Amp

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Naama Tsabar Untitled (Double Face) (2019)
‘Untitled (Double Face) is a performance that coopts and upends the guitar solo through a conjoining and doubling. Using two guitars grafted together, Tsabar and a partner turn the seemingly masturbatory performative gesture into an act based on intimacy and cooperation.’

 

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Banks Violette SunnO))) / (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror (2006)
At the Maureen Paley Gallery in London, June of 06, Violette created sculptural representation of SUNN O)))s entire backline in cast resin and salt, including amplifier stacks, instruments, effects & accompaniments. In addition, black laquered stage platforms and sound panels were created as a basis for the groups actual backline setup, and a selection of drawings were presented within the context. The result of this performance and collaboration, which was conducted in a sealed gallery space, was intended to generate a feeling of absence, loss and a phantom of what once was’.

 

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Özgür Kar Macabre (2021)
4K video with sound 75″ TV, media player, amplifier, speakers, wall mount and cables

 

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Paul Kos The Sound of Ice Melting (1970)

 

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Grönlund-Nisunen Tampere Beat Frequency (2016)
‘There are two sine wave oscillators and a stereo sound system placed in the room. Each of the speakers plays an individual slightly different sine frequency around 61 and 63Hz. The interference of two different frequencies constitutes acoustically an unison which is called a beat frequency.’

 

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Michelle Jaffé Wappen Field (2011)
Wappen Field is a sculpture and sound installation comprised of 12 chrome plated steel helmets resembling face guards. Each helmet’s dedicated speaker transforms the sculptural installation into an immersive audio environment. Vocal recordings originally created by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, culled from seven diverse performers, are composed by Michelle Jaffé & spatialized algorithmically by David Reeder in SuperCollider.

 

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Jeroen Diepenmaat Ode … (2015)
“Ode…” consists of 83 music boxes in a forest in Diepenveen in the Netherlands, all playing two notes when a cord is pulled. When multiple boxes are activated, the noted come together, creating a melody. Just like two people can meet each other coincidentally, and can become inseparable.

 

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Omar Velázquez Pariah (2015)
Pariah explores the origins of noise and power through chaos theory elements, and how these may relate to the practice of art and rock n’ roll aesthetics. On opening night, several guitarists performed and took part of the work. A metal barricade with LED police traffic light bars ghostly lighted the space as they played cathartic riff rituals. During museum hours, visitors can freely manifest themselves physically and mentally by playing an A minor-tuned custom made guitar at a low 432hz frequency.

 

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Richard Garet Before Me (2012)
‘This work consists of a Fender head amp, a dual cone speaker cabinet, a turntable, a clear crystal marble ball, a shotgun microphone with a stand and a light bulb.’

 

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John Wynne Untitled installation for 300 speakers, player piano and vacuum cleaner (2010)
John Wynne’s installation is at once monumental, minimal and immersive. It uses sound and sculptural assemblage to explore and define architectural space and to investigate the borders between sound and music. The piece has three interwoven sonic elements: the ambient sound of the space in which it is installed, the notes played by the piano, and a computer-controlled soundtrack consisting of synthetic sounds and gently manipulated notes from the piano itself. Because none of these elements are synchronised with each other, the composition will never repeat. The music punched into the paper roll is Franz Léhar’s 1909 operetta Gypsy Love, but the mechanism has been altered to play at a very slow tempo and the Pianola modified to play only the notes which most excite the resonant frequencies of the gallery space in which it is installed. Sound moves through the space on trajectories programmed using a 32-channel sound controller, creating a kind of epic, abstract 3-D opera in slow motion.

 

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Sergei Tcherepnin Motor-Matter Bench (2013)
Rigged with transducers, Sergei Tcherepnin’s Motor-Matter Bench (2013) welcomes sitters, and then, through bone conduction, they’ll hear a composition. Their bodies will actually transmit sound.

 

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Jesper Just Corporealités (2020)
LED panels, multi channel video, amp, sound, steel, and cement

 

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Mark Leckey Untitled (Harlem SoundSystem) (2011)
4 low range speakers, 2 mid range speakers, 3 high range speakers, 1 wooden sound buffer, 4 amplifiers, 1 equalizer, 1 stereo/mono crossover, 1 mixer, cables

 

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Simon Fujiwara Future/Perfect (2012)
‘As the man lies on a tanning bed he learns a foreign language via headphones, audibly sounding out words and phrases, which are amplified and broadcast into the surrounding room.’

