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Otomo Yoshihide + Yasutomo Aoyama without records (2008)
‘Sound installation consisting of 127 portable records players. By mounting such different materials as cardboard or iron onto the turntables that were originally made for playing vinyl records, the players were converted into quiet lo-fi devices playing unique rhythms and noises. Composed out of these is a spatial installation, whereas the rotation of each player is controlled by a computer programmed to generate multilayered soundscapes without ever creating the same combination of sounds twice during the event period.’
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Siobhan Coen & Haroon Mirza Dreamachine 2.0 (2019)
‘Back in 2019 artists Siobhan Coen and Haroon Mirza began work on an installation responding to a experimental stroboscopic device developed by artist Brion Gysin. It was during Siobhan Coen’s residency at hrm199, Haroon Mirza’s studio platform, that the artists began talking about updating the Dreamachine by using computer-driven LED lights and incorporating sounds at frequencies that correspond to the brain’s electrical activity. After consulting with neuroscientists at Imperial College, London, the artists collaborated in the conception of Dreamachine 2.0, an audiovisual update of the original device in which, as Coen describes it, “constantly changing frequencies of light and sound waves produce increasingly complex images in the viewers mind.”’
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John Duncan The DREAM HOUSE (2010)
‘Prototype for the center room of a 7-level structure based on the structure of the human brain, constructed from 495 shipping container modules, designed to reflect or invoke states of mind.’
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Ethan Rose Revolving (2012)
‘Through a simple auditory intervention, Revolving seeks to materially engage a process of sonic transformation by investigating the acoustic possibilities of a revolving door. With this intention in mind, the temporal shift between a set of four distinct tones is activated not by sensors or pre-composed rhythms, but instead relies solely on the bodily activation of the door’s immediate, perceptible motion. The spinning of the door effectively transforms the static tone of each speaker into a repeating musical pattern, or, in the absence of passing bodies, the arrested motion rests on a tone (or two) and drones consistently both indoors and out. By combining the transportive quality of a musical phrase with the immediate physicality of an existing architectural mechanism, the worldly and the abstract may overlap, combine, and dissolve according to the embodied experience of the listener.’
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Bojana Petkovic Swamp Orchestra (2016)
‘Developed by media artist Bojana Petkovic, Swamp Orchestra is an interactive sound installation that mimics the natural chorus of swamp creatures. The project is comprised of 16 light-sensitive sound modules, with each one producing noises from insects, frogs, amphibians, birds and other organisms. Each module responds to a flashlight, and the sound varies based on the amount of the light.’
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Mark Mothersbaugh Orchestrions (2014)
‘I’ve collected odd and eccentric sounds and noisemakers for 35 or 40 years now, and I have a collection of about 250 bird calls. Some of them are like 150 years old. I started playing some bird calls while I was looking at the footage, then I recorded and started making melodic and rhythmic progressions out of the bird calls. I was trying to do it by myself, but it was too hard to sit in a room with 50 bird calls on a table and pick them up at the right time and play them at the right time. In the process of buying a lot of vintage musical instruments, I met this guy that repaired amusement park calliopes and I said, “What would you do if you were trying to make bird calls play?” He goes, “Oh, that’s easy.”
‘We started working with an air compressor, so I used an old foghorn to pump air into these bird calls. Some of them you had to blow air through and some of them it was just like a little pouch and I had to build something that tapped the pouch and made a “peep-peep-peep” sound. Some of them needed something shook or a crank turned to make the bird call sound. They all had different little mechanisms to them. Over five years or so we built that thing and I started writing music for it. It was really enjoyable. I’m always sensitive to doing something where I feel like it’s a cliché or that it’s something I’ve already done. I’m always looking for new things.
‘So, by using bird calls and orphaned organ pipes, I could create this instrument that didn’t have all the notes and wasn’t tuned perfectly across the scale. A lot of the tuning on the pipes was varied. I love that sound of things that you get when you play two notes that are slightly out of tune with each other. There’s a beating. It’s not perfect. It’s kind of more like a gamelan instrument, where they clang and it makes spirits come to life instead of being just this dead, western, bloodless, beautiful, classical-based music.’
