| Projects | |||
| Presence |
A talk about the act of listening, particularly locating sound as a spatial concern. Joining us in the discussion are curator Cecilia Wee, and three of the exhibiting artists, Lawrence Upton, Dawn Scarfe and Tom Slater. The title of the talk is taken from Brandon Labelle's analysis of auditory life and sound culture in Acoustic Territories.
The talk takes place at the James Taylor Gallery at 4:30pm on Saturday the 5th November (map).
Free Entry. More at C&R.
Atmospheres: Györgi Ligeti. Title: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
John Whitney, Matrix III (1972), Music by Terry Riley
Klaus Röder's Kristallisationen are a great example of morphogenetic composition. Inspired by crystal growth, Röder attempted to grow sound particles around germ cells to create sound crystals. He constructed his own analogue synths and obsessively scored his pieces, photographs of which accompany this vinyl release, which you can pick up at Second Layer in Highgate. His work dates back to the mid-70s (he's credited on Autobahn) and he's still active today. You can listen to three decades' worth of electronic composition (including the 9 Kristallisationen) on the Klaus Röder website.
The new Cacao record, Permutopia, is now available via our own imprint, stdio. This one is mainly found sound - tape loops, turntable manipulations & field recordings. It's based on a variety of utopian visions. There's a physical release coming, we're just finalising the artwork.
The purpose of the imprint is to allow us to publish a variety of digital and physical artefacts authored by us & our friends. So there will be more things coming, not just sound works.
Tropical Malady (2004) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. A truly breathtaking two hours of sights and sounds.
Mortal Engine, sound by Ben Frost (found via Matt Pyke).
Things To Come (1936) looks at what would have happened if a World War in the 20th Century had lasted three decades, folks built underground cities and space guns became popular. The chaps in the photo are loading the Gas of Peace into a bomber. Based on an H. G. Wells novel.
Who wants to cuddle Charles the hardest? Let Edwige and Alberte fight it out.
The film (re-)discovery of the year for me - Bresson's The Devil, Probably (clip). Not knowing whether you want to lamp Charles in the chops or embrace him is half the fun (and a mark of its complexity). It's got such a memorable tone and remarkable performances that it left a big impression second time around - especially the church scenes. It's still my favourite suicide film ahead of Taste of Cherry and Japon. Other films I stumbled across this year: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's mesmerizing Syndromes & A Century, Carlos Reygadas' breathtaking Mexican Mennonite film Silent Light, the totally wonderful Zizek! (clip) and one of the only good biogs I've ever seen - Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (clip) as well as UK screenings of Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema (clip) and Marker's A Grin Without a Cat (clip); both epic in length, scope and purpose and well worth the wait.
Tropism VI is our last audio piece in the Tropisms project, which started out with a re-reading of Nathalie Sarraute's 1939 collection of mini-essays of the same name. I leave you with this excerpt from her piece, Tropism I,
They seemed to spring up from nowhere, blossoming out in the slightly moist tepidity of the air, they flowed gently along as though they were seeping from the walls, the boxed trees, the benches, the dirty sidewalks, the public squares.They stretched out in long, dark clusters between the dead house-fronts. Now and then, before the shop windows, they formed more compact, motionless little knots, giving rise to occasional eddies, slight cloggings...
Jodi Cave - For Myria (Two) / 15 questions to Jodi Cave
György Ligeti, like Mallarme and Debussy before him, seemed to effortlessly flit in and out of his contemporary landscape. A Hungarian Jew that evaded the Nazis countless times, his stuff still sounds absolutely modern. Atmospheres and Lontano are two of my favourite scores of the twentieth century. If you have the chance to see them performed, don't miss it.
Music may yet be unborn. Perhaps no music has ever been written or heard. Perhaps the birth of art will take place at the moment in which the last man who is willing to make a living out of art is gone and gone forever.
Charles Ives, Essays before a Sonata (1920)
32 Postcards is a Cacao audiovisual work which we performed live at the Placard Headphones Festival held at Cafe Oto and again at the Sassoon Gallery. There's an online version now available - watch it here.