See it here

 

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Darren Bader Antipodes: Parmigiano-Reggiano (detail, 2013)

 

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Nikita Gale End of Subject (2022)
‘The artist probes how a performance might be constituted in the absence of the human figure while reconfiguring the production of the experience of presence as it is mediated by the physical body—via such mechanisms as lighting, staging, atmosphere, and sound, as well as expectations shaped by existing social and political systems.’

 

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Lisa Kirk Untitled (Speaker) (If You See Something… Say Something… soundtrack included) (2011)
maple, oak, 24.75 x 16.25 x 12.25 in.

 

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Anthony Johnson Memoirs of a Wall (2012)
As my day-job over the past fifteen years, I have worked in behind-the-scenes roles within the art industry, predominately installing and de-installing artists‘ works and exhibitions in galleries, museums and other public and private spaces. In the process of developing the idea of Memoirs of a Wall, I followed a line of thought that started with the chronological gap in between exhibitions on a gallery’s annual calendar. The role of exhibition installer entails operating within the fallow grey zone on the exhibition calendar, and within the non-exhibited gallery site as a space of labour, when it is in-between exhibitions, and neither here nor there. These notions of inter-state times and spaces were given further form by the given architecture of the Carnegie Gallery, where a façade of white gallery walls stand autonomously within the large heritage-listed council building. I think of it as a room trying to disguise itself as another — architectural cross-dressing, if you like. Between the original walls and the display walls, there runs a long tight corridor only forty centimetres wide, along the longest wall within the space, and accessible only by ladder. I began thinking of this difficult to access passage as an analogy for the grey area I occupy in my roles as an artist and an exhibition installer, to that chronological gap between exhibitions – the space of nothing. For the work, Memoirs of Wall, all the pre-existing anchor point holes of the longest wall in the Carnegie Gallery were re-perforated from the back of the wall to the front. As you’d expect, the vast majority were in a central horizontal band along the length of the wall. Then with a hammer, I punched out two eye-holes for myself in the centre of the wall. Throughout the exhibition opening, I wore the wall like a mask, with my eyes visible to the audience from within the gallery space, who could then visually engage with me. Within the gallery, a microphone on a stand was adjusted to touch the wall at the point where my mouth would be relative to the eye- holes. This microphone was ‘live’ and connected to a small amplifier positioned next to the stand. However I remained mute throughout the performance, but the volume on the amplifier was tuned relatively high, to pick up on sound within the gallery. The monotonous drone of the crowded space resulted in a low pitch drone, but at times it neared a point of high-pitch feedback. The shriek of feedback never quite happened, but the immanent threat of the wall screaming created anxious moments within the crowd, and groups would pause conversation to quieten the threatening din. This reflexive adjustment occurred numerous times throughout the performance, the amount of noise in the space shifting, particularly in relation to people’s proximity to the wall. The work thus introduced a participatory element, which established a spatial audial rapport between the audience and the wall I occupied.

 

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Haroon Mirza /o/o/o/o/ (2013)
Mirza has long doctored records or fashioning his own handmade vinyl substitutes from corrugated card or Perspex, but is just as likely to attach a transistor radio to a turntable, or hook up a portable CD player to a bucket of water, creating discordant hums, buzzes and bursts of feedback. For his new show, Mirza has pulled apart stereos, lighting systems and computer circuits to construct new phonographic hybrids that seem to switch on and off of their own accord. Every click of a device is important in the scheme of things; every movement combines to create a new composition in Mirza’s looping, interconnected soundscapes.

 

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Yoshihiko Satoh Present Arms (2002)
Yoshihiko Satoh takes mass-produced goods that have become part of our every day life, enlarges and/or multiplies them, creating sculptures that unleash the energy residing in their function and shape. In 2002, he won the Kirin Art Award Grand Prix for “Present Arms”, a 12-neck guitar conceived as a challenge to a rock guitarist he idolizes.

 

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Ceal Floyer Scale (2007)
Often suffused with a distinctly wry sense of humour, Floyer’s works have an offbeat quality, with the dialectical tension inherent in commonplace representation being inserted into revelatory notional compositions. In Scale, the artist exploits the dual meanings of the title itself, verb and noun, as speakers serially mounted to recreate escalating steps play the sound of footsteps ascending and descending. The footsteps scale the speakers, while the speakers play back a new kind of “scale” – liminal rather than musical.

