Lateral Addition aspires to enrich dialogues among contemporary practices in sound — improvisation, computer music, “sound art,” etc. — and other areas of current media and visual art. In order to nurture the growth of these connections, it serves to further elucidate the often esoteric methodologies and thoughts of artists working with sound through original audio material.
Established in 2013, Lateral Addition releases sets of 4 audio and text contributions from an international roster of artists and writers on a bi-yearly schedule.
Lateral Addition on Library Stack
Remote Viewing (2019 - 2021)
Edited by Eric Laska / email
Program
Preludes, I-IV (0:00-2:56)
I. Prelude I
II. Prelude I
III. Prelude I
IV. Prelude I
Fantasia 1 & 2 (2:57-4:31)
Toccata, I-II (4:32-7:22)
I. “Standard-speed”
II. “Half-speed”
Fretless piano three hands (7:23-10:06)
Fretless piano eight hands (10:07-11:32)
Tuning break
Finale (selected variations) (12:32-14:13)
Performance and composition by Sam Sfirri.
Recorded Summer 2020 and Spring 2021, composed Fall 2021.
Mastered by Taku Unami.
Sam plays a Crown grand piano (150cm) with Capo D’Astro Bar and uses a Marantz PMD221.
Recent piano work by Sam Sfirri on the Madacy Jazz label:
I have been carrying pocket journal notebooks with me for a few years. Plain layout, never spiral, soft cardboard cover. Reading across them I revisit situations, occurrences and thoughts from specific moments back in time. Through what I had written down then, I can see where I was and when, who I was, what there was; and how it all resonates with my current being. But the value of the journals lies in what they enable directly: to experience time and space through a particular level of attention that unfolds certain aspects of reality. As in listening. I go to a cafe and write down whatever comes to my mind, whatever goes through my ears, whatever calls out my perception in a certain moment. I sit down, and I wait. Then something turns on, a detail. In my memory or in situ.
Attention highlights the continuity between the parts, and discreet elements appear together as a whole. Or is it rather that there’s only one single essence with infinite variations and infinite reappearances? Revisiting the journals, I noticed remarkable connections between something happening at a time in a specific place, and something else taking place a few months later, in a different town. In one of the notebooks there’s a list:
1/ Hotel in 2ème arrondissement, fire alarm. [4, 9, 10]
2/ 13 rue de la Lune. [3, 5, 6, 7, 8]
3/ Calle de la Luna, 14. [2, 5, 6, 7, 8]
4/ Hotel in Madrid, fire alarm. [1, 9, 10]
5/ Someone at the floor landing at the apartment building in Marseille. [2, 3, 6, 7, 8]
6/ Someone at the floor landing at the hotel. [2, 3, 5, 7, 8]
7/ A familiar face at rue des Rosiers in Paris. [3, 2, 8]
8/ The same face at Réformés square in Marseille. [3, 2, 7]
9/ Fire on the side of the road while driving towards Sainte-Victoire. [1, 4, 10]
10/ Fire around Marseille. Red sky. Smoke and ashes in the air for a week. [1, 4, 9]
11/ A musician’s house. [12, 13]
12/ Take away food on Ralph Av. [11, 13]
13/ A photo. [11, 12]
Same elements, different contexts.
As if, as we change, we keep our gaze directed towards the same thing.
There’s a level of experience that slips away from linguistic convention, and that belongs to the unnamed territory of intuition and acceptance. When encapsulated into words, the experienced material becomes something else. It gets reduced. Fades away.
Through the lines I can see something that I cannot name.
By a sequence of events, the last three numbers on the list resulted in a translucent spherical polyhedron ending up in my hands. If set at the right angle, when rays of light go through it, their colour spectrum is revealed and projected on walls and any other surfaces around. One can also look through it and see a multifaceted vision of the world. It came with a name: “present ball”.
My thoughts combined into an object.
There are also pitches and frequencies written down throughout the pages of the notebooks, as well as descriptions of sounds. I went through recordings and materials that I have collected mostly this year. Along with some of the frequencies from the notebooks, I assigned a sound to each element of the list. And then made combinations following the numbers from the list.
The piece that follows is a reading of the journals, where reading is listening, and not decoding. It’s also a method to avoid human agency in the compositional process, and instead, let the inscrutable logic of the facts be the organisational factor.
- CdA
Northampton, MA
One afternoon in May 2021, amidst rising temperatures and vaccination rates, I went to Child’s Park with my wav recorder. That week, I was feeling stuck and unsure of what to do with my free time and creative projects. I chose the park because it was a place where activity concentrated, which I had noticed during my frequent visits there that spring. Individual people and groups posted up on the grass at sufficient distances from each other to afford some sense of safety, comfort, and privacy, values which everyone’s body language and choice of grassy spot seemed to assert. However, the intention to perceive or even participate in an interaction was also an implication of our choice to visit a public park. Located inside a triangle created by two relatively busy streets and one somewhat busy one, there was plenty to hear. I went to the park feeling open to an encounter.
I am interested in the impulse to document a particular time and place, the special sausage casing that a recording creates around the events that fill it*, and the independence (but not complete separateness) of the recording from the intentions of any of the actors documented within it, including the recordist.
Field recordings are often situations in which multiple actors who don’t share the same goal co-create a work together. This encompasses a huge ethical range. Sometimes, these misalignments, conflicting goals, and power struggles are audible in the recording.
I am attracted to field recording because of its potential for openness, within very strict boundaries of time and space. Openness to coincidence; the result is not (cannot be?) predetermined. I want to treat turning on the wav recorder as a welcoming gesture.
There’s also a certain honesty that recording affords, which draws me to it. The recording is really what happened to the microphone. You’ll have to decide whether or not to trust me when I say I didn’t edit it at all. It feels vulnerable, and I’m honored to share that with you.
- SS
* Gabi Losoncy, Security Besides Love Part II (2017). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDDMqvGNN4A
These little piano pieces are a selection of 27 of a large catalog of similar fragments that I have been collecting over the past couple of years. In January of 2020, I started to go through hundreds of hours I had amassed of mostly useless recordings of myself playing piano since I was a teenager. I was looking for bits of interesting music in this mass of recordings, which mostly consisted of learning simple songs or some rudimentary and often pretty silly improvisations. I have never really considered myself a piano player and these recordings document the large part of my time spent at the keyboard. Around this time my computer also crashed, and when I recovered what I could, my pirated version of Ableton Live from 2008 no longer worked, so I begrudgingly started using Logic Pro (also pirated) to do music and audio stuff on my computer. I continued listening through these long recordings, cutting out little gestures that were mysterious or compelling for whatever reason. When the coronavirus lockdown began a couple months later, this became the only kind of musical attention I could sustain, and I spent a lot of long nights listening and collecting.
