SoundLAB - sonic art projects

edition04.g. m’scape 06

Enter – m’scape 06 – directly here

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m’scape VI
features these artists—>
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Sara Ayers (USA)
Gregory Chatonsky (France)
Luis Coronado (Guatemala)
Paul Devens (Belgium)
Federico Fronterrè (Italy)
Suguru Goto (Japan)
G.H. Hovagimyan & Peter Sinclair (USA)
Caroline de Lannoy (UK)
Matthew MacKisack (USA)
Janek Schaefer (UK)
Shirley Wegner (USA)

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  • Sara Ayers
  • artist biography

    Interview for SIP – SoundLAB Interview project

    Titles:
    1. Dark Dark Empty
    2001, 1:57
    This piece embodies my memories of a recurring nightmare I had as a child. The most terrifying part of the dream was not being lost, alone or in the dark but a physical feeling I remember to this day of simultaneously falling and flying down the stairs.

    2. Cruse
    2005, 3:01
    A cruse is a small jar or vessel; in the context of this work it serves as a vessel of fragmented memories of transience, decay, hope and rebirth.

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  • Grégory Chatonsky
  • artist biography

    Titles:
    1. My last tape
    2003 / 2:00
    Translate Samuel Beckett “last tape” in obsolete comodore 64 tape sound

    2. Revenances
    2000 / 36:47
    A cyborg fall in love.

    3. Doppelganger
    1999 / 9:24
    A woman speaks to a ghost.

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  • Luis Coronado
  • artist biography

    Interview for SIP – SoundLAB Interview project

    Titles:
    1.MONOS DE YAXHÁ ( Apes from Yaxhá )
    2006.
    As a biology student, Luis spent many weeks in the deep jungles of Guatemala,where the penetrating growls of the Howler Monkeys, gives a deep feeling of littleness to anyone being in the midst of this dense vegetation. Sometimes the sounds stays in your mind for long periods of time. The impressive pitch and the varieties of growls ( according to the different ape families ), keep the treetops in order. Nothing can escape from the sensation of being surrounded by large amounts of Howler Monkeys. The physical and temporal distance from the heart of the jungle, helped to recreate this unique sound.

    2.CAMIONETAS ( Buses )
    Year of production: 2006.
    One of Guatemala´s most particular sounds, is the one produced by the colourfull “Camionetas”. This BLUE BIRD buses are the main transportation for local and foreigners, and their sound is very unique. Each Latinamerican country has different kind of buses, and the guatemalan buses in my memory, sounds like this. Its slow humming lows, the screams of the bus helpers, the radio playing….Its like a premoniton of the stormy trip ahead.

    3. EL LAGO TITICACA ( Lake Titicaca )
    Year of production: 2006.
    At 3600 meters above sea level, the dizziness in your mind makes your senses a little bit more concious. In Bolivia, lake Titicaca rests between huge snowy mountains. The little waves from the lake, melt in the rocky beaches with a bright clean sound. The height and the energetic fields around this breathtaking lake, completes the scene with magic and mistery.

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  • Paul Devens
  • artist biography

    Titles:
    1. On ‘Alkaline’ 01’43 (2006)

    2. ‘Dangerpie’ 03’31 (2005)

    These compositions connect to the theme ‘Memoryscapes’ in the way sounds relate to previous occasions that such a sound is perceived in mind. You would recognise the sound of a car because you already heard a car before. Artists, like me for instance, could play with existing sounds, in order to evoke an idea, a thought, an atmosphere.. or brand new sounds get invented, thanks to the developments in technology. ‘Alkaline’ and ‘Dangerpie’ both oscillate in between alienation and recognition. The listeners’ mind is somehow triggered to place unknown ‘sonic objects’ into a mental realm. Maybe to deal with the fremdkorper or understand the non-understandable.
    The sounds are produced with custom made virtual generators, home made electronics and effects, toys, field-recordings from urban life. The compositions are live at-once-recorded sessions.

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  • Federico Fronterrè
  • artist biography

    Title:
    To Recognize
    (3’16”)
    The conception of this track is related with the will of the expression of the duality between me and the world around me. I want to represent the condition of interaction and fight that is created in this relation. There are two levels in this track that represent the two elements whose I’ve spoke about. The low-mid frequencies are the indistinct, chaotic land of the unknown people. They create, in the beginning, a sense of uneasiness for the incapacity of discriminating the importance of every single element of the crowd.
    Then you begin to understand the consonance between every part of this world and you can hear a melody where you heard an ensemble of strange and creepy sounds before.
    The difficulty to be on the same wavelength with this shapeless reality is symbolized in the track with the scratchy sound(the second level in the track) representing somebody that wants to escape from an uncomfortable situation, from a reality in which he can’t survive.

