tangents / 3 months of 4’33, mic’ing Marfa, three Martinez scores …

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

An overly long list of links collected in recent months:

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from November 8, 2008, through February 8, 2009, guest performers will do John Cage‘s 4’33” each day (except for Wednesdays) at noon “on piano.” The performance series is associated with the exhibit The Art of Participation (sfmoma.org), which runs concurently. The exhibit will feature work by Cage, Lygia Clark, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Jochen Gerz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and Erwin Wurm, among others. … Review of Dia:Beacon exhibit that includes six films by Tacita Dean with Merce Cunningham regarding Cage and 4’33 (nytimes.com):

The 2008 projects of Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA have been announced, among them: composer and trumpeter Dave Douglas working with experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison on the film The History of Gadgetry (“The project will incorporate film with acoustic as well as electronic instrumentation”); composer David Van Tieghem working with choreographer Doug Varone on the dance work Broken Visual Novel; composer Steve Mackey, actor/singer Rinde Eckert, and ensemble Eighth Blackbird on Slide; and Hahn Rowe working with John Jasperse on Thin Man Dance. More details at meetthecomposer.org. … Among the winners of 2008 MacArthur Fellows “Genius” awards are composer and instrument maker Walter Kitundu and music critic Alex Ross (macfound.org). … Review covering four sound-oriented exhibits (and “the shocking power of silence”), including work by Tracey Emin (Scottish National Gallery, through November 9), Richard Hamilton (Inverleith House, ended October 12), Sanford Wurmfeld (Edinburgh College of Art, ended September 5), and the duo of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (Fruitmarket Gallery, ended September 28): guardian.co.uk.

Perhaps the most promising bit of news in the New York magazine coverage of Alanna Heiss leaving the great museum P.S.1 in Queens is that the air conditioning system is due for an overhaul, which means it will no longer risk being louder than the sound art and videos on display (nymag.com). … The Buddha Machine, as a desktop item (zendesk.com). … Website focused on town-encompassing sound-art installation in Marfa, Texas (themarfasessions.wordpress.com). … Project noting 100th anniversary of Edvard Grieg‘s death, including work by Steve Roden, Marc Behrens, Natasha Barrett, Bjarne Kvinnsland,  Chris Watson, and Jana Winderen, curated by Jørgen Larsson (sleppet.no, grieg07.com). … Documentation of “Sound Room” installation by Sidney Fels and Sachiyo Takahashi (hct.ece.ubc.ca).

Excellent 2007 interview with sound artist Stephen Vitiello (turbulence.org):

One of my favorite people in the history of contemporary sound art is Terry Fox. He had this piece at the Capp Street Project that was silent but implied sound. It was a big wrecking ball that was suspended back in front of glass, and the idea was that if there was a earthquake it would shake and smash it. I guess I started thinking, ”˜what could I do that would be about sound without having to produce sound?’. I’m by no means the first artist to work with those low frequencies and the moving surfaces, but I just tried to find my own use for them, and very much got involved in responding to the architecture of each site.

Images from Vitiello’s Duets exhibit, which ran at a through August 30: mckunst.com.

Christian Science Monitor interview with Bruce Odland (csmonitor.com):

“What would it be like if we paid attention to the sounds that we make as a culture?” he muses. “We spend all our time shutting it out because, frankly, our soundscape is a total accident ”“ it’s very harsh and very unfriendly to humans.”

Pioneering computer musician Paul Lansky unplugs, gives up computer-based music (nytimes.com):

Basically I’ve said what I’ve had to say. Here I am, 64, and I find myself at what feels like the beginning of a career. I’m interested in writing for real people at this point.