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Thessia Machado Little Tikes (2004)
‘Machado uses real instruments alongside odd gadgets, professional equipment, and a little human power and timing to not only create a feeling of industrial sound, but provide a backdrop to the Goldberg-like setups used to create the noise. Opened cassette players, spinning tubes, walkie-talkies, and microphones are not the oddest machines she’s ever used to perform; she once composed an eerie piece out of a dying Little Tikes microphone toy.’
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Anna Vasof Self-Portrait (2016)
‘“Self-portrait” is new invention based on the essential idea of motion and time based art. It is an object made out of simple everyday objects such us a metal bucket, an ordinary lamp, magnifiers, rope and paper cups. When the audience move the rope up and down and the lamp starts pending, the object transforms into an audiovisual instrument, which animates a figure that interacts with its social environment.’
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Florian Hecker Event, Stream, Object (2011)
‘Event, Stream, Object creates an unusual listening environment to manipulate one’s perception of sound. Hecker’s multilayered composition is supported by a system of eight qfactor loudspeakers, each conveying a sequence of synthetic sounds. The miniature loudspeakers are suspended from the ceiling, with bent reflectors in front of the them to emphasize the way sounds rebound and are diverted, thus heightening the complexity of the experience.’
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Lawrence Abu Hamdan Rubber Coated Steel (2015)
‘In May 2014, Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank (Palestine) shot and killed two teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and Mohamad Abu Daher. The human rights organization Defence for Children International contacted Forensic Architecture, a Goldsmiths College-based agency that undertakes advanced architectural and media research. They worked with Abu Hamdan to investigate the incident. The case hinged upon an audio-ballistic analysis of the recorded gunshots to determine whether the soldiers had used rubber bullets, as they asserted, or broken the law by firing live ammunition at the two unarmed teenagers. A little over a year after Abu Hamdan completed his report, he returns to the case of Abu Daher and Nawara in his installation Rubber Coated Steel. Rubber Coated Steel acts as a tribunal for these serial killing sounds. It does not preside over the voices of the victims but rather seeks to amplify their silence, fundamentally questioning the ways in which rights are being heard today.’
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Martin Kersels Piano Drag (1995)
‘A baby grand piano that noisily trundles from one side of the gallery to the other, digging irregular ruts in the cheaply resurfaced concrete floor as it is dragged back and forth by a cable attached to an electric winch. A few feet before crashing into one of two walls, the lurching piano grinds to a halt, having pulled its own plug like a household vacuum cleaner that’s been pushed beyond the reach of its cord. Silence ensues as the enormous loudspeakers Kersels has stuffed under the piano’s raised top finally stop blasting the amplified sounds of its tiny wooden wheels that had creaked, screeched and skidded under the massive musical instrument’s ponderous weight.’
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Tommi Gronlund & Petteri Nisunen Copenhagen Beat Frequency (2015)
‘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. Copenhagen Beat Frequency is 3 Hz. It was iterated to be resonating with the singularity and invisible substance of the attic space.’
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Adam Basanta A Truly Magical Moment (2020)
‘Two lovers in the middle of the dance floor. They link arms and begin to spin. The room blurs as they stare deep into each other’s eyes. Perhaps most iconically captured in James Cameron’s 1997 epic, Titanic, this classic scene is found throughout modern romantic cinema, complete with over-the-shoulder and point-of-view cinematography. In A Truly Magical Moment, visitors can re-enact this “Magical Moment” using the contemporary communication tool for many long-distance relationships: Apple’s proprietary FaceTime technology. Gallery visitors and online guests can use their iPhones or computers to video chat the two FaceTime accounts. When two guests connect one to each phone in a virtual “face to face”, the sculpture begins to spin, reaching dizzying speeds while romantic music plays in the background. At top speed, the background blurs and warps, while the image of your dance-partner remains in focus. After 60 seconds of a “Truly Magical Moment” – a wordless, “genuine connection” with another person – the rotation slows down to a standstill, while a nearby digital counter keeps count of the amount of “Magical Moments” enabled throughout the exhibition.’
