CAEL2041 Art of Sound & Noise

Research blog for the Sydney College of the Arts course (Keelan Judge)

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PC Wacko improv test A brilliant and improvised take. I got some truly unique sounds here playing between the dials of the Silvertone amp and the Big Muff pedal in combination. It worked like an instrument in the sense of the slightest adjustment changing the overall effect of a particular sound and creating passages of interesting noise.

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Set up

Pick any electronic device to plug in. E.g. uni computer.

Electroharmonix Bass Big Muff pedal.

Silvertone Smart IIIs amplifier.

Leads.

7mm->3.5mm adaptor.

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Mastering the instrument (performance prep)

The point of the performance is improvisation. I am playing with the sounds that I can distort from the internal noise of the equipment, whether it is a device connected to the setup or just the setup itself.

Here are the variations I’ve tested:

PC connected to pedal and amp

phone to pedal and amp

finger touching lead, pedal and amp

speaker to pedal to bass amp

Each has given a different result and allowed me to note certain skills.

PC

Doubles the Silvertone Smart IIIs buzz. Controlling the tone and volume of the pedal and speaker at its peak, when the other dials are at maximum, produced a wailing sound. I could change this by switching between “Bass boost” on the pedal or return to normal. This would effectively change the tone of the sound. It would mimic a guitar bend as I would rotate the volume or tone dials, even though that, to my knowledge, is not what the pedal’s tone dial does! In mucking around with this I would get some wacky, distorted, alien electronic sounds! The function of the Big Muff pedal is reminiscent of the Lucier project or a contact mic, as I’m getting inside the machine and amplifying its internal resonance.

Finger

Get wind brushing sounds and a muted zapping sound that I could control with the slightest change of contact angle with my finger. It creates a crackly, 8-bit popping sound. Subtle changes and allows me to “play” the lead as part of the instrument.

Moving the lead along surfaces gets a distorted windy feel, like a cheap mic without a wind muffler, much like a contact mic. Particularly metal surfaces.

Phone

Various results on different days. I think this depends on the state of the Silvertone Smart IIIs. Just static pushed to edge. Whiny kind of. I could hear the sound of a dial turning like pushing a stone block along the ground.

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Lucas Abela a.k.a. Justice Yeldham in doctor’s gown playing a show. Stunning. From his site and label Dual Plover: http://dualplover.com/yeldham/

[caelansnoisynose]

Project 2 - response to brief

My work looks at getting inside the material of an electronic device, to use it as a traditional music instrument. Originally, I wanted to use a speaker amplified by another speaker to reveal its internal noise and flip its function from a playback device to a musical instrument itself. Instead, through my tests, this was really about using any electrical device as long as it has a 3.5mm or 7mm jack port of some kind.

In that sense, I have split the instrument. Usually the device played is the same as the one producing the sound. In this case, I plug in a phone or a computer as a source of internal noise. Then I play with the connected leads, the fuzz pedal, through which the sound goes, and then the knobs of the speaker to draw out and alter the sound that’s there underneath.

Different devices produce different effects. This will be discussed in a later post.

Dylan Martorell deals with improvisation and a music-based approach to noise (= a beat, and appealing). The difference with my work is that it's not automated randomness as his works are. There is a closer relationship between the performer and the machine/noise. The improvisation comes from using any electronic device plugged into my setup of a fuzz pedal and the amp speaker. I have to respond to the noise the device produces by playing with the EQ, volume and effects of the setup to create something musical. The playing comes from the knowledge or experience with the dials but also going with the flow in the moment and knowing how to build the performance up or strip it back from what eventuates.

My work is about the ability to play seemingly mundane devices and instruments in an interesting way with the possibility of virtuosity. There is a tension between whether that's attainable due to the improvised nature of having to respond to what the device presents. It's certainly feasible that one could develop expectations about certain types of devices, of mobile phones compared to computers in this setup, e.g. However, the unique nature of the device and its behaviour in a moment dictates what to do and so the virtuosity resides more in the role of the performer having to make decisions in the moment.

In this sense my work follows the improvisation of Lucas Abela, but focuses more on the sound than the performance of raw aggression. It's still noise-based as it's about the noisy sound of an electronic device. However, improvisation is also an inherent interaction with noise: the noise of activity or an event. Therefore, this engages a broader definition of noise: one of information of stimuli, to which I must respond, through the medium of sound. It also broadens the definition of what's musical, since apparently dissonant, "noisy" screeches can be worthy of emotionally stimulating, musically interesting and aesthetically pleasing sound.

[caelansnoisynose]

Australian glass-playing noise-artist Lucas Abela a.k.a. Granpa a.k.a. Justice Yeldham. (Justice Yeldham was the name of a court judge who committed suicide and was later found to be having an affair.)

Shown to me by a friend after I showed him how to build a contact mic.