I guess in Ableton, when you drag the right side of a clipped segment of an audio file to the right, the segment extends with the original audio, so you’d hear what came after the clip in the original recording. But in Logic, or at least whatever setting I had it on, dragging the right side of a clip in the same way just loops the clip. This seems very unhelpful, except for that the first time I stumbled upon this, it so happened that the clip was one of these little 15-second piano segments, and the final chord or sonority transitioned to the first in a way that made me hear the entire passage as an interesting phrase or semi-full idea. The idea stayed interesting to listen to for about three or four repetitions, and then started to feel overly mechanical. For the first time in listening to these recordings, it felt like there was something with at least a vague sense of musicality. So this became my way of working through everything: over the past couple of years have listened back to (I think) all of the long recordings and have made a hundred or so of these little ideas that repeat a few times and usually last around one minute, identifying each of the fragments with the letter ‘e’ at the beginning of the file name, which doesn’t stand for anything.
But still, I don’t really know what these are or why I like them. One thing is that I like listening to these long recordings with an ear towards finding these repeatable semi-ideas from the sheer continuity of a mostly-unconscious improvisation. And then, having found something, figuring out how long the idea wants to be before it’s repeated, a natural cadence point, the relationship between that point and the “beginning” of the idea, and, secondarily, how many times it can be repeated before it starts to feel very loopy and mechanical. Some of the little fragments I am actually kind of impressed by, and it makes no sense that they actually came out of me, especially because I have no memory of playing any of these. Being much more “musical” than a lot of the “music” I’ve been interested in making over the past few years, this process has been a nice way to remember that I do really love “musical” music, making it and listening to it and thinking about it. This has also given me the chance to spend a bunch of time transcribing some of the fragments. Transcription was one of my earliest ways to love music, transcribing drum parts to Smashing Pumpkins songs when I was a kid or saxophone solos and choral music as I got older. It turns out that I still get a lot of joy out of listening to tiny slivers of music over and over and over again.
Through transcription, it’s also been interesting to notice what’s happening in these fragments musically that might have made them catch my ear. As you’ll see if you check out the transcriptions shared here, most of these are based in some kind of modal exploration of three scales that involve five black keys on the keyboard: Db major, B major, and F# major. This is pretty obvious, I guess, but because I’m not a pianist, playing around in these three modes allows me to think about the movement of voices, textures, and rhythmic interest between the hands while mostly constraining the modal possibilities because my hands sort of know where to be. So, because of the mostly frictionless feel of modal movement between, say a Gb Lydian space and a Db major space, the interest in a lot of these fragments might come from a single fortuitously placed chromatic tone. In a short idea where Db major is the center of gravity a single D-natural, maybe as part of a Bb major leading to an Eb minor, can provide what minimal harmonic density to make the idea feel like more than just twinkling, consonant gladness. Of course, all of these descriptions are coming much after the fact: none of these fragments appeared as themselves while I was playing through, and that hypothetical D-natural might as well have been a slip of the finger.
Listening to this stuff with a wide frame of hindsight also allows me to hear a kind of ghostly trace of all the piano music that I’ve been interested in learning to play over the past ten years. This is all quite amateurish hacking, but there are a few of these “e”s from I think around 2018, when I was plucking through some Bach two- and three-voice keyboard pieces. I can hear these somewhat baroque-sounding gestures (trills and certain kinds of arpeggios) in some of the fragments here, albeit filtered through hands that can only approximate them as gestures anyways. And there are a few from when I was checking out a bunch of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk transcriptions, although I don’t think that comes through in my playing. And there’s a bunch from a period of obsession with Brahms, which was sparked by reading something that described this one particular chord in a late piano intermezzo of his as some kind of “consolation” for having a basically unsatisfying life. After reading that, I spent a year or so learning that intermezzo, either because I thought that idea was bullshit or because I too wanted some consolation. Anyways, if that influence shows up at all, it’s in the more recent segments (not that they’re in order here) where the two hands are playing in a woozy 2:3 pattern and the right hand is doing these diatonic sixths in whatever key: for example, “ej 0621 10.” I guess the most obvious trace-influence is Satie, whose music was how I learned piano in the first place, starting at age seventeen. I’d want to say that the influence is from his later repetitive étude-like absurdist pieces rather than the saccharine earlier music that he’s more well-known for (maybe “e” stands for étude?). But then again I guess these “e”s are also a bit saccharine in their own way. That’s fine.
I’m happy to share these in this way, all laid out and kind of unmusically over-described, as is my preference. I still have vague ideas about ways for these specimens to come to life somehow: as a source for future collaborations, or arranged for some kind of brass and wind ensemble, or sampled, or used in some other way (feel free). For now though, just a long, neat row of these little shells of possible music in a display case.
- DB
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
[ g, e, i, s, c, t, n, y, n, h, o, l, n, s, n, a, i, h, l, e, t, i, o, o, i, o, t, f, o, h, t, d, r, m, e ]
[ t, o, d, r, o, m, y, i, t, o, i, n, l, h, n, l, s, s, t, h, n, e, i, c, i, o, e, g, e, t, a, h, n, f, o ]
[ f, d, e, a, l, o, t, s, t, n, o, c, h, s, o, i, i, g, o, t, i, l, i, y, h, o, n, n, e, t, h, r, m, n, e ]
[ y, m, i, o, c, t, h, i, e, i, i, h, n, e, o, a, n, t, l, n, o, r, e, s, f, n, t, o, o, s, d, l, g, h, t ]
[ t, o, r, i, s, l, n, g, e, t, h, n, e, e, i, d, f, c, t, n, y, t, m, l, o, o, o, o, i, a, i, n, s, h, h ]
[ i, m, t, r, i, n, i, l, e, h, n, e, n, f, i, l, c, s, t, o, t, o, n, o, y, o, e, a, s, d, h, h, t, o, g ]
[ t, r, o, o, e, o, h, f, n, i, t, n, e, y, t, l, i, e, m, n, h, c, s, s, d, a, i, i, l, t, o, o, h, n, g ]
[ g, y, i, n, h, f, s, i, i, n, t, r, n, i, o, a, l, h, o, n, e, c, s, e, t, o, o, e, h, t, t, m, l, d, o ]
[ h, s, i, l, t, n, t, o, t, i, y, f, c, r, o, g, o, o, t, e, n, i, a, n, n, h, e, m, l, o, d, h, i, e, s ]
[ f, e, t, s, n, o, n, g, i, i, m, c, e, a, h, i, o, y, o, i, o, l, h, t, h, d, t, l, e, o, t, r, n, n, s ]
imdolinsno toiatenf h o iscthe rgtylnh eo
gnmtontsloo i eenh ioteynisc rohaftdilh
taotim oethiho r eoefhs dsiicyngnln otnl
imc totetolfehy tihnrno glnnao hdioessi
int hfoatoenmn eigyrs ioeonit otldhhslc
omlnsy oaegen sicodihhttrtei finlotohn
antlnootciht el ongteo e miyoir ifhssnhd
otiodhagn islynm flethhice t nin ootesor
t hhthdoiytomcoo olfnsiiie n nsrgnlee ta
fee nmihho ntoricion tn theosgtlly osaid
This new work was created for Lateral Addition between March - June 2021 in Berlin using the SuperCollider audio synthesis programming environment, then edited in a timeline. The source is a synthesized ‚siren‘ sound, which was recorded out and loaded into nuPg (New Pulsar Generator*); following manipulation of the sound file, the recorded output was then loaded into a custom-coded granular synthesis instrument for further transformation before finally entering the timeline. All material in the composition was generated from a single audio file.