Interview with Antony Hall, maker of sound-art devices, such as the iLog, pictured below (we-make-money-not-art.com):

Option presented to me when I purchased a ticket to see Cluster perform at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco earlier this year:

Yes, please add $2.35 USD to my order to help green my experience. This equates to 1 green ticket(s) @ $2.35 each which offsets approximately 348 lbs. of CO2. (begreennow.com)

How to strip the music from YouTube videos (lifehacker.com). … Forget stock photography. Here’s “stock audio”: audiomicro.com. A buck a minute — “or less.” … How to enjoy an Autechre concert (interimlover.livejournal.com). Rule number one: “Don’t use earplugs.” Rule number six: “Be entertained by the haters.” … What Neanderthals sounded like: engadget.com. Maybe. … A white noise machine for your browser: simplynoise.com. … And for your iPhone: red-sweater.com/shush (via downloadsquad.com). … Suzanne Vega, muse if not mother of the MP3, because her song “Tom’s Diner” was used in early testing of the compression algorithm (nytimes.com, collisiondetection.net). As mentioned in her essay, I’d emphasize that the same song is also important for having served as an early inspiration for grey-market remixes such as Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, since back in 19990 Neal Slateford and Nick Batt, recording as DNA, did an unsolicited dance mix on the a capella song. … BBC news of circa-1951 electronic music (bbc.co.uk, createdigitalmusic.com — thanks to the half dozen people who alerted me to this).

Steam-based synth (engadget.com, musicradar.com). … Music extracted from cassette tape of Apple I BASIC (engadget.com, boingboing.net). … A non-profit arts organization focused on radio and other transmissions: free103point9.org. … Video camera serves as surface-interface for computer-lab DJs (engadget.com). … The sounds of scanning (engadget.com, makezine.com). … Music based on Braun products (from objectifiedfilm.com, the website of film director Gary Hustwit [Objectified, Helvetica] — thanks for the tip, Brian Scott of boondesign.com). … Music for guitar, drums, electroencephalograph (nytimes.com). … This is real, not a summary of a Bruce Sterling short story: African drumming helps in development of whale-avoidance system (collisiondetection.net). … The listening of Neal Stephenson while working on his novel Anathem (nytimes.com). … First Brian Eno, then Robert Fripp, now Police drummer Stewart Copeland, who composed sounds for a BlackBerry (engadget.com, crackberry.com)

Scorekeeper: Michael Bross‘s Oddworld video-game soundtrack made available (music4games.net) … The following all via imdb.com: Not a big surprise, but Charlie Clouser is scoring Saw V. … David Torn did the score for The Wackness, and is now on Linea, La (by Demon Slayer director James Cotten). … Lisa Gerrard scored Romans 12:20, Playing for Charlie, and the kayak documentary Solo, and is working on Samsara by Baraka director (and Koyaanisqatsi cinematographer) Ron Fricke. … Kent Sparling scored this year’s Seventh Moon and is attached to Everything Strange and New. … David Holmes scored Hunger by British artist Steve McQueen. … No surprise that Clint Mansell did the latest from Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler. He’s also attached to The Calling and to a forthcoming sci-fi flick called Moon. … Underutilized Cliff Martinez is on not one but three films in production: Un Simple Espion, The Company Men (by Vice‘s Raul Inglis), and Anyone’s Son (directed by Danny Aiello). … Excellent interview with Gustavo Santaolalla (nytimes.com):

“We are doing contemporary music, music that expresses the urban landscapes of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Obviously tango will be present there. But milonga, candonga, murga”— three other local rhythms — “and rock, hip-hop and electronica are also part of the genetic map of this place”

Grey Market: SpliffHuxtable.com is probably the best MP3 blog fixated on instrumental tracks of hip-hop songs. Recent excellent examples include the string’n’percussion-laden “Reality Check” by Binary Star, produced by Trackazoids (MP3, spliffhuxtable.com), and the warped reggae of Big Pun‘s “Still Not a Player,” produced by Knobody (MP3, spliffhuxtable.com). … And a Federal appeals court has ruled in favor “open source” copyrights (nytimes.com, informationweek.com, lessig.org).

R.I.P.: Composer Donald Erb, 1927-2008  (sofaarome.wordpress.com, cleveland.com/plaindealer, nytimes.com). … Composer Mauricio Kagel, 1931-2008 (guardian.co.uk, nytimes.com). … Artist Bruce Conner, 1933-2008 (earz-mag.com, bbc.co.uk, sfgate.com).

