Episodes
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Welcome to the 22nd episode of Anechoic Chamber, once again bringing you unique reportage from the thriving margins of art and culture. Our guest for this edition is Jean-Jacques Martinod, Ecuadorian filmmaker, transmedia artist, archivist, radio DJ, and occasional curator. Martinod’s film work, which is the topic of discussion for this program, fuses together elements of both experimental and documentary filmmaking practice, resulting in a unique audio-visual hybrid that the artist describes as follows: “Cinema as messenger via spontaneous generation and improvisation, at an immanent level, to counteract the society of the spectacle...an invitation to a polysemic experience and potential polyphonies. A cinema of becomings.” This is evident in films such as Before the Deluge, La Bala de Sandoval (or Sandoval’s Bullet), and Datura’s Aubade, the last done in collaboration with Bretta Walker. Taking occasional cues from surrealist and gothic styles of literature, cinematic influences such as Jean Epstein and film peers like Salome Lamas (whose concept of para-fiction informs Martinod’s own evocation of what he calls para-worlds) his work boils down a complex set of reference points into a visceral experience that is strangely accessible while being intellectually challenging. As such, he has screened at international festivals such as the Rotterdam Film Festival, FIDMarseille, Mar del Plata, European Media Arts Festival, 25FPS, and many more, alongside regular appearances in galleries and DIY spaces. So here, with a much more detailed exposition of his creative vision, is Jean Jacques Martinod.
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backing sounds provided by the artist and TBWB
opening music: Colin Andrew Sheffield / James Eck Rippie, "Viola Variations"
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artist film links on Vimeo (password: monopolio)
(password: monopolio)
Before the Deluge | 38min
https://vimeo.com/343528776
La Bala de Sandoval(Eng. Sandoval's Bullet) | 17min
https://vimeo.com/297421250
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Anechoic Chamber links:
donate via paypal to [email protected]
host website: www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net
closing music: Teiji Ito, "Moonplay" -
Welcome listeners to the 21st episode of Anechoic Chamber, once again bringing you unique reportage from the thriving margins of art and culture. Our guest this time is the British sound artist Scanner, known by his human alias Robin Rimbaud. With a staggering number of live actions and recordings to his credit, Scanner’s oft-cited and controversial claim to fame has been his usage of intercepted communications and conversations as the raw material with which to build music dramas with an intense poignancy and personal relevance. This practice is, however, just one point of reference in a large body of work that deals with what the artist has called a “archaeology of loss” documenting the ghosts and all-too-quickly forgotten ephemera of the information age. Scanner’s enthusiasm for such led to the co-formation of the notable record label Ash International, one of the key labels to fuse esoteric or paranormal interests with aesthetic impression from the hard sciences. His own work has been applied to all kinds of installation environments and contexts, and to collaborations with artists from DJ Spooky to Mike Kelley, and has even earned the endorsement of the late Gilles Deleuze. He has created permanent installations in everything from Riga airport to a Paris morgue, has scored the first virtual reality ballet for the Dutch National Ballet, and also scored a piece in Trafalgar Square for 1,000 dancers. With a restlessness that has extended to his private practice of writing a daily diary entry since he was 12 years old, we at Anechoic Chamber are fortunate to steal some rare moments of his free time.
all selections provided by Sacnner, from the following releases (mostly) available to stream / download at https://scanner.bandcamp.com/:
- "Sound for Spaces"
- "Play Along"
- "Mass Observation (Expanded)"
- "Esprits de Paris (with Mike Kelley)"
- "Electronic Garden"
- "Reason by Heart, Sleep by Twilight"
- also featured Scanner remix of Scorn "Night Tide," from "Ellipsis" remix album
additional artist links: www.scannerdot.com
Anechoic Chamber Links:
host website | www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net
donate via Paypal: [email protected] -
Episodes manquant?