On the macro-compositional level, heteronomy is the condition of all things presents alternations of sections and materials in an evolving manner, working with time proportions and repetition to both organise a sense of rhythm and to support processes of aural definition and retention, and more broadly to align with the artists’ pursuits into understanding the extent to which external forces create our notions of self.
* The New Pulsar Generator by Marcin Pietruszewski is based on the original Pulsar Generator from Curtis Roads and Alberto de Campo.Pulsar synthesis is essentially a train of filtered pulses generating signals that emit frequencies in the range between rhythm and tone; these filtered pulses transform sound samples through cross-synthesis. The novel program was originally named after ‘the spinning neutron stars that emit periodic signals in the range of 0.25 Hz to 642 Hz.’- from Microsounds by Curtis Roads (MIT Press, 2001)
Hi Fan Services,
Thanks for getting back to me with regard to performances of the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium. I have not been back to a home game since COVID-19 regulations have changed, and while I’m a big fan of Dieter Ruehle’s organ, I’m glad to hear that on-field performances are back!
With that in mind, I’d like to submit my friend and colleague Caroline Portu for your consideration as a performer of the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium.
I recently met Caroline on the set of a Christmas film near Boston where we were both working as actors, and have since become aware of her tremendous singing ability — especially as it relates to The Star Spangled Banner. I learned that, back home in New England, she frequently sang at sporting events for Boston College (graduated ‘17) and also sang at Fenway Park.
Caroline recently moved to Los Angeles and I think a great introduction to the city, and vice versa, would be to put her skill and expertise to work in the service of our local team, singing the song on the field before a home game.
Would this be possible?
We made the attached recordings as a demonstration. The first file includes a long delay and a slight emulation of a PA — an idea of what Caroline might sound like in the big outdoor space at Dodger Stadium, minus the crowd.
The second version is clean.
Thanks for your consideration, and please let me know if you would like more information or if there is a more specific or appropriate address to send this query.
Go Dodgers!
- TM
vocal performance and editing by Caroline Portu, engineering by Chris McLaughlin
Writing About The Names
A statement
The Names is a new Berlin/Amsterdam collective of creative musicians playing open, yet melodic, pieces in a Cage/Oliveros informed spectrum of improvised strategies and open-ended compositions. Giving homage to the Chicago tradition of AACM music as well as praise to progressive thinking in society, highlighting people such as Angela Davis, Michelle Alexander, Audre Lorde and composers such as Anthony Braxton, Eva-Maria Houben, and George Lewis, whose names, along with the names of band members and friends, have been used as the melodic or structural impetus of each composition.
Shaped by the ideas of critical music, listening and sounding practices, and the position of the post-musical, the group combines playing musical material with reflections on public space, society, and the world of ideas at large. For now, the music revolves around the open-ended compositions and arrangements of Koen Nutters, which serve as a conduit for each member’s personal and musical expressions. Each member, as a composer in their own right, is invited to contribute material to the collective’s repertoire.
That’s easy to say...
Of course name dropping is easy; but maybe this is what it takes for a European, white, cis male with some kind of conscience to dare to even get near what used to be called Jazz music. I am aware. I am cautious to speak. But I won’t be paralyzed by guilt. I am trying to do something right through music, and through community, through society, through being socially conscious without feeling hip about it. And even if I am; I hope something good will come out of it anyway. What I’m saying is: the only way I can engage with this music, this inspiration from my teenage years, is by making it about the originators of this very material. Composing the melodies by taking their names and connecting them to our endeavors to make collective, creative music. Our band: The Names. We are not imitating, perhaps referencing, hopefully mostly being inspired to do our own thing, our own music, our own expression of unity, hope, and creativity. Reflecting on how we would like society to improve itself through our collective engagement in doing what we love to do under fair conditions and making it available for anyone who wants to hear it, in concert halls, streets, squares, squats, anywhere...
Quote
Much propaganda is being done for the view that people are motivated by self-interest, the desire for money or fame or both. This is not true. The majority of people have a definite need to feel that they are serving the community in some way. We need the feeling that we are performing a useful function in society and not just living off society or other individuals in a parasitic way.
Cornelius Cardew - Stockhausen Serves Imperialism pp. 60-61
Quote
“You will notice that I do not use the word ‘jazz’ to speak about my music. However, I like the word ‘jazz,’ It sounds good, it’s a great invention as a term, but I don’t consider myself to be a jazz musician—and I’m in the process of asking myself if I’m even a musician at all.”
Anthony Braxton quoted in George Lewis’s A Power Stronger Than Itself p. 328
Quote
[It] is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.
...the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.
Audre Lorde - Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, 1978
Quote
“Sonic agency is expounded upon as a means for enabling new conceptualizations of the public sphere and expressions of emancipatory practices - to consider how particular subjects and bodies, individuals and collectivities creatively negotiate systems of domination, gaining momentum and guidance through listening and being heard, sounding and unsounding particular acoustics of assembly and resistance.
Brandon Labelle - Sonic Agency p. 4
Wants and interests
I wanted to give musicians a starting point for getting together. As a band, as a creative unit. Not just the fact that we live in the same city, not just outlines of finished products to (re)create, not fully formed ideas to actualize. But potential in its purest form. Then, when the pandemic hit, I was in Amsterdam. Rehearsing with more than 2 people was out of the question, and everyone is always too busy in Amsterdam anyway. Nobody has time to get together for vague promises. So I started an overdub project, like every musician in the world. But to me it was actually creatively very liberating. I found a way to merge my different interests together, the Cagian, semi-independent layering I’ve always been interested in found its way into the dubs. I would ask people to make overdubs just by looking at a rough score, and only perhaps by listening to what was played before. Of course I was clear about what I thought was needed from each particular musician. What kind of playing would work in this context. And it always worked. I mostly just layered it on top, and adjusted the volume a bit from phrase to phrase. Here and there cutting things out. (This last bit of text refers to a set of pieces soon to be released on the label: Editions Verde.)
https://editionsverde.bandcamp.com/
I am interested in playing music with a group of dedicated people willing to spend some time working together to create a language which can be used to communicate intentions and positions to each other in flexible environments and malleable structures.
I am interested in playing music as a sort of code, to communicate with fellow players as well as the audience. Structural and melodic messages that can be accompanied by words, by certain names, sometimes spelling out these messages, sometimes simply adding sonic or metaphorical layers on top of the sonic structures.
I am interested, as a white European cis male to make something clear about my position on the political spectrum. I am saying: I do not agree with fake fascist agitators, and I stand up against racism. I still believe in the social-democracy I grew up in, and I believe in creating a fair and just society. I am willing to give up power, money, and fame for this. And I do not expect to be taken seriously by anyone, not just yet. Maybe one day, and maybe along the way I will inspire some other (white) people and artists to stop being silent about these issues, these issues that need to be addressed in art as well as in life. And perhaps a mixture of the two is what I am trying to conjure up with this project. A way to project a political opinion, a social instruction, without taking away the mystery, wonder, and joy of creativity and art.
Quote
“I have an ambivalent relationship to the term ‘allies’ because when it comes to challenging racism, I think white people should know that they have as much of a stake in purging the society of racism as people who are the immediate targets.”
