Art of Failure:
Drone Fest
20 JunListen to performances from the Drone Fest …
Text by John Rosenthal
Sound is like a mirage, a physiological trick, the byproduct of the random set of circumstances that has found you alive, with a pair of ears, on a planet with an atmosphere conducive to breathing.
When we talk about sound, we are really describing a type of energy, a mechanical wave.
It is a wave propagated by a source, be it a guitar string or the snap of a branch. Its speed, referred to as frequency, is measured in increments called hertz (Hz). We can “hear” sound within the audible spectrum, but we are also effected by inaudible frequencies too, allowing for changes in our mood. Perceptions of doom or elation can be attributed to inaudible frequencies.
In space, electromagnetic waves are also measured in hertz and we can translate their frequencies to audible sound. The Crab Nebula radiates at the low frequency of 30 Hz, the equivalent of a very low B, almost inaudible when translated to a mechanical wave. Measurements of plasma waves within the sun’s heliosphere (the area of the solar system effected by the sun’s magnetic field), register at 300 Hz, equivalent to a tone close to E flat.
Pitch is frequency. For example, the most common modern tuning standard for ensembles is the key of A above middle C – 440 Hz. This is sometimes referred to as concert pitch.
If you double the hertz to 880, you raise the pitch, this is called an octave. The result is a higher tone – a faster vibrating wave. If you drop the pitch equally to 220 Hz, lowering the octave, the result is a lower tone – a slower moving wave.
Drones are sustained tones, frequencies that are shaped by the human voice, acoustic or electronic instruments.
The drone is a deeply minimal and ancient form of musical expression, perhaps our earliest form of music, and certainly our most elemental. Droning is extremely malleable. It takes just one voice and one tone to drone, but drones can be layered and performed by large ensembles and given to a aural vastness, though always governed by the minimalist state of submission to sustained tone. Though minimal in concept, drones can involve a great degree of subtlety and dynamics. Shaping the sustained tones creates a unique texture. Droning is essential to indigenous musical traditions worldwide and has had a profound influence on modern music.
Drones have the unique ability to produce a trance-like state in both the musician and the listener, especially as they are sustained over long periods. It is no wonder that droning forms the basis for many sacred music traditions.
As you experience 24 hr drone, you will notice a background tone in the Basilica. Each hour is set to the frequency of a tube-powered oscillator, driving a mechanical wave expressed as a frequency corresponding to the tone parameters of the musicians slated for each hour. These tones will mainly concentrate in the hertz range of concert pitch as described above. If a particular performer’s piece is pitched to drone in the key of E, than the oscillator will be placed at 329.2 Hz, or octaves above or below if they wish. The oscillator is as much a part of the performance as the musicians. They can choose to keep the tone in their performance. They can play in unison with it, harmonically or dissonantly. As each piece ends, the oscillator will return to your listening focus. In a sense, it will act as a clock, changing hertz to mark the hour and the beginning of a new drone.
As a listener, you are integral to the experience of 24 hr drone. You will be just as effected by the deep power of droning tones as the musicians conjuring them, and your presence and commitment is inspirationalt. The layout is in the round, like a clock. You can dance, meditate, sleep, eat and move about. You can interact with the sound and the musicians as you see fit.
So it is that we exist in a sea of invisible waves. With 24 hr drone, we pay homage to the invisible powers.
Information of the event and performers here:
http://basilicahudson.com/24-hour-drone-experiments-in-sound-and-music/
Sexing Sound
20 FebSexing Sound: Music Cultures, Audio Practices, and Contemporary Art
Pop and rock music has long been an important forum for experimentation with gendered performance, audience identification, and different models of authorship and collaboration. What happens, we ask, when the complex affective and social dynamics of popular music cultures are put into a dialogue with more rarified notions of audio cultures or sound art? Taking the issue of sexual difference and sexuality as its central concern, this symposium brings together an international group of artists, writers, educators and curators to address the gendered complexes of “music cultures,” “audio practices,” and where these two realms intersect in contemporary art. Presentation topics include the feminist sound archive Her Noise, women in early punk, the voice, and the soundscape. The symposium will end at 5pm with a performance of a composition by Annea Lockwoodperformed by Kristin Norderval, followed by a reception at 6pm in the James Gallery with a set by JD Samson.
Organized by:
Valerie Tevere (Mellon Humanities Fellow, the Center for Humanities; Media Culture, the College of Staten Island/CUNY)
Siona Wilson (Program in Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY; Performing and Creative Arts, the College of Staten Island, CUNY)
Sexing Sound: Music Cultures, Audio Practices, and Contemporary Art is being recorded for broadcast on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM, in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley, and online at wavefarm.org.
