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01/01/08 11:20AM
Introduction – Part One
Listening and thinking about sound art/music and related ideas as well
as performing throughout 2007 lead me down a variety of paths. Some of
these preoccupations occurred because they are related to my occupation
(earning a living through consulting and teaching) while others are part
of my avocation (making, performing, learning about, and critiquing
sound-related art works). Please note that all errors and omissions are
my own.
To begin with teaching, during Spring semester 2007 I wanted to connect
some of the young designers and artists at Milwaukee Institute of Art
and Design (MIAD) with the social, technical, commercial, and historical
origins of the computer technology that most of us use everyday for our
creative efforts. How did we come to have these wonderful and accessible
tools for our educational, communications, and entertainment needs?
Wanting to explore the origin of and issues related to computers as
tools for thought and creativity, I developed a course called From
Utopia to Today. In this survey, I introduced my students to the
scientists, designers, artists and think-tanks from the early part of
the 20th Century through today whose utopian visions drove the concepts,
media and products we all take for granted. From Alan Turing, John
von Neumann, Norbert Weiner, and Vannevar Bush to Douglas
Engelbart, Ivan E. Sutherland, Alan Kay, and Ted Nelson, we
covered the theoretical, scientific and commercial development of
computers.
It was fascinating listening to each student early in the semester
describe their first experience with computers, video games, cell
phones, music playback systems, and all the technologies that have
converged and are now miniaturized and fit either in their pocket or
backpack. Unlike people of my generation who grew up rooted to place
(think land line phones, console TVs, stereo systems, and those first
enormous desktop PCs), my students are a mobile generation carrying
their world with them where they go. When you realize how much computers
as we know them came first through the efforts of technicians engaged in
war and later from the visionaries who never considered commercial
development but wanted to empower human thought, it is amazing that
today it is business, commerce and fashion that drive the development of
computers. I hope the class was a wake up call for the "look through any
Windows," iBook, iPod, iPhone generation.
Fall 2007, I presented a class called Hi & Lo Tech Art in the Sixties.
My intention was to look at art from that time period through the lens
of the technology used to produce it, rather than the list of movements
and "isms" usually used to describe art of the time––Happenings,
Fluxus, Pop Art, Op Art, Minimalism, Kinetic Art, Conceptual Art, Earth
Art, etc. Underlying the art history survey component, I wanted to
explore with my students various questions: whether the technology used
was a neutral tool or a McLuhanist carrier more powerful than the
content, or how deeply could you define technology––everything that
human's used to produce artifacts, or just the results of
post-industrial society, etc., and ultimately what impact that had on
both the conception of art and the resulting artifact. While not as
successfully conceived as the From Utopia to Today material, it allowed
me to range over a variety of sound art and music examples and themes,
always an underlying drive in my teaching. More on listening to music in
that context below.
In February, I collected three hours of music I downloaded, principally
from myspace sites, and curated a program of downloaded music for Hal
Rammel's Alternating Currents program on WMSE 91.7 FM. (You
in turn can download or stream his program from February 18, 2007 at
http://www.wmse.org/archive.php?dow=Sun&hour=180) In the spirit of
"information wants to be free," I followed the practice that if it was
available for download, I was granted permission to do so. Some artists
featured included Tim Perkis, Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack,
Scott Burland and Frank Schultz's Duet for Theremin and
Lapsteel, Susan Alcorn, Christian Munthe, Mazen Kerbaj, and
Nick Didkovsky's Swim This with Gerry Hemingway and
Michael Lytle. I was just passing the music on to another group
of listeners trying to extend the life of these great examples of
contemporary sound art.
Also in February, Rammel released Like Water Tightly Wound
on Crouton Music. The recording is a 10 inch vinyl disk in an
"antiqued-themed 78 record package," featuring two works performed by
him on his self-design and constructed "Sound Palettes," (wooden painter
palettes that contain various rods mounted perpendicular to the surface
and amplified through a contact microphone). This is a concentrated
sound experience and compilation of some of the more subtle techniques
and sounds available from these instruments. I rarely hear this level of
clarity and subtlety when he plays in a live situation. The recording
quality shows off all the light tinkles, warm resonant tones, and deep
roars capable with these instruments that at times sound like percussion
at others cello or bass, but with an intimacy as if he were playing in
the room with you, rather than in a large hall or gallery. Like Water
Tightly Wound extends the work from his Lost Data series of
the previous year.
