Sunday, April 22, 2012

WOW MOM and my father's voice


WOW MOM and my father's voice

WOW MOM
WOW MOM WOW
WOW MOM WOW WOW MOM WOW
WOW MOM WOW MOM WOW
WOW MOM MOM WOW MOM MOM WOW
MOM WOW
MOM WOW MOM
MOM WOW MO MOM WOW MOM
MOM WOW MOM WOW MOM
MOM WOW WOW MOM WOW WOW MOM

apocolypse negativises all achivement.  the opera of the damned.
              ... Graham Video Chat Growing up in Texas, opera sensation
              Texas-born and bred opera star's elegance and warm
lessness, and the phantom of the other opera borders on psychosis.)
"for here is what it is, opera and oratorio,
My father sings the opera beautifully. There are nine acts and tableaus,
are the austere elements of this opera of muted terror and annihilation.
familiar, developing much as an epistolary novel or soap opera develops,
 says jennifer, a opera a opera a opera, then sartre la-la
 she sings, jennifer sings, a gay a opera a opera a opera,
 a gay a opera a opera a opera, and alan and jennifer are all
                  opera and totenlieder, we silently drank a glass of
new ion in opera ,
rivals  beggar's opera  venice irish widow
  distance. It is here at the climax of the opera that my father's voice
  ...
  ...
  ...
  ...
  ...
  ...

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Tracks from the Eyebeam Sound Summit

Tracks from the Eyebeam Sound Summit

I recorded the following tracks at the summit; most of it focuses on my
playing - which might or might not be of interest. The baritone sax is
Chris Diasparra. The singing in the summit13 is Seth Dellinger, who floats
in and out. The occasional thumps elsewhere are from the interior of Mary
Mattingly's Flock House. I played sarangi with Ben Houge's sounds, as well
as sounds coming in from others on the OSC network. There are two tracks
based on Kyle Clyde's giant plate reverb unit. I played sarangi, flute,
viola, cura cumbus, and garklein recorder. On one track, I walk through
the space, recording and passing what everyone's doing. Apologies for
emphasizing my own work; Jackson Moore recorded everything, and others
recorded their own work as well. I'm amazed at the richness of Chris'
baritone and Seth's singing; on summit13, my speed's pushed to the limit.
The whole event was astounding! Thanks to everyone, especially Jackson for
putting this together! (Apologies also if I've missed credit for anyone.)

http://www.alansondheim.org/summit01.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit02.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit03.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit05.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit06.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit07.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit08.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit09.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit10.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit11.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/summit13.mp3

The original announcement with URLs and descriptions from Jackson -

On April 21st, Eyebeam's main exhibition space will be transformed
into a small village dedicated to creative sound research. Using resources
as diverse as atmospheric sensors, string instruments, reverberant plates,
magnetized wires, cell phones, data hubs, and laughter, participants from
Eyebeam's sound research group will convene to run experiments, share
original research, develop work in progress, and explore collaborative
strategies.

Interaction, encounter, and juxtaposition will be emphasized over sound
isolation.the idea being that sound is transparent enough to permit a
human ecology that transcends the singular focus of the concert format.

Kyle Clyde will test sound absorbancy, sound bleed, and feedback
thresholds with her giant plate reverb unit.
http://www.kyleclyde.com/

Bernhard Garnicnig will examine the resonant frequencies and specific
sonic qualities of networked devices.
http://www.acgunsdcroses.com/2011/volumes

Christine Sun-Kim will experiment with strategies for encoding sounds on
magnetic wire.
http://christinesunkim.com/

Jackson Moore, John Speck, Russell Baker, and Rob Lee will work on a
melodic pidgin language.
http://www.thelanguageofmoss.com/listen-to-moss

David Reeder's OSC network will turn a ping pong table in Cambridge into a
metronome in Chelsea, and much much more.

Mike Clemow will be working over the OSC server with a the roving laptop
brigade, sampling and interacting with the surrounding space.
http://michaelclemow.com/

Yo Park will lead exercises in laughter, with Andrew Sigler, Cigdem
Tankut, Gulsen Caulk, Gabriel Levicky, Jayoung Chung, Victor De La Cruz,
and others.

Alan Sondheim, Azure Carter, and Chris Diasporra will revisit the
discovery of music: the moment when people first began figuring out how to
make sound with objects. http://www.alansondheim.org/

Seth Dellinger will develop his phonemic vocal music.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/44190101/Introduction-to-the-Beeayboll-project

Ben Houge will construct his auditory kaleidoscope, and provide sensor
data from the MIT Media Lab for sonification.
http://benhouge.com/kaleidoscope.html

Amelia Marzec will demo Re-wired, a wearable device that translates
ambient sound into haptic feedback. http://www.ameliamarzec.com/rewired/

Brian House will sonify his compendium of rhythms from everyday life.
http://rhythmanalysislab.org/about

Mary Mattingly brings us the sound of place: the Flock House living
system, and its peripatetic denizens. http://flockhouse.org/

With a special surprise from Hethre Contant's Texas Mockingbirds.