Images of the Week: Act/React in Milwaukee

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Milwaukee Museum of Art is currently hosting an exhibit titled Act/React, curated by George Fifield and dedicated to “intuitive, digitally developed interactive art.” The images below are, in descending order, of Janet Cardiff‘s “In Touch” (1999), a table top that talks when it is “stroked gently,” and “Echo Evolution” (1999) by Liz Phillips. Also represented in the exhibit are artists Brian Knep, Daniel Rozin, Scott Snibbe, and Camille Utterback. Act/React opened on October 4, 2008, and runs through January 11, 2009.

More info at the museum’s website, mam.org/act, and on the exhibit’s blog, mam.org/act/blog.

5 Most Downloaded Free MP3s of September 2008

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a list of the 5 most popular Disquiet Downstream entries on free recommended MP3s from last month, September. They’re listed in descending order:

  1. Composer David Stutz‘s quasi-Gregorian a capella musical accompaniment to Neal Stephenson‘s novel Anathem (disquiet.com).
  2. Two DJ sets by Wobbly (aka Jon Leidecker) of mixes from his appearance at a recent Cluster concert, including a century-spanning collection of music related to birdsong, featuring work by David Tudor, Wendy Carlos, Florian Hecker, Christina Kubisch, and others (disquiet.com).
  3. A release by smohm from the netlabel Hexawe, which focuses on music made on the free audio software Little Pig Tracker (disquiet.com).
  4. Music made on Automaton, a piece of commercial software (from the company Audio Damage) that applies the cellular automata of Conway’s Game of Life to sound. One of the entries, by Kent Williams (aka Chaircrusher), glitch-ifies Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”(disquiet.com).
  5. Closely mic’d eggshells, courtesy of Steve (Subscape Annex) Burnett  (disquiet.com).

Quote of the Week: Gristle in the Gallery

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is Rachel Carvosso writing on the exhibit Yokohama Triennale 2008: Cerith Wyn Evans and Throbbing Gristle, currently at Shinko Pier in Yokohama, Japan, and running through November 30, 2008.

Through the use of sound both an internalized space of hearing and an external one related to the body and its position in the installation is created. There is a sense of an absent performer but of what kind one cannot be entirely sure. As we listen, our faces reflected in the mirrored surfaces, others look on and we become the performers. We are left to ponder the sense of sounds as an attempt to communicate that which is precisely non communicable. We can view ourselves in the mirrored surfaces but we cannot reach a definitive conclusion about what it all means; instead, this work encourages us simply to slow down and change our perception of space, sound and time.

Read the full review at tokyoartbeat.com. More details at yokohamatriennale.jp. Below is a photo, borrowed from Carvosso’s review, taken at the exhibit:

Pavel Büchler Audience Mashup MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

About a year back, I mentioned in this space an album (and related MP3) by Christopher DeLaurenti (disquiet.com) consisting of field recordings made at classical music concerts before or between performances. As the Resonance FM website earlier this week noted (resonancefm.com), a solid precursor to DeLaurenti’s effort exists in the work of Pavel Büchler, whose album Live compiles the sound of audiences excerpted from the artist’s collection of live recordings of concerts (reportedly jazz concerts, though I could swear I hear Stevie Ray Vaughan in there).

That collection consisted of 351 albums, and thus 351 became the number of limited-edition copies of Büchler’s Live committed to vinyl. Fortunately for the approximately 6,699,999,649 rest of us currently living on this planet, a Resonance FM podcast back on November 10, 2006, presented Live in full for free download (MP3). The premise of Live is initially off-putting; applause is generally a distracting element in a live recording, probably the second least beloved element after an extended drum solo. The applause is so tied up in the ego of the performer that for the listener it can be the equivalent of watching a slide show of someone’s vacation with too many pictures of them in it. However, the sounds on Live successfully put the performer aside for the moment, and posit the audience front and center, a mass of humanity that, at its best, has the vibrancy of a great musical performance. (The MP3 file of the Resonance FM recording is housed at archive.org.)

The images below are from two others of Büchler’s sound-related works: an Istanbul installation titled “The Castle” (2005) featuring speakers designed by Guglielmo Marconi, and the gallery installation of a work similar to Live, the piece “3’34” (2006), a recording comprised of the sounds between tracks on 10 vinyl recordings of music by John Cage.

More on Büchler at the website of Manchester Metropolitan University (artdes.mmu.ac.uk), where is is a Research Professor.