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Welcome to episode 20 of Anechoic Chamber, once again bringing you unique reportage from the glowing margins of art and culture. Our guest for this edition is Steve Finbow, author and editor whose works have appeared on imprints such as Infinity Land Press, Zero Books, Repeater Books and Amphetamine Sulfate. Finbow has quietly yet unmistakably become an integral part of the 21st century literary landscape, by taking an ecumenical approach to written material that is equally informed by critical theory and avant-garde art as by the under-documented shadow side of human behaviors and interactions. In a cultural scene which seems to have exhausted its ability to explore the extreme, so-called, Finbow presents a variety of often uncomfortable subject matter in a way that is both forensic and poetic. From his biography of Allen Ginsberg to his exhaustive discussions of, among other things, necrophilia or the role of sickness in creative life, Finbow’s body of work steers clear of expectations and does so in a way that is genuinely informative rather than making this simple act of surprise or shock the primary objective. He has also worked in collaboration with artist Karolina Urbaniak on Death Mort Tod: A European Book of the Dead and has most recently edited Infinity Land Press’ Anthology commemorating the first eight years of that publisher’s activity.
Additional atmospheres and segues by Thomas Bey William Bailey
Closing credits music: 'Blue Basket' (instrumental) from "Cambodian Cassette Archives: Khmer Folk and Pop Music, Vol. 1"
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Artist links:
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/anthology
https://amphetaminesulphate.bigcartel.com/product/the-mindshaft
https://www.instagram.com/stevefinbow/
Anechoic Chamber links
donate via Paypal: [email protected]
Host official webstite: www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net -
Welcome adventurous listeners to the 19th episode of Anechoic Chamber. This is the second part of our two-part exposition of the work and thoughts of our guest Andrew McKenzie. Working since the 1970s, McKenzie is particularly known for his pioneering efforts to expand the vocabulary of recorded sound, which itself expanded into a mission to enhance all modalities of perception - this has been carried out with his flagship project The Hafler Trio as well as in collaboration with artists such as Clock DVA, The Anti Group, and Psychic TV.
Though certainly not the only arrow in his McKenzie’s quiver, his extensive performing and recording career has both informed, and been informed by, a host of other creative activities drawing upon knowledge from both techno-scientific and esoteric realms: working as a computer programmer before (as he reminds me) there were “pictures” on computer screens. Teaching Tibetan language and calligraphy (and some Sanskrit). Writing books, editing video, designing everything from graphics to instructional materials, and working as both a hypnotherapist and psychotherapist. One of his more recent and significant ventures, dubbed by him “complementary education,” fuses insights gleaned from all of these distinct experiences, and involves conducting 14-hour long sound workshops aimed at re-discovering the creative process in a world obsessed with nominalization (in other words, with the act of devaluing a process by conceptualizing it as a thing or object). After fruitful residencies in the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland and elsewhere, McKenzie now resides in Estonia, from which he joined our host for the following conversation.
This comes with the disclaimer that, despite capturing several hours worth of useful material for these next couple episodes, we still emerge with little more than a snapshot of a legitimately eclectic and evolving personality.
Additional audio segues provided by Thomas Bey William Bailey
intro music: Pierre Bastien, "Gypsy Rhythm"
Artist link: linktr.ee/simply_superior
Anechoic Chamber links
Host: www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net
Donate via Paypal: [email protected] -
Welcome adventurous listeners to the 18th episode of Anechoic Chamber. This will be the first in a two-part exposition of the work and thoughts of our guest Andrew McKenzie. Working since the 1970s, McKenzie is particularly known for his pioneering efforts to expand the vocabulary of recorded sound, which itself expanded into a mission to enhance all modalities of perception - this has been carried out with his flagship project The Hafler Trio as well as in collaboration with artists such as Clock DVA, The Anti Group, and Psychic TV.
Though certainly not the only arrow in his McKenzie’s quiver, his extensive performing and recording career has both informed, and been informed by, a host of other creative activities drawing upon knowledge from both techno-scientific and esoteric realms: working as a computer programmer before (as he reminds me) there were “pictures” on computer screens. Teaching Tibetan language and calligraphy (and some Sanskrit). Writing books, editing video, designing everything from graphics to instructional materials, and working as both a hypnotherapist and psychotherapist. One of his more recent and significant ventures, dubbed by him “complementary education,” fuses insights gleaned from all of these distinct experiences, and involves conducting 14-hour long sound workshops aimed at re-discovering the creative process in a world obsessed with nominalization (in other words, with the act of devaluing a process by conceptualizing it as a thing or object). After fruitful residencies in the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland and elsewhere, McKenzie now resides in Estonia, from which he joined our host for the following conversation.
This comes with the disclaimer that, despite capturing several hours worth of useful material for these next couple episodes, we still emerge with little more than a snapshot of a legitimately eclectic and evolving personality.