At the end of March, composer/performer/computer installation artist
George Lewis gave a lecture at University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
called "Living with Creative Machines." Lewis, an active improviser, has
been a pioneer in the use of software-based interactive instruments
beginning with his work Voyager from the mid-1980s. Besides
auditing the survey of his work, and hearing him astutely answer
questions from both university show-offs in the audience as well as
people who clearly had no clue about his work or milieu, my main
take-away was his remark that, "improvisation is the ubiquitous practice
of everyday life." Well there you have it.
In preparation for the tenth anniversary celebration for the
Audiotrope trio
(Hal Rammel––invented instruments, Steve Nelson-Raney––soprano
and sopranino saxophones, and myself––guitars, voice and electronics
mostly) to be held in May, I facilitated a "self-interview" with
intention of publishing a commemorative book for our celebration
performance. We met and discussed origins, influences, working methods,
and surprisingly, a number of aesthetic differences. A feature of our
work over the last decade has been the avoidance of discussion about the
music, other than brief observations, usually following one of the 60
plus concerts during that time, like "well you guys sounded really
good," etc. So, some of the items or issues laid dormant waiting for an
inevitable outpouring. I transcribed the interview, passed it to Hal and
Steve, who made minor changes and suggested edits. Independently, I
solicited contributions from a number of others, most of whom obliged,
and Marly Gisser and I put it into form as a small book published
by Necessary Arts.
Audiotrope
Steve
Nelson Raney,
Hal Rammell,
Thomas Gaudynski
Audiotrope celebrated the anniversary with a concert at Woodland
Pattern Book Center in May. There are still some copies of the book
available for those who weren't there or didn't get a review copy. Let
me know if you'd like one.
Also in March, Gary Hassay, saxophonist from Allentown, PA, who I
first met in 1982 when the trio Diana David, Paul Gaudynski and
Thomas Gaudynski (DG&G) performed there, asked me to write liner
notes for his forthcoming album Beauty. I spent a few weeks
listening first to all the pieces recorded with this trio including
Dan Dechellis on piano, and Tatsuya Nakatani on
percussion––about 120 minutes of music. (Nakatani played in Milwaukee in
November at Woodland Pattern Book Center recently with Swedish guitarist
David Stackenäs as part of Alternating Currents Live. See
below.) Then a few more weeks to the final cut list before putting
fingers to word processor. Rather than describe the music specifically
as in a review, since I knew the reader would already have made their
purchasing decision, I determined to take a more poetic approach to the
concept of beauty, and how the trio had channeled it during their work.
The album came out this past fall.
From the intro of my Meditation on Beauty:
Much of what goes for beauty today is arbitrated by commerce and is
reinforced by advertising and media. We have been warped and turned
aside by the enemies of beauty. Tempted to worship false appearance. Who
needs that?
It only takes a little effort to shut off that influence––for us to
strip our individual humanity to its essence opening our selves to
nature. True beauty, undetermined by human greed, can only be found
there. Lest we forget, we are part of nature.
Our senses are the doors to beauty. Opening, we can take in the
wholeness of form, balance, and harmony of the natural order. Although
nature is not pretty. Nature is our terrible and grave home. True
natural beauty fills us with awe.
Necessary Arts client Bel Canto Chorus presented a
fascinating aural event of choral music in May at the Sisters of Saint
Joseph Chapel all revolving around the theme of light. The Chapel is a
long narrow room with high arched ceiling that sat about 400 listeners
squeezed into high-backed pews and folding chairs along the walls. The
risers for the chorus were set in front of the alter in effect
shortening the length of the room and leaving a large resonant cavity
above the chorus. Beginning at the back of the room behind the audience,
the chorus began with Gregorian Chant. Then, holding candles in
the darkened space, they filed into the aisles, stopped and sang O
Nata Lux by Thomas Tallis. Finally they took their places on
the risers in front and finished the evening singing works by
Rachmaninoff, Holst, John Rutter, and Morten Lauridsen. A
very effective use of the space throughout.
In June, I wanted to try something new for a planned performance in
August with Audiotrope. I pulled my first guitar, a KAY
archtop, out of the basement after twenty-five years, dusted it off and
spent some time exploring what I could do with. Understand, this
instrument, given to me by Paul Gaudynski for Christmas in 1978,
never was playable in the usual sense of the word describing an
instrument––it had a warped neck, slipping tuning pegs, etc. But for an
improviser without preconceptions, it was a great resonant box with
strings. The initial results of my exploration were quite different from
anything I might have tried when I first acquired it, but perhaps
related to the exploratory approach heard on Solo 99. I worked
with the instrument through June and July recording solo pieces, and
then, while mastering, I overlapped some solos simultaneously and
created a few sound constructions. I also raised the action on the neck
and tuned KAY to DADFAD. I completed the project in time for my
57th birthday and Necessary Arts published KAY, A new listen
to an old guitar in September in an edition of 75. I dedicated it to
Paul Gaudynski, for accompanying me on some of my musical
journeys and gifting me with KAY, and to Eugene Chadbourne, for
inspiring me to play guitar ultimately in my own fashion.