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Ulla Rauter FassadenScan Trier (2014)
‘Moving through a city, the visible urban structures – the rows of houses with their fronts, their facades – can turn into a kind of filmic experience for the passer-by. façade-scan translates these visual elements into auditive signals. The surface of the city gets “scanned“ by a sine-generating sound tool. Using the photographs of façades as musical scores, every part of the exterior architecture generates a particular sound and the façade’s elements become tones, intervals and rhythm. The vertical line defines the pitch; the horizontal movement along the rows of houses corresponds to the timeline of the soundtrack. In that way, each building produces its own specific sound-experience and it’s sonic identity. The changes within the particular structures (e.g. decay) become audible.’
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Cildo Meireles Babel (2001)
‘Babel is a large-scale sculptural installation that takes the form of a circular tower made from hundreds of second-hand analogue radios that the artist has stacked in layers. The radios are tuned to a multitude of different stations and are adjusted to the minimum volume at which they are audible. Nevertheless, they compete with each other and create a cacophony of low, continuous sound, resulting in inaccessible information, voices or music.’
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Juan Cortés Supralunar (2018)
‘What is the role of dark matter, an invisible form which accounts for approximately 70% of all matter in the universe? In the 1970’s, astronomer Vera Rubin discovered that the objects at the edges of galaxies moved faster than expected, and predicted the existence of unseen dark matter to explain the discrepancy.
‘Supralunar invites us to experience discoveries made by Rubin on the relationship between dark matter and the rotational movement of galaxies. It proposes a poetic approach to dark matter, visualising this strange and unknown entity that scientists believe supports entire galaxies, stopping them from being torn apart by the extreme speed at which they rotate – but which we cannot see or detect yet.
‘Placing an eye against the lens causes the skull’s orbital and temporal bones to act as an amplifier for the sound produced by the electromechanical gears inside, while the frequency of the lights inside creates a simulation of the morphogenesis of a galaxy through light and sound. Paradoxically, Supralunar’s construction –reminiscent of an ancient clock– allows us to comprehend through everyday, classical mechanics a phenomenon that is based on the abstract theories and unseen constituents of modern physical cosmology.’
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Takis Musical (1977)
‘Panayiotis Vassilakis, known as TAKIS, was one of the most prominent personalities of both international and greek art scenes. A pioneer of kinetic art, he unfurled his talent after the end of World War II, and he asserted himself by offering a different approach to kinetic art. Self-taught artist by conviction, he managed to create an inextricable link between art and science by combining elements of nature and physics in his sculpturing. Takis, as a “tireless worker of the magnetic fields …” continues to this date to experiment and create kinetic works of art that have inspired painters, sculptors and poets of his generation, as well as his contemporaries.’
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Haroon Mirza A Chamber for Horowitz: Sonakinatography Transcriptions in Surround Sound (2015)
‘A Chamber for Horwitz; Sonakinatography Transcriptions in Surround Sound, is a conceptual development of the work Adam, Eve, Others and a UFO from 2013, based on a circuit with eight LEDs. Four Sonakinatography Compositions by Californian artist Channa Horwitz form the basis or starting point of the work. The eight-part notations of potential sounds and movements in time were transcribed by hrm199 Ltd. and written into a computer program controlling light and sound in the pavilion. The electric noise of the current that lights the LEDs in various colours is simultaneously translated via speakers into audible noise. Together, the four interpretations result in an approximately two hour long electronic light and sound concert.’
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Christina Kubisch virtual electrical walks Oslo (2019)
‘The video gives an impression of what you experience when you move through electromagnetic fields while wearing Christina Kubisch’s custom made special induction headphones.’
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Stephen Cornford Constant Linear Velocity (2016)
‘A kinetic sculpture for used computer cases with automated and amplified optical disc drives. The mechanical gesture of a CD or DVD tray opening and closing concisely performs its function as an intermediary between physical and digital space. The addition of a copper coil to each drive enables them to perform their obsolescence aloud. The work is both a monument to the lost physicality of our media formats, and a reminder of the persistent physicality of digital technologies. Each empty metal case has the dimensions of an individual’s digital space, evidencing the waste implicit therein.’