The day will end with a public conversation at 7pm.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Brief Synopsis of the Republican Plaform


Brief Synopsis of the Republican Plaform

http://www.alansondheim.org/platform.mp4

Republicans make me nauseous; their apparent takes on race,
sex, fair play, the environment, the 1% - you name it - are
corrosive, inherently violent, hypocritical. Anyway as you
know, I can't write about this - I don't have the knowledge
many of my colleagues do. So I express myself sometimes in
song and sometimes in video, and this is video. Mind you,
this is the platform of the bad Republicans, those who
would control our bodies and minds and take what little
health care we have, away. And I think this Republican
Platform video, like the Platform Sutra itself, is full of
joy, reverence, and contradiction! Onward, good Republicans!

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Telegraph

Telegraph

The 19th century telegraph and railroad provided the first habitus
for virtual communities. The railroad objectified time and created
the potential for liaisons at a distance. The telegraph workers used
their spare time to talk to one another - friendships and marriages
resulted. The telegraph used a protocol stack reminiscent of tcp/ip
- the layers ranged from hardware to application, with redundancy
and several layers of coding, including addressable messaging
systems, in-between. The telegraph has its parallels in ascii, in
terms of bandwidth; visual telegraphy never really caught on. The
telegraph communality was celebrated in popular literature and song.
For a long time I've been interested in the apparatus itself as
well; recently in Omaha, I was able to buy a small station consist-
ing of a sounder and key. Soon I'll have a telegraph between my
table and Azure's desk, about twenty feet away.

http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph.mp3 (sounds of 1880s key
and sounder with various adjustments for proper tuning:
documentary)
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraphb.mp3 (altered for the
sake of making a sound-work: docudrama)

documentation of telegraph station unit plus unmounted sounder
and key (the unmounted sounder is 1895, the key early-mid
twentieth century):
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph1.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph3.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph4.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph5.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph6.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph7.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/telegraph8.jpg

unmounted key: 37
mounted sounder: Western Electric
mounted key: Western Electric / AT&T

The best book I've seen on the subject: The Telegraph Instructor,
G. M. Dodge, Valpraiso, Indiana, 1908.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

seven omaha videos



seven omaha videos

for Lee Murray, Barbara Simcoe, and Michael Szpakowski

on the virtual, on intrusions, on signaling and communality

http://www.alansondheim.org/pizzeria.mp4 Azure shimmies oddly
http://www.alansondheim.org/singing.mp4 odder flute and voice
in high wind while something exploded in the background, big
emergency
http://www.alansondheim.org/woodpecker.mp4 downy woodpecker
perfectly poised preening, performing
http://www.alansondheim.org/descentpain.mp4 i suppose descent
of a tower from which singing and explosion were heard
http://www.alansondheim.org/ethno.mp4 zoo ethnography of
humans with syringes and field notebooks among animals and
virtual backdrops, virtual freedom, virtual communality
http://www.alansondheim.org/flagpain.mp4 fifty mile per hour
wind and flag against sputtering sound from flag, sarangi,
voice
http://www.alansondheim.org/jellyfish.mp4 because of the
untoward beauty, in spite of the aquarium, without sound,
no mimickry

There are small shifts in the everyday behavior of men and
women, in the light, in reflections in the sky, in the
slightest changes of pitch or echoes that appear to come
from nowhere. magnified, the world suffers, organisms come
to life, things totter, topple, what is - was, what was - is
fast disappearing, what will be - has already corroded. zoo
animals live - are kept alive; the jellyfish remains mobile,
immobile; the flag might as well be a frond from sigillaria,
leaf from neuropteris; flute and voice are already lost in
the mythical darkness of wind and explosions; for a moment,
Azure moves to the rhythm of the corporate and time unwinds;
for a moment, this bird, this woodpecker, here, signals in a
search for food; and for a moment, descent takes the body
from the wind, and the hollowed rasp of metal stairs takes
over. It is all already gone. It is all built on and from
the everyday - look, you'll never guess what happened to me
this morning, who could of thought something like that would
occur in the middle of the night. We live among these
tremblings, not long enough for the grand cycles to mean
anything more than the flattened pages of history: we have
to read the world in such a small amount of time, everything
is lost, everything disappearing, where we were born is
never bearing down, where we are headed is all too familiar,
everything trembles, shudders, everything is otherwise...
 ·  ·  · 2 seconds ago

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

playing flute with grackles


playing flute with grackles

http://www.alansondheim.org/calls1.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/calls2.mp3

you can hardly hear the grackles, but we did well
on the rising glissandi

thank you grackles


Tuesday, April 3, 2012

in Meditation




in Meditation

http://www.alansondheim.org/meditation.mp3

in Transport dost Thou send me,
to and from Wastelands and Pales,
into Plains of Jewels and Perfection,
into great Halls of Tourmalines and Amber,
yes, of Tourmalines and Amber,
to and from Wastelands and Pales