July saw the initial performance of Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra (MiLO)
at Hotcakes Gallery. Brainchild of Chris Burns, MiLO
is an evolving group of aural and visual laptop artists with visiting
acoustic and electro-acoustic musicians. The first performance included
two screens of mutating and evolving projected images mixed live with
accompaniment or juxtaposition of sound works improvised by various
laptop performers and a pair of saxophonists. Although it was a great
beginning, there were times that I wished Stockhausen or someone
was in the back of the room with a mixer adjusting levels through out. I
thought the ensemble sense of its own mix was not as articulated as I
would have liked, but this was their first performance. The group has
performed twice since then, including accompanying the 1927 film by
Walter Ruttmann, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, and I
regret missing them. Burns assures me not to worry since he has plans
for many other events.
Part Two:
01/01/08 11:24AM
Listening, Looking and Performing in 2007 – Part Two
Introduction – Part Two
Listening and thinking about sound art/music and related ideas as well
as performing throughout 2007 lead me down a variety of paths. Some of
these preoccupations occurred because they are related to my occupation
(earning a living through consulting and teaching) while others are part
of my avocation (making, performing, learning about, and critiquing
sound-related art works). Please note that all errors and omissions are
my own.
In September Hal Rammel organized a performance of the Lost
Data Project, named after his composition and recording project from
2006, along with Jon Mueller and Jim Schoenecker. The
performance with Rammel on sound palettes and turntable, Mueller on
feedback resonated percussion, and Schoenecker on synthesizer and
turntable, took place at the Haggerty Museum of Art in conjunction with
an exhibition of Gina Litherland's fine magic surrealism
paintings. The music centered around slowly evolving textures rather
than call and response or "squeaky-bonky" improvised interplay. The
music suited the resonant space of the museum. You can hear a sample of
the performance at http://www.topscoreusa.com/lost_data_092007.mp3.
In October I listened to Rae Armantrout and Jane Hirschfield
read their poetry at Woodland Pattern Book Center––an interesting
pairing that made for an eclectic evening. Both read short works that
they introduced with contextual comments and stories. Each poem read
seemed to expect an "uh-huh" moment at the end––here's my poetic object
about this or composed of that; audience response, oh "uh-huh."
Comparing it to a musical event, I was surprised that the rhythm of the
performance was composed of such short events, with such typical end
results for each piece or movement. More like a pop (or song-form) music
recital than jazz, chamber music, or electro-acoustic music concerts.
Jon Mueller of Crouton Music organized a visit by the trio
Konk Pack (Tim Hodgkinson tabletop guitar and electronics,
Thomas Lehn analog synthesizer, and Roger Turner drums and
percussion) in mid-October at the newly remodeled Cactus Club. Mueller
graciously invited Audiotrope to open for them. I had heard a few
of Konk Pack's recordings, found on-line, and was familiar with
the work of the group's members as individuals and in other contexts, so
I was excited that a group of their caliber was visiting. As the
promotion materials described, "each concert is legendary." The club has
a backroom that allows a level of subtlety in performance since it is
removed from the noisier bar section. Audiotrope took advantage
of that space to move from quiet to loud, spare to complex in a brief
opening set. Konk Pack however seized the opportunity to blast
with high intensity and frenetic energy throughout their entire set
sweeping everything away in their path. Turner could not rest and kept
the music moving with unbounded rhythmic energy. Lehn uses his tiny
synth to noisy advantage and employed such great body language.
And Hodgkinson, spurred on by the other two, with his pixy grin, ripped
it up with his plucked strings and pedal effects. It was a great, nay,
legendary concert.
During much of 2007, I spent working with my client the Urban Ecology
Center on marketing planning. The Center is a fascinating
organization that works to connect young people, primarily, with nature
in an urban setting. Through its educational efforts in our neighborhood
on Milwaukee's East Side––they bring students from neighborhood schools
to Riverside Park daily for science-based experiential learning about
nature––they have helped reduce crime in the park and help protect the
natural areas along the Milwaukee River. Visiting the Center and the
park often, I came to appreciate listening to the urban environment with
perhaps more attention than usual. I began taking sound walks and
attending to the interplay of natural and manmade sounds. I'm working on
developing either some listening exercises or suggested sound walks for
visitors to the area. Perhaps helping auditors with checklists of
sounds, not unlike the bird lists that birders compile. For example,
walking into the park from the Locust Street Bridge, you move away from
the intense sound of traffic to the micro-sound environment of song
birds, crickets, and wind in the trees. Moving towards the river, you
experience both the sounds reverberating beneath the bridge span and
contained in the river valley. Walking deeper into the park, you might
almost imagine being in the country, but still hear the sound of a
passing plane or the low distant rumble of Highway 43 two miles to the
west.