Earth Sound…
10 NovDouglas Kahn, ‘Earth Sound, Earth Signal‘; interview with Douglas Kahn by Galen Joseph-Hunter of Wave Farm, and Eyebeam panel discussion on Kahn’s new book.
Raga Darbari in the MELA Dream House
7 JunThe Just Alap Raga Ensemble
Pandit Pran Nath 17th Anniversary Memorial Tribute
Pandit Pran Nath 17th Anniversary Memorial Tribute
Three Evening Concerts of Raga Darbari in the MELA Dream House
Saturdays, June 8 and 15, 2013, 9 pm
La Monte Young, voice
Marian Zazeela, voice
Jung Hee Choi, voice
Naren Budhkar, tabla
The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath from the Just Dreams CD
MELA Foundation Dream House
275 Church Street, 3rd Floor, between Franklin & White Streets in Tribeca
Admission $36. MELA Members, Seniors, Student ID, $28.
Limited seating. Advance reservations recommended.
Info and reservations: 212-219-3019; mail@melafoundation.org
Three Evening Concerts of Raga Darbari in the contemporary Kirana gharana (style) of North Indian Classical Music will be performed by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela with The Just Alap Raga Ensemble in a memorial tribute to Pandit Pran Nath on the 17th anniversary of his passing, Saturday evenings, June 1, 8 and 15, 2013 at 9 pm in the MELA Foundation Dream House light environment, 275 Church Street, 3rd Floor. PLEASE NOTE: To prepare for the scheduled concerts, the Dream House Sound and Light Environment is now closed for the season; it will reopen on September 21, 2013. From August 15-September 14, MELA will present Jung Hee Choi’s multimedia installation, Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest VII.
La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Jung Hee Choi, voices; with Naren Budhkar, tabla; will be accompanied by The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath from the Just Dreams CD. The Just Alap Raga Ensemble will perform Pandit Pran Nath’s special arrangement of “Hazrat Turkaman”, a traditional vilampit khayal composition set inRaga Darbari.
Young considers The Just Alap Raga Ensemble to be one of the most significant creations in the development of his compositional process in that it organically merges the traditions of Western and Hindustani classical musics with the knowledge of acoustical science to embody complementary forms in an encompassing evolutionary statement. Pandit Pran Nath has said, “Alap is the essence of Raga. When the drut [faster tempo] begins, the Raga is finished.” With The Just Alap Raga Ensemble, Young applies his own compositional approach to traditional raga performance, form and technique: a pranam (bow) of gratitude in reciprocation for the influence on his music since the mid-fifties of the unique, slow, unmetered, timelessalap, and for one of the most ancient and evolved vocal traditions extant today. The Ensemble features extended alap sections, sustained vocal and instrumental drones, two- and three-part harmony and counterpoint in just intonation over tamburas. Young, Zazeela and Choi premiered The Just Alap Raga Ensemble on August 22, 2002 in a memorial tribute to Ustad Hafizullah Khan, the Khalifa of the Kirana Gharana and son of Pandit Pran Nath’s teacher, Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan Sahib.
Luigi Russolo, ThE ARt of NoiSe
25 Mar‘…On 11 March 1913, Russolo issued his manifesto L’arte dei rumori (The Art of Noises), dedicated to fellow Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. Expanded into book form in 1916, it theorized the inclusion of incidental noise into musical composition. With Ugo Piatti, he later invented the intonarumori, noise-emitting machines that allowed the modification of tone and pitch. In 1913-14, Russolo conducted his first Futurist concerts with numerous intonarumori. Audiences in Milan, Genoa and London reacted with enthusiasm or open hostility. Russolo started to contribute to the magazine Lacerba, where in 1914 he published his Grafia enarmonica per gl’intonarumori (Enharmonic Notation for Futurist Intonarumori), which introduced a new and influential form of musical notation…’
…Lampo Performance Series: Valerio Tricoli
25 Mar‘On March 30, Berlin-based composer and sound installation artist Valerio Tricoli offers a special program for Lampo to mark the 100th anniversary of Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto, The Art of Noises (March, 1913). Russolo’s manifesto introduced the idea of noise-sound into musical discourse, creating the conditions for radical advancements in sonic art and informing movements in musique concrète, electronic music, and the practices of American experimental composers such as John Cage. In the essay, Russolo lays the foundation for a new music based on what he calls ‘Futurist noise-sound,’ claiming that all sounds of life—whether natural or derived from man-made devices or machines—should be incorporated into music. He also strongly encourages the development and design of new instruments capable of producing new kinds of noises suitable to the mise en être of the expanded acoustic imagination of the composer. Russolo himself, some months after the publication of the manifesto, would present his own Intonarumori (Noise-tuners).