Additional audio segues provided by Thomas Bey William Bailey
intro music: Pierre Bastien, "Caravan" and "Au Prado"
Artist link: https://linktr.ee/simply_superior
Anechoic Chamber links
Host: http://www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net
Donate via Paypal: [email protected] -
Welcome to episode number 17 of Anechoic Chamber - freeform commentary from the thriving margins of art and culture. Our guest for this edition is author Audrey Szasz. Currently based in London and raised in Central Europe, Szasz has been noted for writing in the mold of authors such as Anna Kavan and has claimed others such as JG Ballard and Lauetreamont as primary influences - all coming together to suggest a style that resists easy genre classification, and which builds a profoundly personal and admittedly perverse realm of fantasy and nightmare from elements of science fiction, decadent poetry, true crime writing and much more. Perhaps fitting into a class of writers that were once condemned by the literary critic Michiko Kakutani as so-called designer nihilism, Audrey’s creations can often be extremely intense explorations of the psychopathology that results from humans’ existence as eternal contradictions. For example, her latest work Tears of a Komsomol Girl builds its unconventional narrative around a semi-fictionalized portrait of the so-called “Butcher of Rostov,” Andrei Chikatilo. Having made her official debut with “The Plan for the Abduction of JG Ballard” - a collaborative work with the poet and author Jeremy Reed - she has now gone on to release work on the Amphetamine Sulfate and Infinity Land imprints. Our wide-ranging discussion here reveals a number of Audrey’s motivations, thoughts on non-literary human affairs, and spiritual predecessors, who we touch upon in the first part of this program.
backing sound piece "Negev" provided by the artist
|Artist links (content may be NSFW)|
audreyszasz.wordpress.com
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/tearsofakomsomolgirl
@szasz_audrey
|Anechoic Chamber links|
host: www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net
Donate via paypal: [email protected] -
Welcome to the 16th episode of Anechoic Chamber, featuring Johnson City, TN-based artist Bryan Lewis Saunders. Working in a wide array of disciplines from drawing to sound recording, Saunders is in many ways the quintessential American folk artist: having himself identified risk-taking as one of the key identifying features of American creativity, his own forays into this field have coupled the boundary-testing ethos of 1970s American performance artists with an intensely dedicated level of documentation that itself combines scientific rigor and journalistic honesty. For decades now, Saunders has maintained his vow to draw daily self-portraits that reveal fluctuations in his psychic makeup, and has done this in tandem with projects in which he imposes severe restraints upon himself: living for a month deprived of sight. Drawing while under the influence of a new drug for two straight weeks. Subjecting himself to extreme temperatures for extensive periods, and choosing to document the effects of completely monochromatic living environments during quarantine. In addition to this, Saunders’ experiments with sleep-talking and his unique form of confessional performance known as “stand-up tragedy” hint at an individual for whom no obscure corner of human experiential terrain is to be left un-explored or un-mapped.
credits:
Remixed excerpts of Bryan Lewis Saunders' "Deaf Month", "Blind Month", and "Temperature Month" Vinyls by Thomas Bey William Bailey. Background music by Razen. Audio recordings by Christopher Fleeger, Bryan Lewis Saunders and Thomas Bey William Bailey.
Artist link:
www.bryanlewissaunders.org
Anechoic Chamber links:
Donate via Paypal - [email protected]
General host info: www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net -
Welcome listeners to the 15th installment in the Anechoic Chamber audio documentary series. Our guest for this edition is San Francisco-based artist and acoustic researcher Michael Gendreau. Gendreau has been active as a solo artist or musical collaborator since the early 1980s, gradually diverging from the realm of conventional recorded music by recording the sounds of built structures and amplifying them in performance scenarios. This use of buildings themselves as a kind of “loudspeaker” is one dramatic and unequivocally physical aspect of his work, but certainly not the only one. With his several decades long research into the concept of parataxis - that is, the juxtaposition of multiple pieces of verbal information that have no immediately clear relation to one another - Gendreau has immersed himself in the worlds of linguistics and logic, while also alighting on the ideal conceptual apparatus with which to animate works of experimental music. Among his other sonic adventures, Gendreau has also made his own unique contribution to the world of so-called “turntablism,” using the volatile medium of lathe-cut records as a performance tool. From his early work with ‘zine production to his publication of the densely packed yet accessible Commonplace Book of Parataxis, Gendreau’s creative life has been held together by several common golden threads of elementalism, openness to collaboration, and - in his own words - a belief that ““Creativity arises with effective interaction between two modes of thinking.”