2007 was a lean year for discretionary spending on new recordings. I
counted only seven CD purchases––most made with financial gifts for
birthday or holidays, plus a few exchanges with other artists, and of
course internet or radio listening. This, however was offset to a degree
by the amount of music I brought up from the basement where my LPs are
stored.
Much of this listening to older recordings was driven by teaching. In
Spring, I needed to play examples of computer music and so brought up
Hiller and Isaacson's Illiac Suite for String Quartet,
Milton Babbitt's Philomel, and Charles Wuorinen's
Time's Encomium. In Fall, I need to play various examples of music
created with low technology and so brought up David Behrman's
Runthrough, David Tudor's Rainforest, John Cage's
Radio Music and Cartridge Music. I also introduced
students to voltage-controlled modular synthesizer music and played them
Wendy Carlos' Switched on Bach and Morton Subotnick's
Silver Apples of the Moon (although I had to borrow both of these
from the Milwaukee Public Library.) And I needed to contextualize these
last examples from the sixties with The Beatles' Tomorrow
Never Knows and Frank Zappa's Uncle Meat. For my two
classes I went through the painstaking process of digitizing my brief
examples from LPs without really the proper equipment or software.
Then in October, Jim Cogan invited me to guest lecture during his
History of Sound in American Media class at Beloit College. In
specifying the equipment available in his class room he said there was a
turntable. After trying to teach aspects of musical history,
specifically from the sixties and seventies, at an art school where
everything is either completely digital or of the most antique processes
available with no middle ground––think printmaking or painting––this was
a wonderful opportunity to present the music in the form it was designed
for: vinyl records. Focusing on aspects of electronic music, I played
excerpts of Terry Riley's A Rainbow In Curved Air,
Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain and Violin Phase, as
well as the library copy of Switched on Bach. Both Cogan and I
passed around the sleeves and handled the disks like holy relics from
the past.
Unfortunately during Q & A I made a remark apparently denigrating
Frank Zappa's music as pop, and the students immediately challenged
my characterization. I'm sorry I used the term "pop" and not
"commercial." No matter how masterful or enjoyable Zappa's music is, I
don't believe he ever conceived it in terms of art––that rarified form
of hot house flower. His music was intended to be heard through the
mechanisms of commercial music no matter how much he may have lampooned
commercialism and his own work's lack of commercial potential. A sly fox
that one.
Capitalizing on the honorarium that Cogan secured for me to teach the
class and the end-of-year need to find tax deductions for Necessary
Arts, I bought a new USB, S/PDF turntable. The first thing I did
after figuring out how digitize files was make a copy of the long OOP
Columbia Music of Our Times LP The World of Harry Partch for my
friend and colleague Paul Krajniak.
Since then, listening to out of print LPs also drove me back to hear
things a diverse as Anthony Braxton's New York, Fall, 1974,
Gavin Bryars' 1,2,1-2-3-4, Christopher Hobbs'
McCrimmon Will Never Return, Olivier Messiaen's Fete des
Belles Eaux (for sextet of ondes martinot), the CCMC 3 record
set of Larry Dubin and the CCMC, Jacques Bekaert's A
Summer Day at Sony Point, and Alvin Curran's Fiori Chiari,
Fiori Oscuri.
Marly Gisser and I had a chance to catch the Milwaukee Dance
Theatre production of Spaulding Gray: Stories Left to Tell
just before the run ended in November. Gray's widow, Kathie Russo,
collected materials from Gray's monologues, letters, and unpublished
journal entries which are read/recited throughout the performance by
five performers––often with a rotating cast of "stars" taking one of the
positions. Co-directors Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson
blocked the performers––representing love, adventure, journals, family,
and career––throughout the space as they presented what became a mosaic
of stories and information that ultimately coalesced into a funny and
touching portrait of Gray. You could have sat back, closed your eyes,
and experienced the performance as hörspiel, but I had to think of the
production through my Brechtian filter. Rather than a continuous
narrative interrupted by "situations," the entire production consisted
only of "situations." I had to wonder if the order of the material
needed to be, or if it was indeed, set to provide a specific dramatic
result, or could the elements of the mosaic be presented in any order in
a more Cagean presentation that still had a desirable impact. I'll have
to tease that question out with Isabelle and Mark next time I seen them.
