Shortly before the recent mid-August Disquiet.com break, Daniel Kolb wrote in to express pleasant surprise at the work of sound artist Harold Shellinx. The latter’s “10 Seconds a Day” project had been featured here back in early July of this year. It’s an ongoing series in which Shellinx records and concatenates brief segments of daily field recordings. Turns out that Kolb has been up to the same thing, a habit he has tracked at tensecondsrule.com. Kolb agreed to post for free download the first five minutes of his 2010 compilation at soundcloud.com:
Like Shellinx’s, Kolb’s is a mix of familiar sounds that take on a narrative-like flow during the course of their unfolding: tea kettle, conversation, silence and near-silence, static, alarms, surface noise. They are, as his “rule” (pictured above) suggests, a kind of diary. Not the reflective diary, in which one ponders recent events and thoughts — more the diary as catalog of sonic incidents, ones that might spark memory, or that might surprise with the sort of details that are only noticed after the fact.
More on Kolb, who is based in Buffalo, New York, at tensecondsrule.com, which includes a page specifically related to the influence of John Cage on Kolb’s practice.
Marc, thanks for listening and your interest in the ‘ten second rule’. diquiet is a wonderful site; I’m being exposed to so much great work!
Excellent!
In case you’re interested, my friend, the german guitar/electronics musician Michael Peters (http://michaelpeters.de), did a 10-sec-a-day project in 2000 which he released as “MY2K”: excerpts and info and many of the individual sounds at: http://michaelpeters.de/my2k.htm
Tobias
Tobias, I checked out Michael’s project site. Very cool! “Walking on hard snow” (Dec.29) in Germany sounds exactly the same as it does in Buffalo NY! I plan on ordering Michael’s MY2K disc. Check out tensecondsrule.com, where you can now order the complete year-long recording from 2010. Thanks!