music used in this episode:
Michael Gendreau: “Drowning” 12” and selections from “Concerted Structures” CD
Crawling with Tarts: “Cameo and “Candy Tooth Ceylon”
Collision Stories: untitled 2 and 3 from “Those Missing Will Complete Us”
Artist links:
http://www.michaelgendreau.net
http://www.publiceyesore.com/catalog.php?pg=3&pit=140
https://soundcloud.com/michael-lee-gendreau
http://www.collisionstories.com/
http://rajar.bandcamp.com/releases
Anechoic Chamber links:
donate via Paypal - [email protected]
general host info: www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net -
Welcome listeners to the 14th episode of Anechoic Chamber, once again bringing you exclusive insights from the margins of art and culture. Our guest for this edition is the Finnish visual artist Jukka Siikala. Working in the media of painting, photography and video, and now narrative fiction as well, Siikala has a highly distinct style noted for its focus on psychosexual material, the presentation of which walks a tightrope between eroticism and horror. Though sharing some creative DNA with similarly inclined artists like Hans Bellmer, Siikala’s work much more clearly shows the effects of the use and abuse of digital technology: for example, many of his painted portraits are marked by photorealistic approximations of the pixelation or visual glitches that accompany partially downloaded video clips. As such, his artwork successfully reveals the essence of a 21st century wherein pornography is often more readily available than running water, and where ephemeral obsessions multiply more quickly than can often be studied or documented. His refusal to comment on the moral or ethical implications of such a world actually increases the dreamlike potency of his work. He has personally suggested that much of his material opens onto a world in which [quote] “the female is a fetishized platform and the male is almost non-existent.” Whether you find this to be a desirable state, or the stuff of nightmares taken from the pages of J.G. Ballard’s fiction, we submit that Siikala’s work will cause strong visceral reactions.
Needless to say, listener discretion is advised for those uncomfortable with the subject matter mentioned above.
background ambience from Jukka Siikala's "Human Porridge" DVD soundtrack; and additional unreleased ambiences from Siikala and TBWB
artist links: www.siikala.com (NSFW)
Anechoic Chamber links:
donate via Paypal - [email protected]
general host activities: www.thomasbeywilliambailey.net -
Welcome to the 13th episode of Anechoic Chamber; free-form audio and insights from the margins of art and culture. Our guests for this edition are Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, a partnership known for their advancement of scientific creativity - that is to say, for a series of works that are aesthetically engaging while also being informed by a high level of scientific rigor, and in particular by a specialist knowledge in the limits of perceptibility. The duo’s fascinating art events, with alluring titles such as “Mucilaginous Omniverse,” or “Sonolevitation,” are almost unparalleled in the modern art world, owing to their rejection of that milieu’s largely linguistic approach to propagating itself and a clearer focus on art as phenomenological study. More importantly, though, they earn their distinction by exploring the so-called “objectless universe, “ exposing audiences to physical phenomena in various transitional states or states of incompleteness. In some cases, their commitment has led to historic firsts, such as the largest display of sonoluminescence ever displayed (this being the emission of light bursts from imploding bubbles within an acoustically excited liquid). Through these actions, Domnitch and Gelfand have also touched upon the sensory condition of synesthesia and raised the question of perceptual modalities beyond the five so-called classical senses. We hope you find the following discussion of their methods and inspirations as stimulating as we do.Additional sounds from the artists' installation / performances "Force Field" and "Mucilaginous Universe," and "Specification Sixteen" (audio by Richard Chartier & Taylor Deupree) from "Camera Lucida" DVD Artist links: www.portablepalace.comAnechoic Chamber linksDonate via Paypal: [email protected] host activities: www.thomasbeywilliambailey.com
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Good evening and welcome to the 12th episode of Anechoic Chamber; free-form audio and insights from the margins of arts and culture. Our guest for this edition is Danish multi media artist, nomad and researcher Jacob Kirkegaard. Given his extensive amount of travel and the wide scope of his chosen subject matter, Kirkegaard’s work can be difficult to summarize in a brief statement, hence the necessity for the lengthier introduction that this show will provide. Nevertheless, Kirkegaard is notable for his use of location recordings, later combined with a variety of visual imagery, to present intimate experiences of globally diverse locations and to perhaps interrogate just how familiar, or just how exotic, these locations may be to us. In addition, with ambitious works such as Labytinthitis, Kirkegaard has extended this sense of reality’s ambiguous nature to the human body, using the rarely explored realm of otoacoustic emissions from the inner ear to show how even fundamental assumptions regarding sensory perception can occasionally be challenged. In the process of doing so, Kirkegaard somehow manages to be an artist who (in the words of Julie Martin from his 2014 Earside Out exhibition catalog), “transcends politics….there is no lecture from the artist, no finger pointing at us humans who are complicit in many […] world-wide phenomena.”