This Lampo program will be divided in two parts: first, An Homage to Luigi Russolo, a live electro-acoustic improvisation for electronic devices, self-built instruments, found sounds, and voice, to be followed by La Solidità Della Nebbia, a multi-channel diffusion of the tape composition.
Valerio Tricoli (b. 1977, Palermo, Italy) is a Berlin-based composer, improviser, producer, sound installation artist, sound engineer, and curator bridging musique concrète and conceptual forms of sound with a radical interest in how reality, virtuality, and memory relate to each other during the acoustic event. He mostly uses analogue electronic devices including reel-to-reel tape recorders, synthesizers, microphones, light effects, and ultrasonic speakers. However, the structure of the setup is ever-changing, seeking multiple relations between the performers, the device, and the space in which the event takes place. Tricoli is one of the founders of 3/4HadBeenEliminated and the Bowindo label / collective. In 2012, he presented a new interpretation of the seminal 1952 John Cage electro-acoustic tape piece Williams Mix with Werner Dafeldecker, which premiered at Maerz Musik, Berlin. He is currently working on two compositions for piano and electronic sounds (with Anthony Pateras) and on a concrete music cycle inspired by the Book of Qohelet. Tricoli made his U.S. debut at Lampo in March 2008, when he performed Take Thy Horoscope and Walk, a multi-sensorial set of live concrete music in quad sound with strobe lights.
Founded in 1997, Lampo is a non-profit organization for experimental music, sound art and intermedia projects.’
Unsound Body
25 FebChristof Migone, Sonic Somatic
‘This book delineates a territory of investigation for sound art and its various manifestations through historical, theoretical, polemical and critical analyses of artistic, musical and literary works. In doing so, Migone gives radical definition to an auditory study that includes the complexity of silence and mutism, identity and abjecthood, and language and its stutterances. The recurring site of these stagings is the somatic under all its forms: embodied and disembodied, fragmented and amplified, vocal and mute…’
Audio-Vision
22 NovAudio-Vision: Sound On Screen, Michel Chion
An assessment of function and aesthetics of sound in television and film.
Acoustic Mimicry
21 NovIn this exercise you will be producing a short 2-3 minute video/sound work, where the sound environment is entirely constructed by you, to enhance and/or critique the experience of the visual imagery. You can use found video footage or something of your own making.
Consider the examples of works that we discussed in class. And look again at the Walter Murch interview, where he talks about some of his experiences building representational realities and hyper-realities through sound montage.
Once you have determined the ‘site’ that you will fabricate, ask, ‘What is the nature of this sound, what is its mimic, analogue, surrogate, or double. And how can I borrow from one of these sources to imitate the other?
Improvise with any tools of your preference; voice/body, instrument, software, etc, to create a distinct soundspace; an articulation or deception that locates your work in a representational reality, or indicates discrepancies in the formulation of media representation. Will your work augment the experience of what you see, will it seek to make sound visible? Will it reveal the illusory or deceptive apparatus of the production itself through indicating the shortcomings or manipulations of its construction.
We will view/listen to these works this week.
Modes of Listening
31 OctFrancisco Lopez: ‘Profound Listening and Environmental Sound Matter’
Brian Eno, ‘Ambient Music’: Eno_Ambience
Pauline Oliveros, ‘On Sonic Meditation’: On Sonic Meditation
David Toop, ‘Sinister Resonance; The Mediumship of the Listener’
Ola Stockfelt: ‘Adequate Modes of Listening’
Auditory Spatial Awareness
17 OctPlease Read Chapter 2 From, ‘Spaces Speak, Are You Listening; Experiencing Aural Architecture’, by Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter. © MIT Press 2007. Reading Discussion led by Anthony and Makia
Experiencing _Aural_Architecture
In preparing your project development, include:
-A definition of ‘soundscape’, as you have derived it from our discussions and readings.
-An explanation of your use of field recording to the project.
-Citations of any relevant readings/works and their connection/inspiration/research to the project.
-Consideration of the balances/imbalances of sonic, environmental impact (tenets of research in acoustic ecology) as expressed through the work.
soundenvironments 