 

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Kaz Oshiro Sunn Studio Lead Amp II (2021)
Acrylic and Bondo on canvas

 

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Adam Basanta A Large Inscription, A Great Noise, 2019
Microphones, mic stand, amplifiers, gravel, cement, cable, steel, motor, electronics.

 

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Martin Kersels Buoy (1999)
mixed media including a mirror ball, a Walkman, an amplifier, a speaker, a tin can, a flashing light, and a motor.

 

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Benoît Maubrey Shipwreck (2023)
350 connected loudspeakers, line in, Bluetooth receivers, microphone and sampler machine/ Loopbardo

 

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Peter Kennedy Snare (1972)
‘Snare was first staged in 1972. The sound installation takes its name from the snare drum at its centre. It has a microphone placed underneath it and a speaker inverted on the two drumsticks resting on the snare drum. Another speaker is magnetically attached to a steel-framed chair, facing the drum. Both speakers are attached to an amplifier which is connected to a two-track tape deck. The microphone underneath the snare drum feeds into a second amplifier. The tape deck plays a recording of a drum solo. As it feeds through to the speaker on the drum, it triggers the drumsticks. The microphone feeds the live drumming sounds into the amplifier not connected to the tape deck. The installation is set up to allow feedback to enter the soundscape.’

 

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Tim Bruniges MIRRORS (2014)
Acting as “sound mirrors”, these curved surfaces collect, compress and amplify all sound occurring in front of them. When received, sound is pushed outward along the edges in the opposite direction. Because the two slabs are placed in front of each other, sound is being transmitted back and forth over a ~8 meter distance, constantly amplifying the sound in the room. This all is supported by a second layer of sound: two speakers and a microphone embedded in the parabolic reflector, amplifying the sounds in the room and playing them back with different layers of digital delay, creating a tension with the purely acoustic “delay”.

 

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Nicky Teegan Prayer Battery (2012)
The cult demands complete fanaticism and dedication to these devotional objects. These objects are charged with a spiritual dimension. They are mystical beings. This is a space of worship, fetish and indulgence for the cult. A shrine is built in which all of the objects are directed towards. It is a void, a cite of incantation or prayer. A drone plays towards the void, it is a charge, resonating throughout the space, generating a state of hypnosis. The drone is powered by a another devotional object, a prayer battery, containing the charge of chants and rituals powered by the cult. Footage of a ritual is played in the corner of the room looping eternally. The figure is shrouded by protective material. Canonised, it holds a relic of the void and performs a ritual of devotion towards the poster on the wall that depicts a utopian world in which these mystical objects originate from.

 

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Ariel Bustamante Volumen Sintetico (2011)
‘The work is composed by 1629 earphones embedded in a 180 cm diameter wooden parabolic antenna and 24 electronic boards that distribute sound from a mp3 player to each earphone. The parabolic geometry allows for all the sound sources to coincide at a focal point one meter away from the structure’s center, which results in a noticeable increase in the general volume due to the addition of each earphone’s low decibel intensity. Another characteristic of this work is that the disposition of the earphones causes the sound to stop being individual and become public. This is due to the fact that the earphones are exposing their faces, or their speakers’ fronts, which are usually hidden inside of the ear. This disposition of elements refers to a large speaker, a medium that reproduces sound; however, this is not a neutral medium, like the common home speaker.’

 

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Zimoun Guitar Studies 3.02 (2022)
‘In search of expressively emotive guitar tone, Zimoun uses a range of extended strategies to agitate and evince his instrument’s voice on ‘Guitar Studies’.’

 

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Nadine Robinson Coronation Theme: Organon (2008)
speakers, sound system, mixed media

 

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Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller Ambient Jukebox (2023)
interactive jukebox with 60 tracks of ambient guitar music composed by the artists

 