Featured audio (all provided by the artist): Excerpts from "Rewind" installation as found in Sweden, Cuba, New York City, Istanbul / artist's contribution to "freq_out" group sound exhibition / location recordings from Chernobyl / "A Town in Russia" / "Opus Mors" excerpts (ambient recordings of hospital morgue and corpse decomposition at body farm) / "Membrane" recordings of U.S.-Mexico border wall / "singing sands" recordings from Oman / "Labyrinthitis" piece based on otoacoustic emissions
artist links: www.fonik.dk | www.topos.media
Anechoic Chamber links:
[email protected] for PayPal donations
www.thomasbeywilliambailey.com for host activities -
Our guest for this episode is Kazuya Ishigami, an electro-acoustic composer and musician who has been active for decades in the extremely fertile Kansai region of Japan. This is the region that has brought us such paragons of musical eclecticism as the Boredoms and pioneers of unadulterated noise such as Hijokaidan and Masonna. However, in addition to these very widely cited examples of sonic intensity and underground attitude, there are creators like Ishigami who incorporate a much greater degree of nuance and subtlety, which is grounded in a clearly Japanese philosophy towards biological phenomena. That is to say, much like the late Kyoto experimenter Akifumi Nakajima, aka Aube, Ishigami approaches technology as something that cannot be completely separated from the natural world, and of course this results in a very organic sound that disrupts expectations of how “electronic” music should sound.
In the spirit of the original Japanese independent record labels like Skating Pears and Vanity, Ishigami has also curated his own NEUS-318 label to minimize aesthetic compromises, and to locally release the works of artists from nations as geographically distant as Argentina and Lithuania. The label’s name is an acronym standing for “noise, electronics, and unknown sounds,” which itself is a good synopsis of Ishigami’s musical interests and his balance of noise music’s confrontational aspects with something more ephemeral and less clearly defined. Ishigami has worked as a concert organizer in both traditional venues and locations like the Zenkouji Buddhist temple, as being a collaborator with visual and performance artists, and of course being a reliable and friendly participant in the “uchiage,” the after-concert communal meals which often end up being an extension of the concerts themselves.
Artist links:
https://kazuyaishigami.bandcamp.com
http://www.neus318.com
https://neus318.bandcamp.com
Paypal donations for Anechoic Chamber: [email protected]
All other inquiries: [email protected] -
Time to pass around the hat while waiting for fresh content. Spread the word on social media platforms if so inclined, and PayPal to [email protected]. Gratzi!
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Greetings and welcome to Episode 10 of Anechoic Chamber, free form audio from the margins of arts and culture. This week’s guest is perhaps Argentina’s most eclectic musical export, Reynols. True to that eclectic form, this edition of Anechoic Chamber will proceed a little differently than before. After several email exchanges with founding member Anla Courtis, it was decided to do a show which would be wholly comprised of examples from Reynols’ sonic universe along with narration, by me, of their biography, as previously printed in the 2018 Pica-Disk box set ["Minecxio Emanations"] dedicated to the band. For newcomers: Reynols was founded in 1993 and has ever since been powered by the singular vision of Miguel Tomasin, a drummer / vocalist with Down’s Syndrome whose unorthodox interpretation of the universe around him gave rise to both musical forms and non-musical concepts the likes of which “normal” musicians, so-called, still struggle to create in order to differentiate themselves from their thousands of peers. Despite being no strangers to the interview circuit, being the subjects of various documentaries and (as we will get to in short order) being on Argentinian national television for a considerable amount of time, a certain fog of mysteriousness still covers the band’s activities and many of their acolytes might agree that it’s better this way. So, in this spirit, we’ll honor Anla’s request continue by allowing the band’s music center stage.