Jan (Microstoria, Mouse on Mars) created an artificial listening site at the Cubitt Gallery in Angel, known simply as the 'noise room'. You could sit and listen to 8 hours of sound created especially for the 5.1 sound system. The full program includes folks like Keith Fullerton Whitman, Kevin Blechdom, Lee Ranaldo and David Grubbs. I visited it yesterday (final day) and it was pretty great.
I'm hoping the full program will be published in some kind of format too.
Cacao was a last minute addition to a bill at the Sassoon Gallery in Peckham last night, supporting Janek Schaefer and Yuri Suzuki. It was only our second live show - I'll be putting the audio and visuals online soon.
Yuri played his prepared turntable - a custom made dubplate played with portable styli (video). It was top. Go check out some of his other work at Yuri's website.
Len Lye, Swinging the Lambeth Walk, 1940
I've long been a fan of Len Lye's work. Lye was a member of the GPO film unit, whose landmark work was the wonderful soviet-influenced Night Mail (The GPO Film Unit was part of the Post Office). The GPO Film Unit collected works are available on DVD.
Lye's technique often involved painting directly onto celluloid. Full filmography.
Stumbled across a double DVD of Kenneth Anger's films (part 1, part 2). Totally great.
Klaus Schulze has released more records than is probably good for him (40+), but 'Synthasy' on side 2 of 'Dig It' is great. I couldn't find it online, but I managed to find 'Nowhere Now Here' from his porn film soundtrack, Body Love (1976).
I've been a big Akiko Yano fan ever since John came back from Tokyo and dropped Sleep On My Baby in my lap (thanks John). Lately she's been doing lots of hushed solo piano work, like Piano Nightly. Let's not mention her ex shall we - she's ace in her own right.
Dr. L. Subramaniam is just great. Particularly the pieces where the Western classical tradition goes completely out of sight, like in these three ragas for solo violin.
Butoh 'weakened body' performance from Tatsumi Hijikata.
Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo is one of the most memorable pieces of cinema I've ever seen. I just saw it for a second time, and what strikes me most is the soundtrack. The contrast of Bach's choral piece, St.Matthew's Passion, with Odetta's A Motherless Child and the mind-blowing excerpts of Missa Luba, combined with the cinematographic style literally make the film. Missa Luba is a Congolese take on Latin Mass, in which a choir underlays a solo voice - here's some recordings and notes on the compositions (gourd shaking is vital). The actual piece that Pasolini uses throughout the film is a child choir performance of 'Gloria', in particular the latter stages. If you haven't seen the film, you're missing out on the best biopic ever created.
Last night the Tate Modern screened works of early computer art for free in the Turbine Hall. It was a great setting and a superb screening, which included work by Lilian Schwartz and Denys Irving (full listing here). Amongst them was Two Space by Larry Cuba. I can't find it online but the excerpt above gives you a feeling for Cuba's work. All the pieces were a tribute to the use of technological constraints as a creative driving force. I'm hoping more of this early work is published on DVD format at some point.
Popol Vuh - Aguirre. Soundtrack to Herzog's great film of the same name. Recently remixed by Hecker & Haswell.
Arthur Russell - Another Thought (Keeping Up)
The second release in our series of Tropisms is now available as a high quality download. This one contains the next three Tropisms. Download it here.
Above: Spread from 'Tokyo and my Daughter'. Below: Images from 'Tokyo Suburbia'
Takashi Homma is a japanese photographer. I really like 'Tokyo And My Daughter' and 'Tokyo Suburbia'. He's about to publish a volume which aggregates a selection of his work on Tokyo to date.
Sennett describes craftsmanship as "an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake". It's a great topic, which has come to my mind a lot with respect to software design. I have always viewed programming as a craft, amongst other things. There are reviews from The Times & The Guardian. I've ordered my copy. Grab yours.
'Tropisms' is the latest Cacao release. It contains the first two tropisms in a series which will be released in parts. The tropisms are sonic versions of Nathalie Sarraute's interpretation of the term, exemplified in her literary work of the same name (more). You can download the artwork & release in full.
No synthesizers were used.
Zimmer is one of our custom-made max/msp instruments which we use in Cacao. Click the image for a full-size version.
Gui Boratto / Chromophobia
Another remix from The Field on this one. Axel Willner keeps a distinctive, simple style through all of his production work. I admire the consistency.