On the subject of Bertolt Brecht, I again spent some time with
his work during 2007 after finding used copies of his Poems 1913-1956
and World Dramatists: Bertolt Brecht by Karl H. Schoeps.
Then during a conversation at Thanksgiving with Tom and Zach
Aries in Chicago about music and art, Tom asked, "Why do you like
Brecht?" At first I was taken aback. Was this one of those questions
like, "Why do you like Ezra Pound (when you know he was an anti-Semite
fascist)?" Mixing art with politics. But I forged on and replied that
his appeal for me continues to be both his dramatic and poetic work and
concepts of theatre as well as his life and times––what was the music
like then? What did the art look like? How did people dress and act?
It's just the historian in me. I also realize that the Brechtian model
of theatre with its intention of promoting critical thinking is out of
favor in our digitally networked, game-laden, reality-TV soaked culture,
but we got interrupted before we could pursue the conversation further.
November held some interesting opportunities to observe the interplay of
video and music. Artist Catherine Ross had two works exhibited
over a period of four weeks at MIAD. The most successful for me was her
piece Trilling which consisted of looped close-ups of hands
gesturing wildly and the loop fragments passing from right to left. The
sound track was a series of trumpet figures that followed the visuals
aurally in space. Unfortunately, the gallery didn't post any information
about the work so I begin first looking for the logic of the visual
images and seeking the loop structure, then trying to understand the
sound to image relationship. Later I discovered her website (www.catherineross.net/)
and according to her artist's statement, Trilling "recombines
footage from the early 80s sitcom 'Three's Company' into a sequence of
traveling gestural loops. Trumpeter Taylor Haskins composed the
music, creating a unique improvisational response to each clip." I
thought the work had the elegance of a Steve Reich tape loop
piece. Take a look at the excerpt Ross has on her website.
The Colloquia in Conceptual Studies from UWM presented a
performance by Tom Recchion and Jonathon Rosen as Radio
Nurse in November billed as "live audio-visual contamination and
disintegration." I knew of Recchion's work from his Los Angeles Free
Music Society (LAFMS) double LP from the mid-1970s. And unknowingly,
I was familiar with Jonathon Rosen's illustration work through its
appearance most recently in a Science Times special on Sleep from
the New York Times. Their performance of live improvised music
and visuals was one of the more satisfying sound/image events I've
experienced recently––while sound and image were not precisely
coordinated, the flow and interplay of each worked quite well together.
During performance, Recchion sat with his back to the unfolding images
while Rosen faced the screen looking over Recchion's shoulder. The pair
described how they shared materials long distance for the few weeks in
advance of the performance so had familiarity with other's approach and
intentions and consequently they weren't seeking a one-to-one match of
sound and image. Later they described their improvisatory method as a
"non-linear way of working because stories are hard." Recchion reminded
us that there are different free improvisation languages and that for
him, he like to have all musical languages available within the context
of "free improvisation."
A final performance observed was the duo of Tatsuya Nakatani and
David Stackenäs presented as part of Alternating Currents Live
at Woodland Pattern Book Center on November 4. (You can stream or
download the broadcast from November 11, 2007 at http://www.wmse.org/archive.php?dow=Sun&hour=180).
I wanted to see/hear Stackenäs after hearing his work on WMSE 91.7 FM
previously. How did he play those double set of picked figures on the
guitar? (He placed a drum stick under the strings mid-way up the neck
and finger picked on both sides of the divided string simultaneously.)
And I wanted to revisit Nakatani's work after listening to his playing
on Beauty all Spring. Both played solo pieces––Nakatani building
up a droning tour de force that began and ended with double bows on a
large tam tam; Stackenäs presenting his signature picking. Then they
both put similar language together in duets. I wrote in my notebook
about Nakatani, "undisciplined but ferocious."
As I get ready to face 2008, I'm looking forward to teaching the third
iteration of a class I call Sound + Art + Language at MIAD––an
incomplete and eclectic survey exploring the intersections between the
auditory, visual and literary art beginning with Guillaume
Apollinaire, Italian Futurism, Hugo Ball, and Dada, threading
through concrete and sound poetry, and ending up with Lawrence
Weiner, Barbara Kruger and Laurie Anderson. But my mind is
turning towards something for Fall 2008 tentatively called Ethics
and
Aesthetics of Sampling and Appropriation.
I can't wait.
I hope this whirlwind of listening, looking and performing experiences
from 2007 is of interest. Time to put on new ears, eyes, and fingers in
readiness for another year of sound art and music.
© 2008 Thomas Gaudynski |
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