All musical selections by Reynols, available on the following releases:
https://www.discogs.com/Acid-Mothers-Reynols-Vol1/release/14832178
https://www.discogs.com/Reynols-Minecxio-Emanations-1993-2018/release/13340854
some additional new releases by the artist:
- Gordura Vegetal Hidrogenada 25th Anniversary
in a special "dematerialized LP" format edition
https://reynols.bandcamp.com/album/gordura-vegetal-hidrogenada
- Reynols "Gona Rubian Ranesa" LP
Outlier Communications (Canada)
https://outliercommunications.bandcamp.com/
Anechoic chamber links
donate via Paypal: [email protected]
general inquiries. [email protected] -
Welcome to episode 9 of Anechoic Chamber, freeform audio from the margins of art and culture. This week's guest is filmmaker Thomas Nordanstad. Thomas currently helms the production company Electric Avenue Pictures, and has a cinematic resume whose highlights include documentary films dealing with creative response to repressive societies, a series of visually immersive films produced in collaboration with Carl Michael von Hausswolff, and some ambitious new projects: these include a forthcoming feature film entitled The Letting Go, a slow film treatment of Rikrit Tiravanija's communal dining project, and a trilogy of Pinter film adaptations. The economical and essentialist nature of Nordanstad's film is an increasing rarity in an image-saturated cultural atmosphere, and has provided plentiful rich material for the discussion to follow.
Cover image: still from Nordanstad's production of "Victoria Station" by Harold Pinter (forthcoming)
Additional sounds: opening dialogue from "Victoria Station" / soundtrack excerpts from "The Letting Go" (forthcoming) / megamix of psychoambience by Thomas Bey William Bailey
artist links:
www.nordanstad.com
Anechoic Chamber links:
donate via Paypal: [email protected]
all other inquiries: [email protected] -
Welcome to episode 8 of Anechoic Chamber, free form audio from the margins of arts and culture. Our guest for this edition is Rick Reed, an Austin, Texas based visual artist and electronic musician. As one of the first individuals in the area to record and perform home-grown electronic music outside of an academic or otherwise institutional framework, Rick has been a key participant in Austin's transformation into a city where the surplus of new electronic music, rather than a deficit, is the challenge to be dealt with. His even-handed and unique approach has led to fruitful collaborations not only with experimental music icons such as Keith Rowe, but also with pioneers of synesthetic film including Ken Jacobs and Aldo Tambellini. Inspired by the odd malfunctions of analog communications media (for example, de-tuned shortwave radio or distorted television signals), Reed has spent decades crafting art that hints at the ease with which reality can be completely transformed by slight perceptual shifts. We discuss this, and more, in the conversation to follow.
All music by Rick Reed, from "20 Million Years to Earth" retrospective compilation
Artist links:
https://richardkreed.bandcamp.com
Anechoic Chamber links:
donate via PayPal: [email protected]
other inquiries: [email protected] -
Welcome to episode 7 of Anechoic Chamber, free form audio from the margins of arts and culture. Our guest for this edition is Francisco López, who as of this recording is celebrating 40 years of what he has called sonogenic composition. Over this time, López has carved out an almost unparalleled reputation as a bioacoustic researcher and as a champion of sound's phenomenological, non-representational qualities, while being critical of conceptual uses for the same. Equally at home using sonic material from the rainforest or the factory, while also being equally adept at exploring the qualities of overwhelming noise or seductive silence, López remains one of the principal authorities on the extremes of sonic perception and how they inform all that lies in between. Though he is often noted for the supposed "novelty value" accorded to his rejection on the concert stage, this is only one aspect of a fully integrated philosophy of sound, which we hope to unveil in this broadcast.
All compositions by the artist; available on the limited edition USB card album "A Bunch of Stuff 1980-2020: 40 Years of Sonogenic Composition"
artist links:
www.franciscolopez.net
Anechoic Chamber links
donate via PayPal: [email protected]
all other inquiries: [email protected] -
Welcome to episode 6 of the Anechoic Chamber, free form audio from the glowing margins of arts and culture. Our guest for this edition is Barbara Ellison, a composer and sonic researcher whose deep explorations into what she calls "phantasmatic" sound reveal a world in which aesthetic experience becomes an active, rather than passive process, and in which our human propensity for seeking meaning in the apparently meaningless is manifested in a variety of fascinating ways. In her new book Sonic Phantoms - co-authored by yours truly, and out now on Bloomsbury's 'Sound Studies' series - Ellison unveils a previously hidden world in which musical instrument practice, technological experimentation, world travel and immersion in nature all point back towards this propensity and suggest it as being the spark for a staggering amount of human creativity. The following discussion, along with compositional examples provided by Barbara, only begin to scratch the surface of this involving subject.