Wild Combination: A portrait of Arthur Russell is screening in Berlin in Feb 2008 and then hopefully the rest of the world. Here's a video teaser. Don't miss.
The only film about me I like
- Rem Koolhaas, on the cover of Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect (DVD) by Markus Heidingfelder. It's a good watch.
I'm keeping up.
Cacao's second release — Sonatas For VHS — is now available. You can listen to any track in full or download the entire release (including artwork) on the Cacao page. Sonatas For VHS is a re-working of Franz Schubert's last three piano sonatas, which were written just months before his death at the age of 31. Our field recordings come from Melissi & Rotterdam this time around.
Yamantaka Eye conducts 77 drummers at BoaDrum77 on 07/07/07. Find out more.
Carsten Nicolai processes muzak culled from hotels, airports & in-flight airline programs in xerrox.
Afterwards you might want to check this compilation of italodisco artwork, design and paraphernalia (Youtube link).
"I'm very careful when crossing the road... I think of the accident before it happens"
- Jean-Luc Godard, '2 or 3 things I know about her'
Fatcat have recently released a compilation of Brighton-based Semiconductor's audiovisual work on DVD, and I must say it's great. I particularly like the 'Microclimates' piece, in which real landscapes are subtly altered. You may have seen a number of these pieces before, but it's well worth the compilation. More here.
Those who've been following the story will know i had my last analogue camera stolen at gunpoint on the streets of Caracas, Venezuela. I've been digital ever since, but recently started hankering for printable media again. Should have snapped the Horizon Kompakt with a 120 degree lens but i want to blow these up, so opted for the medium format Holga. Both are from lomo.
On a photography tip, i recently picked up David Robinson's excellent series on themed landscapes (shot with a Horizon?), entitled Wonderland. Here's a shot from that collection:
For further reading on the subject try Baudrillard's America - in particular his fascination with Disneyworld.
Robinson's also documented the lea valley, pre Olympic Games.
I'm joining social music service last.fm as a full-time developer in a couple of weeks over at their new office in old st (it still looks like a mess - story + pics). As those who know me will confirm, i have views on social software and how culture can suck less under new classification, distribution and publishing models, so i'm really looking forward to getting stuck into moderation strategies, web services, folksonomy and data mining. Particularly psyched to find individuals i respect (e.g. Joi Ito) among the investors.
It should be a tremendous year for last.fm. Hopefully i can play my part in that.
Hard to think one company could come up with design excellence like my old handycam as well as design crimes such as the jewel case (what an environmentally damaging design, aside from its aesthetic and functional problems), all in one decade.
I have a phobia of jewel cases. I had to encode all my CD's to digital format just so i could throw them away.
This handycam features a single battery pack that plugs into the 8mm tape player, the camera and the battery charger as well. That's modular design. The whole kit comes in a metal handycam briefcase. Testament to what was arguably a golden age in technology product design.
Still works to this day (more than 20 years of use). Try saying that of your Sony Cybershot in 2026.
In the process of archiving and digitizing analog tape loops from work i had done in 1982, I discovered some wonderful pastoral pieces I had forgotten about[...] with excitement i began recording the first one to cd[...] To my shock and surprise, I soon realized that the tape loop itself was disintegrating[...] the iron oxide particles were gradually turning to dust and dropping into the tape machine, leaving bare plastic spots on the tape[...] i was recording the death of this sweeping melody[...] it was very emotional for me, and mystical as well[...] on September 11th I was on my roof in Brooklyn, less than 1 mile from the World Trade Center[...] We saw those towering structures fall before our very eyes[...] We were apalled[...] We sat on the roof terrace on lawn chairs and watched the fires burning all day into night with the Disintegration Loops playing in the background...
- William Basinski, Liner Notes, Disintegration Loops I-IV
William Basinski's 'Disintegration Loops' recordings are a tribute to analog media's temporality; to its ability to invoke human nostalgia. You will not find a better example in the audioture of the 20th century of how memory embeds itself in media and vice versa. Listening in is a shattering experience.
William can post his recordings out to you direct, check his releases page. Here's a pitchfork review if you like that sort of thing.