Angela Davis
A Conversation Between Michelle Alexander & Angela Davis (10/20/17)
Melodic codes
Harmonic messaging, structural roadmaps, names turned into melodies.
Melodies embedded in a flexible, sonic, environment.
At some point I started using a little self-made system that turns the letters of the alphabet into pitch classes. Then I started using it on people’s names. The people that were going to play the pieces. So the pieces were personalized, in a very direct way. They were meant to be played by certain people whose names made up the pitch material. (The last piece I made with this system is called: The names have been changed to protect the innocent.) Then I started to write dedications to people, people that were not necessarily going to play these pieces, using their names to create melodic and harmonic material and naming the pieces using their initials and full names. Early examples of these are AYD (Angela Yvonne Davis), JK (Joseph Kudirka), MA (Michelle Alexander), and QT (Quentin Tolimieri) as well as musicians who influenced me a lot at a younger age like AB (Anthony Braxton), and more recent discoveries like GEL (George E. Lewis) whose book ‘A Power Stronger Than Itself ’ was a major influence on the resurgence of my interest in Afro-centric American experimental music.
A renewed interest in Afro-centric American Experimental Music.
I have developed an interest in 1960’s Jazz harmony as a means to fill in the blanks. Impressionistic harmonic structures rather than serial pointillism. More fitting as a communication of structural whereabouts between musicians. Not excluding pointillism and the atonal but at the same time filling in the gaps between notes by means of scales. Pathways towards recognition and harmonic color consistency between players.
The harmonies and strategies of the mid 60’s Miles Davis quintet was a particular stream of music I analyzed and utilized to create a number of frameworks The Names could operate in.
And not only this kind of harmony, but also the colors of Debussy, the scales of Xenakis, The sudden up and down runs of Lachenmann, the weirdness of Ablinger and Barlow...
Jazz music was a practice of self expression and self determination. I’d like to extend that to a current practice of communication within understood and agreed upon structures by a diverse group of individuals. Both musical and social, giving an example towards the political...
Quote
All music reflects the political lines and embodies the ideas of definite social classes. In composing music the political aspect is of paramount importance. In performance and criticism of music the political aspect is of paramount importance. Every attempt to produce music that is politically progressive shows up more glaringly the necessity for the musicians to integrate with the [people] and support their struggles practically.
(from the introduction to Stockhausen Serves Imperialism)
Feels
I was getting the feeling I needed to fill a large gap in my knowledge of music theory. Something I never had a use for before. Dealing with melodies and modal harmonies...
I went from seconds, sevenths and ninths to a more fourth and fifth based harmony. Logically the next step would be sixths and thirds. And indeed here we are, seconds and thirds form scales. Scales create modes, modes create moods and colors. Seeing harmony not as function but as color. Colors that can shift anywhere, anytime…
I find it interesting to combine Wandelweiser style playing and Ablinger/Cage/Oliveros style concepts with simple major, minor, and altered scales. The results are still abstract and flexible enough to be interesting for the listener, no obvious tonal center, but for the players it becomes much more malleable; controlling the colors as they make decisions on where to go next, and in which octave… (A good example of this is the piece: Song for Angela Davis. Versions of which will be released soon on Editions Verde and KN’s bandcamp)
I like to think of the melodies and the harmony in this project not as a definite structural totality, but as a means for a player to communicate where they are inside of the flexible structure.
Other players can then join them there. Or stay where they are, even if it is a different part of the structure. It is not against the rules to play 2 harmonies on top of each other. It’s all a matter of arranging things, agreeing on a set of circumstances. As such there are no definite rules.
So the idea of variation doesn’t just apply to the melodic structure, but to the structure of the whole idea of the piece. It can fall apart, and be put back together again in a different way. Players can play from different starting points, get stuck at different points, and join each other wherever seems appropriate. There is no fixed structure that is more right than any other structure that is made up on the spot. As long as it can, at certain points, be communicated where one is, it is all good. Even when the message is not always received.
Miles Davis did something like this. On Live Evil he included the Hermeto Pascual pieces. Slow, drawn out melodies, gorgeous harmonies, colors, colors, colors, warped percussion, semi-similar melodies that are hard to tell apart. Are Selim and Nem Um Talvez actually the same piece? Need to revisit them again, and again, impossible to tell from here.
In The Names, the repetition of the melody makes it a geo-musical marker for both the musicians and the listeners. Being familiar with the territory, it is easy to keep track of these markers here and there. Even if they don’t make the kind of sense they do in linear music. We recognize where the other is, maybe we’ll go there too. Going slower and slower it starts to make more and more sense… Maybe the roads don’t connect the same way anymore. But that’s ok. As long as we get there in the end, and towards the end.
Improvising with a melodic guide seems like a more fair way of beating the odds. Four note pitch sets are not as strong as a melody in a harmonic context. Though the clarity of harmonically colored melody notes is intoxicating, overwhelming, too much, and perhaps dangerous stuff. Better be sure to dilute it enough with post-musical strategies; with the structural thinking of Anthony Braxton, or the strategies of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Referring to the liberation of the Cagian layers, different things going on, not necessarily in a one-on-one connection with each other, maybe just a side-ear. Make your decisions based on the structure that is given, not on what the other players are doing at the time. But the material is all matched, it is a given that things will be OK, if your definition of OK, for music, is broad enough to make that happen. This is where the whole thing about post-music comes in. To be OK with an outcome that might not sound like music to some people. Or even like bad music to some people. That’s the tricky thing about moving into areas like melody, where some people think they know how it is supposed to go, how it is supposed to sound. Just listen to the ‘Music for (number)’ series from John Cage, to see how beauty can appear in unknown connections with semi-known material. (Particularly an obscure recording of Music for Three for violin, cello, and piano. Or the recording of Music for Four by the Arditti Quartet. You can hear the same material floating around in there in both renditions.)
- KN
Quote
Paul Berliner's encyclopedic study of the creative process among jazz musicians discusses the use of harmonic sequences or "progressions" as a basis for improvisation. The author asserts that improvisers liken a harmonic sequence or "progression" to "a road map for charting the precise melodic course of a rendition" (Berliner 1994, 71) - remarkably similar to Cage's already cited notion of a performer's function with regard to indeterminate scores as "filling in color where outlines are given." Thus, a strong case could be made for the contention that, just as chance operations can constitute one method for realizing performer indeterminacy, performer indeterminacy may be one method of realizing an improvisation.
George Lewis, Improvised Music After 1950 p. 16
The rehearsal recordings (mastered by Taku Unami)
Along with the track included in this issue of Lateral Addition: ‘AYD (Angela Yvonne Davis)’, the rest of the rehearsal recordings fit for human consumption (3 versions of ‘QT’ and ‘Song for A....’) will be available on Koen Nutters’s bandcamp page.
https://koennutters.bandcamp.com/releases
AYD (Angela Yvonne Davis)
A melody, repeated, in octavated unison, going slower and slower, until it becomes a texture.