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  • Suguru Goto
  • artist biography

    Title: o.m.2 – g.i. -p.p., 1997-2004, 19 min.

    1. om1
    2. om2
    3. om3

    Composition for BodySuit and Interactive Video

    The sound for the original composition was generated from April until July in 1997 at IRCAM for instruments and computer. Some of the sections were modified later, and then adapted for use with BodySuit, creating this new version.

    First the Max with ISPW on NeXT was mainly used to generate computer sound. The sound synthesis methods which are programmed for this composition are based upon additive Synthesis, FM synthesis and Granular Synthesis. These are now ported to Max/MSP. The algorithm is based on the idea to create mechanical texture which gradually transforms as time progresses. The parameters are decided with controlled random data which are sent through many levels of hierarchy. The Granular Synthesis was especially programmed to interpolate sound constantly.

    This composition is based on the density of texture and the alternation between the dynamical and the statistical aspect of the movement. The ideas of the composition are summarized in the title of which the initials mean : o.m=Onomatopoeia and montage, both of them can be heard clearly in this composition, 2=second version, g=granular, i=interpolation ; p.p=poly-phase.

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  • G.H. Hovagimyan & Peter Sinclair
  • artist biography

    Title:
    Circular Time
    2006
    Bastien Gallet and Peter Sinclair decided to create a video with me talking about podcasting and memory and my ideas about time. Peter edited the sound in a layered manner and the results is a Borgesian style discussion about circular time. Cyrille C. de Laleu shot video of me and Bastien walking a circular hedge first one way and then the other. The finished piece should be quite interesting because she is a pretty terrific artist. In the meantime the sound piece by Peter does a neat trick of using stereo pairs to have me talking at myself.

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  • Caroline de Lannoy
  • artist biography

    Title:
    Indivisible
    2006, 1:48
    My sound piece “Indivisible” is the recollection of events exploring the nature of memory and methods through which it can be disorientated. It involves structured sounds with an implicit concept of time, place, associated emotions, pitch, and energy. The presence of these elements is organized into units with interrelated rhythm, harmony, and melody. It defines time as a nonspatial linear continuum wherein events of memories occur in an apparently irreversible order. The work invokes and conveys a sense of motion in time and space.

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  • Matthew MacKisack
  • artist biography

    Title:
    guesswork (asirememberit)
    2005 – 3m28s
    Guesswork is a project that is: treating art as stimulus; sculpting the spectator?s mental imagery; asking how a mechanised and mediated society sculpts the contents of consciousness; trying to explain to myself problems of memory and epistemology; trying to argue myself out of my head. Guesswork (asirememberit) is talking about boxes: a room, the Cartesian “dark room of the mind”, a television, a Necker cube.

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  • Janek Schaefer
  • artist biography

    Titles:
    1. “His Masters Voices”
    1997 [film 2006], 5.05min
    ‘His Master’s Voices’ is a simple and clear demonstration of the multi-arm simultaneous play back of the Tri-Phonic Turntable, and was the fist Plunderphonic collage I ever recorded on it. T.S.Elliot reads an extract in mono from his 1948 poem, ‘The Four Quartets’ which ponders on ‘Time’, past and present. Taking the spacing of the tone-arms as a basic delay device set out on a single copy of the LP, each output is panned across the stereo field which in turn ‘amplifies’ the content of the prose.

    2. “Minneapolis ‘Office Max’ Messages”
    2003 [film 2006], 2.15min
    A collage of the messages I found left on the display model of a mini digital dictaphone bought at a Branch of Office Max in Minneapolis. In a condensed period of time we get to hear many different cultures and stereotypes interacting with the technology uninterrupted by the presence of sales staff. The piece concludes with a voice from my car radio as I tested it in the carpark outside talking about innovation and technology.

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  • Shirley Wegner
  • artist biography

    Title:
    1. “I LOVE YOU”
    2002/2006, 60 seconds soundtrack in a loop

    ‘I LOVE YOU’ is a 60 seconds soundtrack of gunshots played in a loop. The soundtrack is composed of two types of gunshots: a single gunshot or a burst-mode from a machinegun simulating the lines and the dots of Morse Code and edited in a sequence that spells out I LOVE YOU. (In a gallery the piece would be presented with the 10”x 10” aluminum plaque and a set of wireless headphones).
    Inspired by my own experiences of my army service, in this piece I was interested in the ambiguity formed in juxtaposing two languages; a military language on one hand and a language of intimacy on the other.
    This piece is part of a body of work that addresses the idea of construction of memory. Growing up in Israel and living and working in New York City, has created a geographical distance which allowed me to explore how my memories were formed, to expose their mechanism of construction. In each of the images I make I explore the relationship between the personal and the political, between my own private memory and the social political context in which the image operates.