Topics under discussion: tricksters, "gods of the in-between" and shamans / tricks of the mind in bistable imagery, Gestalt psychology, expectations priming perception and experience, the brain as a "predictive machine" and "top-down" perceptive models / the phenomenon of sine wave speech and the apophenic mind / semantic satiation and semantization / EVP, OVP and pareidolia / katajjaq vocal game of the Inuit / acoustic niche theory in natural environments, and its effect on human musical composition
All compositions used in this episode by Barbara Ellison 2009-2019
artist web links:
www.barbaraellison.com
https://barbaraellison.bandcamp.com/
www.sonicphantoms.com
Anechoic Chamber links:
donate via Paypal: [email protected]
general queries: [email protected] -
Our guest for Episode 5 of Anechoic Chamber is Enzo Minarelli, who, since the early Seventies, has been active in the field of linear and visual poetry, performing several one-man shows while also editing and releasing records, CDs and DVDs. He is the main theorist of Polypoetry - whose first Manifesto was published by Minarelli in 1987 - and the publisher of the vinyl series 3ViTre Records, producing about twenty records both on 7” and LP. He has also founded the 3Vitre Archive of Polypoetry which can now be consulted permanently at Lincoln Center in New York and at Bologna University. As a scholar and researcher about orality and poetry, his essays and books are a well-known reference on the subject. His sound and visual works are in the collections of national and international musea, libraries and archives. As a video-poet, he has produced many video-poems and video sound poetry installations since the early 80s.
For this discussion, Minarelli provides a valuable primer on sound poetry in general, dispelling numerous myths about the form while also touching upon its most essential qualities.
Discussion topics: Is technology essential to sound poetry? / not “performance art” or music / Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck: two different poetic perspectives on language / relationship to the “avant-garde” + being comfortable with tradition a la Dick Higgins / Can sound poetry be comedy? / Losing control of the audience / different meanings of silence in performance: beyond John Cage / “Urloh” + “Howl”: an example of art meeting life
Sounds used in this episode: Enzo Minarelli “Urloh (1984)” (previously appeared in Polipoesia mon Amour [2005] and Voice Studies London [2015]) / "Voci Nell Italia di Fine Secolo" / "Gran Amor Platonico" / Additional atmospheric sounds created by TBWB exclusively using interview footage from this episode as a sound source.
Cover image: “Urloh” schematic by Enzo Minarelli.
Anechoic chamber links:
Artist web links:
http://www.3vitre.it
https://www.enzominarelli.com
donate via Paypal: [email protected]
all other queries: [email protected] -
Welcome to episode 4 of Anechoic Chamber, free-from audio reportage from the margins of arts and culture. This episode’s guest is John Duncan, multi-disciplinary artist, psychic researcher and key figure in a fluid subculture based upon explorations into the extremes of information and expression. Duncan’s long-standing propensity for working with either an overload or deficit of stimuli have made this work more, rather than less, relevant to the present, while his declaration of quote “take me as you will” hints at an ethos of directness in a media landscape of seemingly universal deceit. Interestingly, our discussion for this episode focuses not just on the artist himself but on the actions of several other individuals whose work he has recommended.
Topics discussed: nearness to death and proving worthiness / learning from isolation / Narcomantic sleep performance, and an interesting participant (Nicola Valentino) / social media and “no picture didn’t happen” / taking up shortwave radio as an instrument, and Gary Jo Gardiner / another new instrument: Aurora Borealis radiation / resonant sites for recording / Bryan Lewis Saunders: an example of risk-taking art / art as a mirror, as a hammer, and more
Sound used in this episode: John Duncan / Bernhard Günter “Home, Unspeakable” | John Duncan “Change” from ‘Mind of a Missile’ compilation | John Duncan directing Ensemble Phoenix Basel “Phantom Broadcast (acoustic)” | John Duncan “Move Forward” soundtrack | John Duncan “River in Flames” | John Duncan + Elliot Sharp “Tongue” |
John Duncan “Lady Grinning Soul” [David Bowie cover, currently unreleased]
artist link: www.johnduncan.org
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