A short passage of just plucked bass and guitar, continuing the melody. Then, after a significantly slower rendition of the unison melody, it becomes a swamp, a texture, so slow it’s almost static. But the players can still hear the next notes coming. The melody still works as a roadmap. As a way for players to signal where they are. Or to deviate and create harmony. Everybody at their own pace. Nothing forced. Having heard the melody a few times now the audience is also part of the listening process, of the search for the next thing to play. The slowing down is also a process that helps the group make collective decisions. To take a second to think about a place the piece can go, which we’ve sort of agreed on. Instead of soloistic / solipsistic action, we see a group effort to change the material from one thing to another: a process.
Quote
OC: Normally I begin by composing something that I can have them analyze, I play it with them, then I give them the score. And at the next rehearsal I ask them to show me what they've found and we can go on from there. I do this with my musicians and with my students.
Jacques Derrida interviews Ornette Coleman, 1997
Quote
If working-class people are not in a position of awareness to accept any music in the service of socialism except the inevitable patronage offered by composers like the later Cardew, working in a deliberately simplified and banal idiom, then this is the fault of the processes of exploitation and stultification dealt out by the ruling classes to serve their interest. It is not good enough to assume that people who are expected to make rational and informed political decisions are at the same time incapable of being rational and informed about the culture of their projected society. It is unfortunate that most people are not in a position to come into contact, let alone sympathize, with radical musical ideas.
Richard Barrett - Cornelius Cardew (CCR p. 352)
The Names are: (in alphabetical order, August 2021)
Sara Campos - voice
Seamus Cater - harmonica
Heather Frasch - flute*
Marielle Groven - violin, piano, melodica
Morten Joh - Just Intonation vibraphone
Carina Khorkhordina - trumpet*
Jeroen Kimman - guitar
Koen Nutters - upright bass*
Han-earl Park - guitar*
Gert-Jan Prins - percussion
Germaine Sijstermans - clarinets
Aimée Theriot-Ramos - voice, guitar, cello
Quentin Tolimieri - melodica*
* playing on this version of AYD (Angela Yvonne Davis)
Answer now, the shipping forecast is you, by the Met Office, on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and WA15, on Thursday the 14th of May.
Good morning for girls in Viking.
Since 2014, I have been engaging in a new set of practices that I describe as
site-responsive sonic art. This involves developing technologically-mediated sonic
responses to site through human, material, and environmental considerations.*
Forth Fisher to foggie Fitzroy.
‘Sounding Out Spaces’ looks to theoretical movements within the arts to disrupt
the notion of audience-as-passive-observer or consumer.*
Soul Shannon, Farrell, and fairies turn off the upstairs;
1800 play bingo, just west of Fitzroy. 1010.
Common to the collection of practices that has been developed is the
theme that sound is produced in response to certain perceived or
measured attributes of a particular site. These features may be
acoustic, environmental, historic, and, perhaps, even imagined.†
997 by 1800, Wednesday. Pharaohs. 1022 by same time,
Ferro 994, moving steadily. Stand dissipating, Fastnet.
‘Sounding Out Spaces’ explores how we can use digital means to participate
directly in our environment, leading to novel and inclusive experiences. These
ideas are developed through iterative practice. The series began in 2014 with a
focus on guerrilla performance using portable analogue technologies, and has
evolved to involve, most recently, large-scale public installations.†
6 showers at fast, good dogger.
The temporal and ephemeral nature of such works, formed out of interactions
between participants in a particular scenario, resonates with Small’s idea of
music as something that happens through the negotiations of people with and
within a space. A site-responsive sound art practice both acknowledges and
allows for investigation of these dynamic relationships.‡
Steering southwesterly, 5 Morris Autos;
5 mainly fair, moderate, or good.
In ‘Lucky Dip’ (2015), audience members were offered multiple modes of
participation within the sound-environment field. Taking place during a
busy arts festival that was hosting several site-specific multimedia works,
the piece consisted of live electronic music that could be experienced both
underwater in a large swimming pool, and above the water through
loudspeakers. A total of nine performances took place over the course of
the three-day festival in Phoenix, Arizona.‡
Fitzroy's 56 North–rain in northwest–moderate, or good;
Fitzroy soul 620, perhaps to be a girl.
Sound is always situated socially, culturally, and perceived within a particular space.†
Occasional rain: good, becoming moderate, or poor:
cheap bastard Irish Sea.
Self-built hydrophones were positioned in the pool so that the movement
of participants could be made audible and be further transformed using
digital signal processing. This layering of possible experiences set up
various mutually affecting relationships within the environment and
provided different points of access to the piece.‡
Occasionally Gail–a tin salmon–good, occasionally poor.
A live electronic performance practice demands that the performer be able to
respond to the specificities of a given situation. But rather than attempt to control
the particulars of a performance environment, I suggest that it is fruitful to
embrace the improvisational nature of such work.‡
Gail 80: northeasterly 5; showers–at first good–is pharaoh’s.
‘Sounding Out Spaces’ contributes to cybernetics-driven arts practice through its
modular and portable approach to the development and organisation of hardware
and software components within a network.*
Rising quickly, wake! Northwest 5: intermittent fly drain.
In closed-loop homeostatic systems, changes in state are determined by
variances in the environment. Autopoietic systems, being initially concerned with
the cellular level, but later expanded to deal with the entire nervous system,
determine their activity on internal, rather than external (environmental) factors.
Changes in the external world cause perturbations, yet the organism always acts
upon its own internally-determined rules.*
Situation low-pressure–scented close to Shetland–
will drift East towards Norway, slowly losing its identity.
Working with autopoietic systems makes explicit the role of
environment—or medium—in which the work is undertaken.*
Occasionally gay, late at first, northeast 45th: Berwick-upon-Tweed to Whitby.
These musical systems are necessarily constructed by means of
culturally informed choices of materials, hardware, and importantly
the embodied actions of the artists and other participants involved.*
Good find: Regis to Lands End, including the Isles of Scilly.
Working with adaptive dynamical systems, the goal is to create audible
ecosystems that unfold over time with coherent characteristics which are
determined by their internal structures.†
Terrible three becoming Easterly, then South Easterly later.
As autopoietic systems themselves, humans may be present in the
specific environment, but are not the prime cause of musical activity.*
45–occasionally six later–in far west.
In such cases, the audience is not directed to experience the work
in a particular way, but is invited to explore their own trajectory
through a variety of access points.†
Fur: good.
Some participants chose to lie in the pool and let their ears move in and out of
the water; others preferred to listen purely through air, but were able to hear the
movement of those in the water.‡
Easterly 3 or 4. Southeastern E45, occasionally six-letter in West.
The various implementations of second-order cybernetic ideas lead to new
musical aesthetic experiences, while simultaneously offering alternative modes of
understanding musical activity—as embodied rather than necessarily formalistic.*
St David's Head–including the Bristol Channel–won’t be coming.
The project generates responsive sonic environments that have the potential to
unfold over time in non-random, yet unpredictable and compelling ways.*
1023 Cineworld.
Here, the multisensory experiential modes are not enforced, but are
optional, subtle and dynamic. This exemplifies the link between audience
participation and site-responsiveness: the piece could be performed in
other similar sites, but this type of performance ecosystem affords
participation that gives agency to the listener (through multiple modes of
listening chosen by participants, ability to affect the sound and so on).‡
Rising is the weather forecast for the inshore waters of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, valid for the following 24-hours.
