Month: July 2012

The Sound (and Sound Application) of Video Art (MP3)

Peter Campus and Douglas Gordon in conversation

/ By Marc Weidenbaum


The Tate Modern’s interview featuring artists Peter Campus and Douglas Gordon, as moderated by former Whitney Museum of American Art director David A. Ross, is focused on their video work, but it serves wider-ranging consideration and application (MP3). As Ross says early on, it’s almost unseemly to simply refer to them simply as video artists, because to do so seems to unintentionally but firmly subjugate their work as some sort of subset, or offshoot, instead of as artworks whose elected medium was simply defined by the projects they desired to implement, the questions they wished to probe. This is a situation not unlike that of “sound art” — it often seems like “sound arts” is a more applicable term, much as feminists rightly speak of “feminisms” lest they unintentionally feed the impression of a unified collective point of view, or better yet of “sound in art.”

[audio:http://static.tate.org.uk/1/onlineevents/podcast/mp3/2008_04_17DouglasGordon.mp3|titles=”Tate Modern Discussion”|artists=Peter Campus and Douglas Gordon]

In any case, the Tate interview, which dates from April 2008 but only recently popped up in the museum’s RSS feed, is quite thought-provoking, especially Campus’ depiction of early interactive work, and Gordon’s thoughts on matters of slowing down pre-existing media (this is the artist who created 24 Hour Psycho). And those listeners hoping for a touch of the purely sonic will appreciate a moment when Gordon aims to characterize the sound of Campus’ studio, the sound inside Campus’ head; he does this by intoning a wordless hum that he modulates incrementally up and down.

Track originally posted for download at tate.org.uk. (Image up top of 24 Hour Psycho from cbc.ca.)

sound.tumblr.com

A new lightly annotated outboard-brain link-blog Disquiet.com side project

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

In association with the 15-week class that I’m teaching this fall at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, “Sounds of Brands / Brands of Sounds,” I’ve started a new Tumblr side-blog project, a lightly annotated outboard brain of links associated with the topics that are core to the class: the use of sound in marketing and advertising, the marketing and advertising of sound-related brands, sound design in consumer products, and music licensing, among other things.

I may collate and/or cross-post some of those pieces here, but in the meanwhile, you can follow it all at sound.tumblr.com.

Initial posts include the presence of sound design at the London Design Festival this year (developed by Arup, with audio by Squarepusher and Jana Winderen, among others), consideration of the purchase of Mog by Dr. Dre’s Beats, the work Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) did on an alarm clock for Philips, and the use of Roland 808 imagery by Nokia to tease a forthcoming smartphone.

Disquiet Junto Project 0027: Texting

The Assignment: Make a track by turning the instructions text into sound.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday evening at the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership to the Junto is open: just join and participate.

This week’s project may blow up in my face, because it may simply prove ineffective — or unnecessarily complicated to put into effect — for some participants. The theme is turning text into sound in a specifically abstract manner. At a technological level, though, it simply may not function for everyone involved. I’m hopeful that it will work, but if nothing else, the project provides solid evidence that the Disquiet Junto is as much a place where I, as founder and moderator, experiment as it is for the musicians who respond to the projects with their own tracks. I’ve said in the past that the goal of the Junto is, at its core, to provide a place where people feel comfortable failing — and that’s as true for me as it is for the participants.

The assignment was made late in the day, California time, on Thursday, July 5, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, July 9, as the deadline. View a search return for all the entries as they are posted: disquiet0027-texting.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto). They appear below translated into six additional languages: French, German, Japanese, and Turkish, courtesy of Éric Legendre, Allan Brugg, Naoyuki Sasanami, and M. Emre Meydan, respectively.

Disquiet Junto Project 0027: Texting

We’re continuing the theme of “creative reuse” this week. In past Disquiet Junto projects we have reworked audio files, and in the process of interpreting a photograph as a graphic score, some participants treated the image file as abstract audio. This week, we’ll be interpreting a text file as sound.

Please copy the instructions to this project and save them as a text file. You will then open that file in one or more pieces of audio-processing software. The resulting sound will serve as the foundation of your track. You can only use the sounds resulting from the text file in the process of making your track. You can manipulate the sounds, and you can use multiple versions that result from different pieces of software, but you cannot add any other sounds.

Deadline: Monday, July 9, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Please keep your track to between 2 and 5 minutes.

Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, please include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0027-texting”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: As always, you don’t have to set your track for download, but it would be preferable.

Linking: When posting the track please include this information:

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

Continue reading “Disquiet Junto Project 0027: Texting”

The Bass as Violin / The String Quartet as Sequencer (MP3)

Listening to Jason Charney's "Ocean Body"

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The string quartet “Ocean Body,” composed by Jason Charney, is by no particular means electronic. Heard in a rendition recorded live by the Fifth House Ensemble at the Ravinia Festival last month, however, it displays numerous elements that make it something of a sonic fellow traveler. There is its modest pace, which posits it in a meditative sphere. There is its grid-like metric system, which aligns it with step sequencers. There is the way it builds steadily, a composition-by-accrual approach that suggests a method not unlike that of the sampler. There is the attention to the texture of the instruments, the violin and viola in particular. And yes, that is violin singular. Beyond its intricate internal maneuvers, which become apparent as the work proceeds, “Ocean Body” has an additional distinguishing characteristic, which is that Charney directs the quartet to replace one of its traditional two violins with a bass, played here by Kyle Wescott. The result is a rich sense of grounding.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/jasoncharney. More on Charney, who participated in several of the early Disquiet Junto projects and who is based in Lawrence, Kansas, at jasoncharney.com. More on Fifth House at fifth-house.com. More on the Ravinia Festival at ravinia.org.

And here, as a bonus, is video of Charney peforming his work “Compass” (for iPhone and Max/MSP) at an Apple Store:

Filmless Film Music (MP3)

Tracking the path of "I'll Leave a Light On" by Slow Dancing Society

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s difficult not to hear Slow Dancing Society‘s “I’ll Leave a Light On” as the score to an unseen film. It at once bears the hallmarks of something traditionally musical — guitar figures, a slowly progressing melodic bed — and yet employs those elements in a manner more driven by atmospheric intent than by anything approximating a song impulse. The guitar parts repeat until they take on rhythmic, percussive purpose, and that underlying bed becomes a wash of sound. As the track progresses, it doesn’t develop melodically as much as it transforms. The opening section becomes a swell that reveals a clanging, anxious, metallic climax, which then begins a slow, extended fade. The track is from the album Laterna Magica, due out August 15 from the Hidden Shoal record label.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/hidden_shoal. More from Slow Dancing Society, aka Drew Sullivan, at slowdancingsociety.bandcamp.com.