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Kal Spelletich Arbor Aeronautics (2011)
‘Tree avatars, para normal otherworldly spaces and objects. Extending a trees abilities via technology. 40,000 species go extinct each year. Technology has powers. Nature has powers. a lot of these powers you can’t see or understand but both can teach us. Something universal and mythical. A magic forest, hidden meanings, a dystopic land.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Happy to have been your doctor’s assistant. Oh, shit. Have you sorted the laptop? Hoping it’s not actually dead. Or that you backed up the hell out of it? Stressful. Sorry, Ben. ** Jack Skelley, Hi Jolly Jack. So, are you spiritually transformed or even transfigured? I read that Paper piece. Fantastic! Dude, you are so incredibly happening. Milk it like a goat. Everyone, Here’s a fun and highly informative new article from/in Paper Magazine that investigates the cultural phenomenon occasioned by the existence of Jack Skelley’s wild masterwork ‘Fear of Kathy Acker’. To be read posthaste, I suggest. Dude, that’s amazing. I believe I am between books at this very moment, but a pile is calling me. I liked the Ben Fama as, yes, you already know. Love ya back! ** Dominik, Hi!!! Would be ace indeed: the possible symmetry. We’re just sitting and praying, hope against hope, that the Pighead in charge will actually raise the funds needed to go forward because we’re all scheduled and set to go starting in the next week or so. Dear god please. We’re not submitting to festivals right now. We’ve decided to wait until the film is completely finished before we do that again. I think Cannes would be the next one. I suppose you haven’t and never will solve the mystery of the flamingo? A wind so strong it managed to blow it from the 1950s onto your balcony? Love convincing Mother Nature that it’s just a little too cold in Paris today and to turn the sun’s volume up just a little bit, G. ** Charlie Medeiros, Hi, Charlie. Welcome, and very nice to meet you. Sure, I’d be happy to do the interview. Thank you so much for wanting to. I guess maybe write to me at my email — denniscooper72 @outlook.com — and we can figure it out, if that’s best for you? Thank you again. Fine Monday to you. ** Steve Erickson, That’s funny because, I swear to god, a friend of mine saw Tom Petty play at some point and told me that during the encore he played a cover of Sebadoh’s ‘Rebound’. No, I haven’t listened to the ‘Kids’ soundtrack in ages. Does it hold up? We were supposed to get an hour of snow last night, but no dice on our end either. ** Bill, Ah, gotcha. Right, ‘Rotting in the Sun’ has been on my list too. Where to find it … You’d be amazed, or not, at how much more difficult it is to find streaming interesting movies over here in France. Things like Amazon Prime, etc. have a much more limited line up. There was some bonifide fun in that post’s offerings, I do declare. ** seb 🦠, Hey. If I’m awake at 2 am it’s because I need to pee. I have Ezra Blake in my sights, and I just have to pull my bankcard’s trigger now. ‘Spec Ops: The Line’ looks really shoot-y. I’m kind of a wuss with FPS games. I like games where you just run around and look at things and solve things and then occasionally come across a boss-type whereupon I hand my controller to my roommate and say, ‘Can you beat this guy for me please?’ Hope you slept, assuming you sincerely wanted to. Kind stranger replacing it and finding out who you are and where you live and stalking you until he’s in a position to hand it over. I agree with Corey that your text seemed pretty clean to me, and I’m wide awake. ** Misanthrope, The shave brush things are actually nice to use. It takes slightly longer to shave that way, but I do recommend you try it. Plus they look nice on your bathroom counter. Ah, July. Not endlessly in the future, but almost. ** Darby 🐶🩸 ✋, I saw your email before I was fully awake, and I’ll open it and write you back today. It’s possible: I think she (B. Steele) was kind of influential, I’m told. I don’t physically have (I) Crystal Castles, but Zac has it and pays it a fair amount. I do think (III) is a masterpiece. I had a pet rabbit as a child named Mr Bun. I had, I think, four dogs when I was growing up, but they all died violently and tragically, and I have not wanted any kind of pet ever since. So, not in many decades. ** E. Muric, Hi, E. Welcome to here, and thanks for entering and typing. Oh, I talked to you in Vienna! Wow, that site looks completely fascinating. Thank you a lot for reminding me again and hooking me up. Yes, I’m going to scour that. Great, very kind of you. How are you? ** Corey Heiferman, I think Fellini is a pretty big reason why Marcello Mastroianni became a widespread thing, but I could be wrong. Good, then please do join the clan of us bright-eyed, sunlight-lit go getters. I have no relationship to Marco Vassi. I don’t know that I’ve even heard of him until now. Huh. I just did a quick search, and he does seem pretty interesting yes. Oh, wait, ‘The Stoned Apocalypse’, right, duh, I was spacing out. I haven’t done a post re: him, but now I think I have to. Let me see what I can come up with. Thank you for the alluring path forward, pal. ** Niko, Hi, Niko. I saw your email upon awakening, and now I’m sufficiently full of caffeine that will be able to open it and read it and write you back today. Thanks so much. So talk you over there pronto. ** Okay. Maybe you thought amps were just those dark rectangles on the back of a stage that make it possible to hear Judas Priest. Maybe you’ll be surprised by what amps can be when artists get theirs hands on them. Or maybe not. See you tomorrow.