- LSH
* Hayes, L. 2019. Investigating Autopoiesis in Site-Responsive Sonic Art. Interference Journal, 7.
† Hayes, L. and Stein, J. 2018. Desert and Sonic Ecosystems: Incorporating Environmental Factors within Site-Responsive Sonic Art. Applied Sciences, 8(1), 111.
‡ Hayes, L. 2017. From Site-Specific to Site-Responsive: Sound Art Performances as Participatory Milieux. Organised Sound, 22(1). 82-92. Cambridge University Press.
The Shipping Forecast was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, produced by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Tuesday the 12th of May, Wednesday the 13th of May, and Thursday the 14th of May, 2015. Transcribed by dictation.io.
"Untitled discrete arbitrary input functions" is dedicated to my two nieces and my memories of their early-developmental oligodynamic and repetitive cluster-thudding diatony on my father's piano. Unsure if they were intending to annoy my father or merely amuse themselves—or both—the rhythmic qualities of their piano playing as obediently, reflexively gravitational—as if the keyboard were magnetically attracting the undisciplined, quasi-hostile actions of temporarily blithesome children—came to mind when listening back to early drafts of this piece. Upon simul-crashing the piano—in the sense of 'crashing the party' of piano music, a 'crash-course' in piano technique mutated after Ustvolskaya, and literally physically crashing down upon the keyboard—in their mostly harmonically diatonic yet rhythmically microtonal manner they perhaps failed as musicians, but succeeded as composers of a transient form that could not develop beyond its punishing reiteration. I have some sort of memory of trying to stupidly suggest they impute more accidentals into the diatonically-saturated crashings redundantly being spread across registers of the tetrachordal hellscape. But why? To appease my facile 'learned' intuitions of global structural coherence (between, say, rhythm and pitch-class structure)? Probably, given that I'm a dumb bitch with no relationship to children. At the time of this writing, I haven't had any communication with my nieces in years. Why's that, Kieran? Do they even exist? What is this little narrative about your so-called "nieces" plonking down on the keys—some sort of pitifully vain 'domestic anecdote' in-group signaling? Excuse me, sorry, that was my cousin Kaden chiming in to denigrate Me and My Work again.
Q: What is this piece about?
A: Generally, it's about divergent periodic sequences of repeating sets of time-point classes distributed across similarly divergent registral spans. Such divergence is intended to define a global polyphonic texture that maintains structural independence between sequences while simultaneously defining contrast and similarity among them.
Q: That's so abstract, I'm considering petitioning for your cancellation.
A: Fair enough. As one might be able to observe, many of the sequences projected by each 'hand' of the keyboard are repeating sequences. These repeat in order to determine temporal and overall textural definition and distance between adjacent sequences. Thus, while the work is totally polyphonic, each sequence is defined as a texture parametrically non-intersecting—whether that parameter be register, pitch-class structure, or tempo—not only in relation to its antecedent but also the sequence to which it is polyphonically 'simultaneous'. Dissonances are established both through displacement of synchronous downbeats between voices and the structural distance between adjacent sequences within each voice. This is to elide any salient metrical boundaries that might supervene and thus 'condition' how such concurrent sequences are structurally grouped.
Q: How was this piece composed?
A: Quite arbitrarily, as indicated by the title. Each 'hand' of the harpsichord was composed independently. And by composed, I mean improvised on the guitar and converted in real-time to MIDI data. Once one track was performed, another would be performed in the same manner and superimposed. Then each track was significantly edited, primarily to elide unintended artifacts resultant of the voltage-to-MIDI conversion process. Finally, each track i.e. 'hand' was tuned a quarter-tone apart from each other.
FURTHER READING
Johnson, W. M. (1984). Time-Point Sets and Meter. Perspectives of New Music, 23(1), 278-293.
Polansky, L. (1996). Morphological metrics. Journal of New Music Research, 25(4), 289-368.
Tenney, J., & Polansky, L. (1980). Temporal gestalt perception in music. Journal of Music Theory, 24(2), 205-241.
Thomas, M. (2000). Nancarrow's "Temporal Dissonance": Issues of Tempo Proportions, Metric Synchrony, and Rhythmic Strategies. Intégral, 137-180.
Song & Transcription with References
7:47
To decide what to write is a problem of a different order
Part 1: SORT IT ALL OUT AND END UP WITH A SICK OBJECTIVITY
Part 2: ARE YOU RELENTLESS OR UNRELENTING?
Part 3: CRUEL TAXONOMIES
- AS
Like many musicians, I have been particularly interested in the music recording medium and its relationship to live performance. In its history, the format shifted from a document of an actual event (ie. a ‘record’) into an idealized construction.
Through the usage of various reverbs and spatialization, producers construct an artificial sound stage. Like the films of Georges Méliès, the medium places the listener in an idealized position, front and center before the theatrical stage, without the interference of other audience members, environmental sounds, or any hint of the quotidian function of music. Even in the ‘live recording’ (now a necessary distinction between the fictional ‘record’), a fader on the mixing console can reveal the sonic evidence of an audience before quickly diminishing it.
While reverb frequently invokes architecture such as rooms, halls, chambers, cathedrals, etc. (convolution reverb allows for the acoustic modeling of specific real spaces), the presentation still duplicates the modernist orthodoxy of the ‘white cube’: hypothetically without historical or geographical context. In “Room, Chamber, Hall”, reverb is not simply considered as a neutral, physical phenomenon utilized to place sounds on the ‘stage’. What is the significance of augmenting a music performance with the architectural reverberation of a cathedral? Does this space mean something different than a small room?
Accepting the myriad of functions of music outside of an idealized, empty concert hall, “Room, Chamber, Hall” presents its locales with the presence of bodies attending to their physical needs and desires such as eating, dancing, sex, etc..
- WS
PRESENTISM
Within the philosophies of time, three oppositional schools compete: Eternalism describes the phenomenon of time like a strip of film - the past and the future do exist, are real, but the present is merely a human concept. The growing block theory, maybe the most intuitive of the three, states that the present continually creates the past, but the future is unwritten. Presentism on the other hand argues that the only thing irrefutable is the present and that the past and the future are both unreal. By applying these three concepts to music, we may end up with a number of strategies to rethink what we consider as given.
I would like to propose that there has been has been a slow shift in how music was perceived. Improvised music, prior to notation, can be considered as presentistic, manifesting itself only in the present, it’s only traces of existence written in memory. With interpretation and notation, the perception shifts more to a growing block. The mind got a hold of the past, but the future still remained a very unstable realm - once the hand made a mistake with an instrument or the voice was interrupted to catch a breath. Obviously the advent of the recording introduced an absolute future and with it the concept of eternalism in music. Furthermore the introduction of the loop, applied in its most extreme way within techno, embeds the listener in a coherent body of past and future, even with a view of the timeline - first on the record, later on the waveform. A car, racing on the Autobahn, free to move in both directions. Of course, one could argue that the state of ecstasy in which techno is consumed compresses time into a perfect present, the psychological present, which is defined as 2-3 seconds with the equivalent of 1 bar by 120 bpm…
But staying for the moment with the first thought, we can ask the questions: is the loop the defining property of techno? What happens if we remove the certainty of the next kick, eroding the temporal and structural integrity of the genre? Presentism is a project based on one temporal randomised pulse, denying our ability to foresee the next kick and obscuring the possibility to form loops. Yet it upholds timbres and instrument references common to the genre. The aleatoric function acts like an agent of presentism in an eternalist domain. Like improvisation, it has the ability to remove a stable future and at the same time blur the memory by forming insignificant patterns. Intensification usually benefits from a balance between control and the prospect of collapse. The temporal shuffle of techno is the attempted surrender of control of the past and future to the present.
