06. Pauline Oliveros: I was working with my programmer Jesse Stiles on Deep Listening Room an audio visual installation for the Biennial at the Whitney Museum for May 21 through 25.
A Tetra mic and a panoramic camera will be suspended from the ceiling in the Whitney lobby. Anything happening in the lobby – sight or sound will be sent to my Ambisonic Expanded Instrument System (AEIS) that will process the audio and Video and display in the Ehrenkrantz Gallery. The AEIS transforms the audio and video with delays and a variety of modulations. We were working on the modulations.
07. Zach Layton: I’m currently working on a piece for a 64 channel speaker array in Troy, NY at EMPAC. In this recording I was testing the system and making a variety of tweaks and changes to the sound spatialization on the computer.
08. David Horvitz: i’m in hawaii. i put the computer outside where i could sit and look at the ocean. i started the recording at the same time i started making tea. the tea. or looking at the ocean. that is working process.
09. Marc Handelman: This audio recording took place on March 11, 2014, on a train from New York on route to Boston. I spent a good deal of the time working between two kinds of screens, each vying for my attention. The moving image through the train window became a reprieve from the monotonous photoshop work I was simultaneously doing on a laptop. The digital work consisted of an on-going book project of stripping away the narratives and identities from corporate environmental reports to arrive at a kind of perverse notion and rhetoric of commodified and totalized nature. My train journey, ironically, feels so pastoral. I am trying to imagine what this situation sounds like as a recording, which is never what it sounds like as one is experiencing it. An ambient droning, punctuated by clicks, and a fair amount of my coughing, probably fully peaking the sound levels.
10. Tully Arnot:
A sunny Sunday afternoon, visiting my parents house in Manly, Sydney, Australia, between about 3:30 and 4:30pm.
I wanted to start with an interesting sound.
The night before I did some test recordings on my phone, chatting to friends while drinking wine. The phone was on the table so whenever people topped up a drink the sloshing of the wine made nice sounds that drowned out everything else. I wanted to start with water!
So to open, the recording actually starts with a toilet flush, kind of like a clap at the start of a filming a movie. I then wash my hands, lots of nice sounds there.
As I open the door you hear the sound of music increase, my dad is listening to lots of stuff today. I think to start there is Lauryn Hill, then old Michael Jackson – his 70’s stuff.
I sit on the balcony talking to my dad while using my laptop, I’m researching a few things, checking emails, writing an exhibition proposal. We talk about a lemongrass cutting he was giving me, and some wood he just cut.
I walk through the house, passing the speakers the music increases, and into my childhood bedroom where the music is now quite low. I’m looking for a spare SD card, encountering junk including a bell that I keep bumping when I move stuff around.
Open draws, close draws etc. Good rolling sounds.
I just received a Raspberry Pi in the post this morning so I want to upload an operating system to an SD card so I can start using it.
I find the card, walk back into the kitchen and pour a glass of orange juice. The music is closer so now it’s louder, I think its a soul song.
I’m thirsty, but really I want you to hear the sloshy sounds. I place the phone right next to the glass when I pour, and then hold it in my hand while I drink. Gulp gulp.
I go back to the balcony. Dad’s still there. I plug the SD card into my laptop and realise there are photos and videos from when I lived in Berlin in early 2013. They are mostly from a trip to Dresden, we had gone to the Bastei Bridge and some castle. It was minus 20 degrees Celsius that day.
I talk to my dad for a bit about stuff and then sit with him showing him the photos. We talk for a while about the trip, about how cold and bleak it looks.
My dad leaves to walk our dog, a black labradoodle called Lucy. He switches the music off.
I clear off the SD card, format it and install an operating system so I can use the Raspberry Pi.
While things are copying I listen to some of the recordings I made the night before. They were between 3am and 4am after I got home from somewhere to find my flatmate and a friend beside an empty bottle of tequila. The recordings start with a drunken discussion of how to save James Franco’s art career – my flatmate thinks Franco should recreate Andrea Fraser’s sex video artwork. We then discuss gender, sexuality, pop culture articles etc.
I’m waiting for the files to copy so mostly skipping through snippets and it probably sounds quite chaotic.
I realise I need a mouse and keyboard for my Raspberry Pi so dig around for one. More rustling sounds. I find a mouse but no keyboard.
I go back to the balcony, stand there looking out to the trees and listen to the birds. Thinking. Sit down, put on some music, Terry Callier, feeling bluesy. I do a few things on my computer, typing, look at emails.
I grab my iPad, I’m reading back through my current MFA draft so I’m going through that, writing notes on bits I need to change. It’s probably really boring listening to someone read/write on an iPad, no rustling pages, no pen sounds.
Dad comes home, I know because the stereo suddenly goes back on. It’s soul or disco again, not sure.
Lucy comes to tell me how her walk was, she loves that. Jumps on the couch, knocks my phone off a few times. I talk to Lucy for a bit “Lucy! How was your walk?”, “Lucy! Lucy! Luuuuucy! Good girl!” etc etc.
Dad comes out, we chat more while I am distracted by editing my paper. It’s about 4:30pm maybe, the sun is preparing to set, my dad has a whiskey after his walk, offers me a beer but I say no. I think we chat about my brother, family, it’s Mothers Day so we talk about dinner plans when my mum gets home from work. It was my parents wedding anniversary recently, I pay more attention to the conversation now. We talk for a while about welding, my friend Charlie, one of my old photo works, just stuff.
I really like talking to my dad, it feels good sitting on the balcony thinking about things, discussing the world with him. At some point the phone cuts out, but anyway my recording ran longer than the allocated hour. I’m not sure what parts of our conversation made it in, and I guess each individual part is pretty mundane, but they add up to something special. It doesn’t really matter what I’m talking to my dad about, theres something beyond what is spoken that I really enjoy.
11. Deville Cohen: So- yesterday, I was at the gym and I was on my way to staples to make some copies when my friend Naama called me and asked if I am coming to the frieze to see the shows, and that her memory card was full and if I can get her one on my way. Naama Tzabar was doing one of the frieze projects. She took the floor of the both they gave her out side of the tent and turned it into a music stage. Together with the editor of tom tom magazine they curated a music festival with band with female drummers.
The weather was perfect and they had whiskey and pink champagne so I took of my shoes and stayed there for the whole afternoon.
The one hour recording is of two bands and the set up time in between them. I can find out the name of the bands for you if you want.
This is a bit more about her project: http://www.naamatsabar.com/without/