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rubén d’hers playa (2012)
’14 acoustic guitars, 31 dc motors, 300 m cable, fabric and computer’
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Christian Marclay 48 War Movies (2019)
‘Christian Marclay tests the relation between sound and visuals through editing or mixing – of objects (physically splicing vinyl records and album covers in his early work) and in cinema. In his masterpiece, The Clock (2010), sound was the glue, binding wildly different movie clips, and imposing a sense of sequence and pace. This new, epic audiovisual work sees Marclay explode one of cinema’s most familiar genres, the war movie, using the sound edit to slay any sense of narrative. Marclay compacts the 48 war movies of the work’s title into a montage of combat, each appearing as a rectangular border in a receding Chinese box. Details of faces or weapons might lure the eye, but action is indecipherable. The composite soundtrack compounds multiple battle scenes into noise core: it’s chaotic and overwhelming, like being in the middle of a gaming arcade. But this is not a didactic work. The cacophony amplifies the absurd excitement of the war movie genre, and that’s what keeps you listening.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** Misanthrope, Well, I obviously don’t know those kids in those videos, but I am not under the impression that they’re ‘cool kids’. In the grander scheme of things, I mean. I mean I think they’re cool. I mean give me a kid who wants to be a ventriloquist over a kid who wants to be the next Yung Lean any day. Or most days. Keep rockin’! ** David Ehrenstein, Now that’s an idea! ** Sypha, That Ligotti guy’s brain can really surprise one occasionally. Cool, happy if the Neo-D dudes are happy. ** Derek McCormack, Mr. McCormack! You are a dead ringer for Mortimer Snerd! How trippy! I’m just happy that Quinn gave this joint the heads up. Nice, right? I miss you, maestro! Big love. ** Dominik, Hi! Me too, of course. Yeah, I just stumbled upon the new gurochan. Pretty threadbare, but seems like it’ll be scaring the world — well, except for you and me — again before too long. Ha ha, that love you gave me is tough to compete with. How much would you pay to see that? I’d pay a lot. Love making every human being on earth over the age of 80 subject themselves to a cosmetic surgery and style makeover until they become Ricky ‘Horror’ Olson lookalikes, G. ** Jack Skelley, Hi, Jazz-ck. I’m not? Well, someone had better tell that to the tourists on their to Egypt quick. Except there aren’t any right now, I guess. Wow, I remember that sentence of mine. Not why the hell I wrote it, but … I am indeed determined to locate something that extrudes fun today. You too! ** T, Hi! So-so, yep, I don’t know anyone who’s anything other than so-so who isn’t either lying or in denial. You’re in the UK, yeah, rough. We just got spared re-confinement again last night (they decide on Thursdays over here) happily. Well, happily unless that was the worst decision they ever made. We’ll find out. Aw, your old videos sound really charming. I guess you never put them on YouTube or anything. I’m chuffed that you actually watched the videos. That was my hope, but I thought, ‘Nobody’s gonna click on those things’. So you’re like me, at least in that regard. Hugh five, secret handshake, etc. I might go eat some really crazy looking donuts today, so you might be a seer in your hopes for me. We’ll see. I’m going to hope some form of outrageousness has you targeted in its GPS today. ** Bex Peyton, Hey. Ha ha. No, seriously, Slappy needs to be buried more than 6 feet deep. And maybe under molten lead. Yes, when it’s shareable, do, that will be cool. I have some pretty, err, amusing (?) anecdotes about Mr. Rechy and me, but I’ll save for when you and I have a coffee someday. Awesome Friday somehow! ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Ah, well, … Everyone, Mr. Erickson kindly requests your attention for no doubt very good reasons and thusly: ‘Here’s “Clean Before the Kill,” my latest bid to soundtrack a VOD HALLOWEEN ripoff.’ Hm, I’ll find the Timbah thing. Well, I’ll follow your link, I mean, since it’s already found. Ventriloquism has existed in porn that I’ve seen in extremely rare instances, and it always seemed seemed like a very bad idea. Is ‘Chill Out’ sans all its samples really ‘Chill Out’? I have the original pre-censored vinyl of it back in LA, which doesn’t do either of us any good, I realise. ** Okay. I’m quite a fan of sound/noise art, as I think many of you reading this are well aware, and today I present the 5th iteration of sound/noise art/artists that I’ve decided you should know about. Try them. They’ll reward you. See you tomorrow.
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