- JAT
collaborative record forthcoming Spring 2021 on Diagonal
In the moment of disaster, the old order no longer exists and people improvise rescues, shelters, and communities. Thereafter, a struggle takes place over whether the old order with all its shortcomings and injustices will be reimposed or a new one, perhaps more oppressive or perhaps more just and free, like a disaster utopia, will arise.
- Rebecca Solnit from A Paradise Built in Hell
2020 is a tectonic shift, a rapidly changing reality of intertwined symbiotic cause and effect events. The precarity of life, health and care, ignored for so long by those wielding political power, are catalyzed front and center by the pandemic. As the fascist U.S government rants about antifascists and calls to sacrifice whole communities to “the economy” -- the distinction between those wearing masks and those who refuse echo within all areas of existence.
A phone call and I am outside. Handing over a paper bag with shields to Tom who is wearing a respirator. Tom and I had never met until that very moment. He is one of over 30 people who came together to make and deliver protective face shields to essential workers.
For two months the soundtrack for many of us was the overlapping howling of sirens on the streets. Each siren -- a life, tied to multiple lives trying to save it.
The sound piece presented here is a full cycle of 3D printers printing frames for protective shields. Four 3D printers printed shield frames for two months 24/7 to meet the immediate need for personal protective equipment in New York; and as time progressed, other states and countries. The continuous chorus of 3D printing frames for protective shields became a song I would hum as I lived with the never ending cycle of rapid prototyping for a rapidly spreading emergency. It became a second layer for the ambulance soundtrack during my time in lockdown. The full cycle lasts just over 5 hours and results in frames for shields donated to essential workers during the height (at the time of writing this on June 14, 2020) of the Covid-19 pandemic.
An invisible transmission of vibrations from matter to matter is present in my installations. Permeating objects, vibrations are amplified and modulate the sound differently depending on the object's materiality; as does the virus --- transmitting through proximity, amplifying, growing and affecting each body differently, depending on their materiality, on their history and prior interaction with the world.
The intangible mutates… altering tangible objects, creating presence, effecting change with an invisible force.
- LD
There are always images
if there are not we imagine them
if they are not outside we seek for them inside
if they are outside we adapt them
There are always images
words are images
sounds become an image
the wind becomes an image
happiness is an image
We wait for them
Do we need them?
They come out on their own
The images that we already have
the ones we recognize
the ones we create from the ones we already have
those that accumulate
dogmatic, hegemonic
those which prevail in history
The world reveals itself through images
images create the world
the image of the world. A spherical blue and green shape floating on a black background
When and how did I get to know that image? Who showed it to me the first time I saw it?
How did the world think before having it?
Does the world exist without it?
and now that I have it, could I forget it?
The world without image
the world without what is thinkable
is the world of the possible
of the contingency
lots of worlds, other orders?
The image of the other
the unknown
the outside
The image of threat?
The images themselves
Perhaps I should leave the question aside
It seems like it's taking us to a familiar place
I invited 9 people to listen to the Hole - a hole more than 8 meters deep located in the courtyard of the industrial building where I live. In order to access it you have to go down a set of emergency stairs.
The hole is a dark cavity
a tunnel towards something that we cannot reach
we don't fit in it
but we want to fit.
The hole is a container
of our own answers
a container of desire
and a place to wait for that desire
We listen to the hole
if it answers our questions
The hole lacks something
that we always want to fill
Infer
Signify
Appropriate
We look at each other
in a black circle
of 10 cm diameter
The Hole, halfway between action and sound installation, is a recording which documents a collective listening session of a hole. The session was held in May 2020 and it tries to explore states of contingency where the self is continually negotiated with the other, experiencing how listening can be determined by expectations, longings, fears and everything that comes from the participants' (and listeners) reading code.
The hole is presented here as the favorable scenario in which one could put into practice a term I’ve dubbed contingent objects, which also gathers some of my latest work where I try to investigate the concept of Alterity from a socio-semiotic perspective. Contingent objects refers to situations which as a practice experiment with how The Self appears in collision with The Other, acting as a force that in advance tends to cancel the possibility of thinking that which does not pass through the conceptual network of representation. Thus, symbolic structures appear as mediating and modeling figures of things in context and above all as legitimizing mechanisms of hegemonic realities and ideologies.
These systems of representation encode the knowledge of the "external" and contemplate in a massive and general way the difference that limits them to a possible and dominant reality. The same image makes the Other become both interior and strange; it also reduces the limit experience of the exterior to contours, lights, shadows, lines, points. In this way, to seek meaning is to impose similarities so that the Other is configured as an instrument in which you seek so that the unknown can be thinkable. The Own provides a mentality, a genealogy, an atmosphere and most importantly allows it to be treated as a phenomenon with regular characteristics, limiting itself to a process of closure or domestication.
The Other, as a synonym for the unknown, the outside, the strange, the Uncertain or the invisible, threatens to destabilize ideological dogmas,whose only possible defense is to project and infer recognizable schemes consistent with the belief system that perceives it. However, the external is revealed as a non-place from which to reflect on the limits of the thinkable, disobedience and the renewal of the Self.
My research, which began in Mexico in 2015, has given rise in my last works to study the hole as a contingency stage, as a pre-sign space in which significance has not yet been imposed,in which to be able to experience the Outside, the non-representable freed from the image or the postulates or on the contrary to dive into the logic of meaning and recognition of the Self.
On the other hand, my work also explores from a more political perspective the excavation as a disturbance, cracking, an anomaly that reveals the impenetrability of institutional structures.
__________________
Siempre hay imágenes
si no hay, las imaginamos
si no están fuera, las buscamos dentro
si están fuera, las adaptamos
Siempre hay imágenes
las palabras son imágenes
los sonidos se vuelven imagen
el viento se vuelve imagen
la felicidad es una imagen
Las esperamos
¿Las necesitamos?
aparecen solas
Las imágenes que ya tenemos
las que reconocemos
las que creamos a partir de las que ya tenemos
las que se acumulan
dogmáticas, hegemónicas
las que prevalecen en la Historia
El mundo se nos revela a través de imágenes
Las imágenes crean el mundo
La imagen del mundo. Una forma esférica azul y verde flotando en un fondo negro.
¿Cuándo y cómo conocí esa imagen? ¿Quién me la enseñó por primera vez?
¿cómo pensaba el mundo antes de tenerla?
¿Existe ese mundo sin ella?
y ahora que la tengo ¿Podría olvidarla?
El mundo sin imagen
el mundo sin lo pensable
es el mundo de los posibles
de la contingencia
muchos mundos ¿Otros órdenes?
