Continuing with the toner thread, I recently found the blatantly semi-local (mere excuse for a JFA ref) Jason Willis Flyer Collection (’81-’06) while searching out resources for giving visual direction to one of our designers on a Nemo project. I actually remember receiving multi-generational copies of these used as stationary for scrawled notes folded into zines during the early eighties.
It seems obvious to mention Bryan Coley, Lydia Lunch and Thurston Moore’s No Wave — a chronicle of the collision of art and punk in the New York underground of 1976 to 1980. No Wave was recently released with an exhibition at KS Art and a Teenage Jesus and The Jerks show at Knitting Factory NYC. Thanks to Rich for the tip on this one.
It’s really weird that I haven’t dug deeper into this subject matter before. Not just here, but generally as well. The sense of nostalgia that arrives while digging through this stuff has little influence on my sense of awe at the impact of the work itself and the signature beauty it continues to maintain.
I remember seeing a couple of light shows as a kid. I think they were at a local library. Certainly (unfortunately) not a Hendrix show. I remember being moderately appreciative. It wasn’t until later, at the right time and state, that I’d get it. I mean, the cross-disciplined, like-minded collaborative tactile effort is inspiring in itself, given the insular state of the work most of us do today— nestled behind our monitors. And the results, so entwined in the act of creation. So directly linked with the chemically agape audience…
OK, so maybe nostalgia does have a part to play.
Regardless, it seems that with few exceptions these performances overshadow any similar projection work that has followed since. This is especially true in regard to the Boyle family. Surely, well known in the old guard of psyche cognoscenti, but new to me — by name at least.
Graphic Design on the Radio was a series of one-hour radio shows broadcast in the summer of 2007 on Resonance FM. The programmes featured interviews with leading graphic designers who talked about their work and played music that inspired or influenced them.
The unchallenged existence of Numbers Stations is a symptom of the somnambulistic state that the worlds educated populations live in. Anything can be done to this population, and no one will notice or react in any way.
—Akin Fernandez
Sometime in 2002, I stumbled into Aquarius Records trolling for some new sounds, when I was immediately drawn to the image on the cover of something called The Conet Project. I didn’t even skim the review before clicking the first sample. I waited for the first track to load with no expectations.
Distant, warbled voices drowned by seven brief tones…interrupted by Swedish Rhapsody being played on an over-amped musicbox…repeat.. repeat…repeat…numbers read by what sounds like a young girl…the musicbox again…repeat…repeat…the girl, more numbers…
By the the time the shortwave distortion took over 2:45 minutes into the track, my attention had shifted toward a singular point of focus and remained there until all the tracks had played out. It’s difficult to describe it any other way. I tried to reassemble what i’d just heard.
Each recording was a like vignette, replete with it’s own signature nuance and voice, but there was something else going on here. Something more than Toshiya Tsunoda meets Kraftwerk. Something utterly captivating and altogether different.
Digging a little deeper I began to understand just what set it apart.
Expand Post (tome, media:8+)*
*includes full download (133.9MB, mp3.zip + 76pg.pdf)
Beyond tabs and the photo chords of Mel Bay, I’m utterly lost when it comes to reading music. This in part probably explains my fascination with Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise, the first instance of graphical music notation i’ve stumbled upon.
The concept is as beautiful as it is brilliant. Create a visual language as non-traditional musical notation to be interpreted by its preformers. Frequently repeated elements provide a foundation for consensually determined structural consistency. The result? Gestalt driven compositions that level the roles of performer and composer toward a common language of ebb, flow and torrent.
Digging for a link to the Ekstroem glacier audio in the previous post serendipidously landed me on the ABC.au home page where i found breaking news that a giant squid, measuring about six meters long, had just washed up on the west coast of Tasmania.
It was only months ago that I stumbled upon a documentary about researchers eagerly tracking down mere footage of one in the depths of the North Pacific —cheering when they’d captured video of a blurred tentacle swiping at their surveilled bait.
And I thought the synchronicity of arriving at work the next day to find posts about this squid being found was weird…
Another entry in the acoustics of frozen water thread.
This time from a recording made by researchers studying seismic activity on Ekstroem ice shelf on Antarctica’s South Atlantic coast in 2002. Christian Müller, Vera Schlindwein, Alfons Eckstaller and Heinrich Miller registered acoustic activity from a nearby iceberg that when sped up, revealed audible changes in pitch and tone.
Marc Weidenbaum of disquiet sums the discovery up nicely.
Please don’t mistake this for a figment of casual animism. The point here isn’t to attribute sentience to an iceberg; at best in that regard it’s an exercise in enthusiastic anthropomorphism. The point is to revel in the rich sonic attributes of nature, attributes that we can only appreciated thanks to the mediation of technology.
Mocean belongs in every home. Starting with mine (please).
From the organic interfaces site: We live in water for the first nine months of our lives. Deep within our minds, the thread that weaves the substance of our existence resonates. Being close to water, to play with it, is an innate desire.
Mocean frames a time and a space to explore our lost memory in a literal way.
Jacob Kirkegaard - Eldfjall Live at Observatori Festival, Valencia:
“The sounds I here perform with were recorded in two ways: with an acoustic microphone and with an accelerometer. For the acoustic recordings I used a Sanken CSS-5 which I held very closely to the tiny bubbling surface. The accelerometer was inserted approximately 4 cm into the earth and picked up a denser timbre than the acoustic microphone. As opposed to the Eldfjall CD release (where I chose to let the sounds stand by themselves), I here mixed the different sounds with each other to create a more organic sound and a narrative. I began the concert with creaking ice from different lakes in Iceland. These were also recorded with accelerometers. None of the sounds have been processed.”
