devices, they become instruments in their own right. Replacing the prerecorded content of each tape with a microphone gives us the chance to listen instead to the rhythmic and resonant properties of these once ubiquitous plastic shells. Binatone Galaxy brings the framework within which a generation purchased their favourite records to the centre of attention, revealing the acoustics of the cassette and the voices of the machines themselves.’
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Bram Vreven Shape(less)?, 2018
‘As a former jazz musician, Bram Vreven has been making sound installations since 1998. His installations contrast acoustic and electronic sounds in a refined way. Silence has gradually been gaining an important role in his work. A number of his installations make forceful movements, but hardly produce any sound or no sound at all. This silent movement has become one of Vreven’s leitmotivs.’
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Chelpa Ferro Totoro, 2008-09
‘In this installation, the group, formed by Barrão, Luiz Zerbini and Sergio Mekler presents a musical programme in big sound speakers that go up and down, in a continuous movement, during 8 hours, provoking different hearings in each level.’
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Muku Kobayashi Take no Hikui-Ki no Take wa Hikui, 2016
‘The sound installation is wooden-crafted with polished elements. The devices move with smooth mechanical movements to look almost unreal, creating a cinematic sound. They generate various types of sounds, and possibly noise, transmitted to horn speakers. They are operated automatically and perfectly integrated, both in aesthetics and design, with old analogue equipment such as VU meters or audio oscillators.’
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Tristan Perich 1-Bit Symphony, 2010
‘Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip. Though housed in a CD jewel case like his first circuit album (1-Bit Music 2004-05), 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it literally “performs” its music live when turned on. A complete electronic circuit—programmed by the artist and assembled by hand—plays the music through a headphone jack mounted into the case itself.’
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p.s. Hey. ** Shane Jesse Christmass, Hey, man. Me either. Have I done a Melville Day? Maybe not. I’ll look into that. Thanks for the link. I’m on it. Everyone, A new slice of writing by the mighty Shane Jesse Christmass is yours to read on the recently highlighted site Selffuck, and that’s your cue to click this. Thanks too for the direct route to Dale’s book. I don’t know what the ’50th anniversary of Eden Eden Eden thing’ is, so I guess not? ** G, Howdy, G. I’m happy his films look tasty. They are, I say. How’s stuff? My toe is being very stubbornly irksome, but it’s doable in a pinch. Bon day! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. That’s a good one, for sure: ‘BtK’. ** _Black_Acrylic, Uh, hm, family viewing … well, your family is not the typical family, so … possibly? Very stylish. Do your parents appreciate high stylishness? Your excitement is most highly justified, sir. ** Tosh Berman, Hey, T. Oh, for a European outlet of The Criterion Channel, sigh. Hope you’re in tip-top shape. ** Misanthrope, Check ’em out. Actually, and granted I’m a revising/ rewriting/ polishing / typo-hunting nerd, but you don’t need to convince me of the funness. I’m already there. ** Kristopher, Hi, Kristopher. Very nice to meet you, and thank you entering this place. Yeah, I’m in agreement with you on Suzuki, no surprise. I actually haven’t seen any of the three films you recommend, so my day’s internet hunting trip is preordained. Thanks a lot. And I hope this goes without saying: please hang out in here anytime you like. What are you up to? ** wolf, Wowie Zowie Wolf! I’ve been thinking about you over there, buddy. Things are pretty okay. Quiet, kind of a lonely August, but it’s toast now. I think your bet that I would like that kimchi is well placed. Kimchi Day, hm, that would be an interesting challenge. I’ll endeavour to be up to it. The ‘thing’, if you meant the pandemic-related stuff, isn’t really boring me, no. My pragmatism is doing its job, and, you know, we’re still pretty free over here for the moment. I got very bored of everyone I know having vacated Paris for most of August. That got really old. But most of the buds are back or close to, so I’m all right. I am dying to travel. I am happy that Z. and I get to go to Marseilles for a few days at least. Maybe France will be easily enterable again soon. ‘Praying’ for that on my end. Your pandemic stuff is still very messy isn’t it? I don’t even know anymore. Okay, yeah, I guess it is getting very boring, you’re right. Big, big love! ** Steve Erickson, I liked your new track. I agree about ‘Pistol Opera’. It’s great. And what a good title. I liked ‘Drive’ too. And only ‘Drive’. It was efficient. An interest/gift he seems to have lost. ** Right. Should you so choose, you will have a lot of fun and inspiration-related kind of pleasure vis-a-vis your eyes and ears if you give the array I present to you today a decent going over. Up to you, though. See you tomorrow.
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