Lo imagen de lo Otro
lo desconocido
el afuera
¿La imagen de la amenaza?
Las propias imágenes
Tal vez debería dejar a un lado la pregunta
Parece que nos lleva hacia un lugar conocido
Invité a 9 personas a escuchar el Hoyo, un agujero de más de 8 metros de profundidad que se encuentra en el patio al que conduce las escaleras de emergencia traseras del edificio industrial en el que vivo.
El hoyo es una cavidad oscura
Un túnel hacia algo que no podemos alcanzar
No cabemos.
pero queremos caber.
El hoyo es un contenedor
de nuestras propias respuestas
un contenedor de deseos
un lugar donde esperarlos
Al hoyo lo escuchamos
si responde a nuestras preguntas
Algo le falta al hoyo
que siempre queremos rellenar
Inferir
Significar
Apropiar
Nos miramos
en un círculo negro
de 10 cm de diámetro
El Hoyo, a medio camino entre la acción y la instalación sonora, es una grabación que documenta una sesión de escucha colectiva de un agujero. La sesión se realizó en Mayo de 2020 y trata de explorar estados de contingencia en dónde lo propio es continuamente negociado con lo otro, experimentando cómo la escucha puede estar determinada por las expectativas, los anhelos, los miedos y todo aquello que proviene de los códigos de lectura de los participantes oyentes.
El hoyo, se presenta aquí como el escenario propicio para poner en práctica un término al que ha llamado "contingent objects" y que agrupa a algunos de mis últimos trabajos que tratan, desde una perspectiva socio-semiótica, investigar el concepto de Alteridad. "Contingent objects" hace referencia a situaciones que ponen en práctica cómo Lo propio aparece en la colisión con lo Otro actuando como una fuerza que tiende por anticipado a cancelar la posibilidad de pensar aquello que no pasa por la red conceptual de la representación. Así, aparecen las estructuras simbólicas como figuras mediadoras y modelizantes de las cosas en el contexto y sobre todo como mecanismos legitimadores de las
realidades e ideologías hegemónicas. Estos sistemas de representación codifican el conocimiento de lo “externo” y plantean de forma masiva y general la diferencia que los acota en una realidad posible y dominante. La misma imagen hace que lo Otro se vuelve a la vez interior y extraño, que la experiencia límite de lo de afuera quede reducida a unos contornos, luces, sombras, trazos, puntos. De esta manera, buscar el sentido es imponer semejanzas para que lo Otro se configure como un instrumento al que se acude para que aquello desconocido pueda ser pensable. Lo Propio proporciona una mentalidad, una genealogía, una atmósfera y, lo más importante, permite tratarlo como un fenómeno con unas características regulares, limitándose a un proceso de clausura o de domesticación.
Lo Otro, en tanto sinónimo de lo desconocido, del afuera, lo extraño, lo Incierto o lo invisible amenaza con desestabilizar los dogmas ideológicos y cuya única defensa posible es proyectar e infererir unos esquemas reconocibles coherentes con el sistema de creencias que lo percibe. Sin embargo, lo externo se revela como un no lugar desde donde reflexionar acerca de los límites de lo pensable, la desobediencia y la renovación de lo Propio.
Todo esta investigación, que empezó en México en el año 2015, a dado lugar en mis últimos trabajos a estudiar el hoyo como un estadio de contingencia, como un espacio del pre-signo en el que todavía no se ha impuesto la significación y en el cual poder vivir el Afuera, lo no representable liberado de la imagen o los postulados o por el contrario sumergirse en las lógicas de sentido y reconocimiento de lo Propio.
Por otro lado, mi trabajo también explora desde una perspectiva más política la excavación como perturbación, resquebrajamiento, anomalía que pone de manifiesto el hermetismo de las estructuras institucionales.
- VM
But sounds have been heard in the sky. They have been heard, and it is not possible to destroy the records of them. They have been heard. In their repetitions and regularities of series and intervals, we shall recognize perhaps interpretable language. Columns of clouds, different- colored by sunset, have vibrated to the artillery of other worlds like the strings of a cosmic harp, and I conceive of no buzzing of insects that can forever divert attention from such dramatic reverberations. Language has shone upon the dark parts of the moon: luminous exclamations that have fluttered in the lunar crater Copernicus; the eloquence of the starlike light in Aristarchus; hymns that have been chanted in lights and shades upon Linné; the wilder, luminous music in Plato-
- Charles Fort “New Lands”
Note:
For the past 7 years, under the project Lxv I have attempted to instigate occurrences of apophenia, the “unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness” (K. Conrad); by obscuring language and sounds and taking prerecorded samples and field recordings and processing them in a way to create time distortions and auditory contraptions. If we understand “modern media technology- ever since the invention of film and gramophones- as fundamentally arranged to undermine sensory perception” (F. Kittler) then, if successful, I was just cascading upon a preexisting illusion. I am interested in the idea of pattern recognition in music, and an often thin leash to which a listener may follow deviations from an expected path; presented by such elements as tempo, beat, genre and other given parameters. It is said that rhythm is the one indispensable element of all music. I have a horrible sense of rhythm, maybe its because my ears are crooked on my head, but where exactly is the rhythmic line? Plato's observation is that rhythm is simply “an order of movement”. The sounds presented in this mix represent my own tendencies to seek out, or to recognize patterns, maybe where they are not; in white noise, clicks, interference, in random sound occurrences. The sounds are mostly gathered from my own amateur experiments in the field with VLF and shortwave radios, from electronic interference in my faulty consumer electronics, from exchanging image file data as sound, and from static.
Order of sounds:
Number Station (FDR Park, Philadelphia, tuned by Kira, 4/19/20)
Radio Low Pass (year unknown)
Thunderstorm received by “Tesla” style open tuned crystal radio (Girard Ave. Philadelphia, 9/18/18)
Dual Oscillators Pure data (year unknown)
Realistic Synth (3/20)
Field Recording (Frazeysburg, Ohio, 5/17)
Shit Charger (Year Unknown)
VLF Radio (The Serpent Mound, Ohio, 5/17)
Roland SP808EX (Year Unknown)
VLF Pitched (Year Unknown)
Shortwave, Thunderstorm (4/20)
Shortwave, Bit reduced (3/20)
Unknown JPEG (Year unknown)
Radio Arrangement (3/20)
- DS
A Reader Response Exercise for 10 Participants & GRM Sample Pack
“With some conceptual tools, we will be able to find one or several desirable directions for music without having to obey to the dictatorship of technology. For example, the possibilites [sic] of AI in music is in the air nowadays. Lots of people are talking about it but it’s striking how little we think about what music actually is or should be. How can we have a valid opinion on the new possibility computer sciences offer to us as composers if we don’t think harder about the purpose of music itself? That’s one fascinating topic we are really willing to explore at GRM, in order to find the most relevant path in our R&D and software development, but also as composers and music lovers. Experimenting now is not trying every possible technological tool in order to build new sounds and new music. That was the childhood of experimental music, much needed and exciting, but still a childhood. Experimenting now is trying to find what music still can be in a world where almost everything is reduced to signals and information.” (www.ableton.com)