Abela played with instrument-building since the ‘90s.

His work relates to exploring material as a noise-maker, and embeds the act with the sound.

“I see the glass as a magnified stylus that I vibrate with my mouth instead of a groove. “

His work is kind of ironic and yet also points out what it means to be a true musician. He is fully within and committed to the work despite the pain. In his case, the pain is manifested to the viewer during the performance, not hidden behind the scene by callouses from steel strings or the frustration of coordinating one’s fingers on piano keys.

It’s fundamentally aggressive. It relates to my idea of using a speaker because it’s subversive and he’s playing with and expanding dissonant, aggressive, even transgressive, sound as worthy of high art and expertise. It’s ironic because it’s such an unlikely source, and it comes at a great, virtually unrealistic, cost (for the general public). It, at the same time, can seem to mock and venerate the myth of the genius in art.

Testimonial from his website, http://dualplover.com/yeldham/

"Utilising just a piece of glass (found in the area of the performance), a contact mic and some pedals, justice comes onto applause and anticipation from the audience anxious to see the spectacle. Dressed in what looks like a doctor’s gown, his attire gives Yeldham an arguably fitting sideshow freak appearance. After a brief introduction Yeldham launches into full performance by doing what he does best. An intense cacophonic human explosion of condensed cathartic vibrations follows, laced with a kind of transgressive, yet genuine euphoria. In a world of digital laptop complacency, Yeldham’s performance nods more towards Jap Noise legend Masonna for its organic tour de force and true outsider punk spirit, with a tongue in cheek (or rather in this case, pressed up against glass!) approach and cutting humour that the noise/improve scene usually lacks. An audience member between 'tracks' asks Yeldham to bleed at one point, evoking brief vocal disdain from Yeldham. Indeed Yeldham has stressed that any bloodletting that may occur is a by product of the show and not the primary intention. And disappointing for some, Yeldham does not bleed during this show, but bites through the glass toward the end to shocked gasps from some members of the audience. Whether or not Yeldham bleeds after his performance (and at 20 mins Yeldham leaves not his repertoire to overkill, much like classical punk performance) is irrelevant, as in a world of contrived noise makers, Yeldham’s show cuts straight through to the jugular by means of simplicity. And succeeds - in being both unique and bringing a much needed breath of fresh air into the scene. Famously described by one journalist as “The most exciting performer I have seen in the last three years – in fact, since I first saw Iggy Pop" .He’s not far off - its exciting, raw untamed stuff in a world of full of complacent bores .If you ever get the chance (and Yeldham has toured everywhere - from Berlin to Korea with his show!), catch him if you can…."

Andy Black Forest - Supersonc Festival - beat 13 - Burmingham 221012

Interview, process and some skill.

“My installations are mainly driven by my philosophy that noise music is far more fun to make than watch.”

"First up, I got to see this guy perform live – and I seriously was not expecting that. There’s no blood but the intensity of the emotion reminds me of early Neubauten or Nina Simone or someone: he has a trunk full of effects and delay and distortion pedals, and he’s not scared to use them. He blows crazy shit across a shaped plate of glass for 20 or 30 minutes or so, and it’s crazy shit good – so good, that when he started I figured Nicola had slipped on an extraordinarily loud noise tape and I could not quite understand why everyone was crowding around the ‘stage’. The noise is incredible – and when I type ‘noise’, I mean layers of sound, texture, understanding, dissonant harmony. Really incredible. I never was much one for guitar shredding or extended drum fills or virtuoso vocal acrobatics, but it seems the one thing that will really get my pulse racing is some glass shredding. Seriously. This is body-expanding. Sometimes I’m laughing out loud at the nerve and brilliance of it. Sometimes, I just want to fuck shit up (plus ça change). Halfway across it bothers me that few people are dancing amid the ruins but then I figure they too are too stupefied. Justice tells me afterwards that he can’t get booked no more: this is only his second performance this year. Man, this man should be headlining the fucking Sydney Opera House. He’s a fucking MASTER or MISTRESS, or have it what you will, of his chosen instrument. I feel the same empathy towards his music that others doubtless feel for fucking Kevin Shields. (Not literally fucking Kevin Shields, you understand – though maybe some feel that too.) He can’t get booked cos he’s an experimental artist – frequently gets called a ‘performance artist’, much to his disgust – and so he’s meant to be always switching around, trying out new ideas and forms, not concentrate for several years on becoming the world’s leading glass shredder."

Everett True - collapseboard - Brisbane 210614

WARNING

Links:

https://thebrag.com/lucas-abela-sydney-festival/

Coming collab. with experimental hip hop Death Grips. Performed in 2010 with drummer Zach Hill.

https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/bjvmq5/death-grips-are-working-with-face-shredding-artist-lucas-abela

[caelansnoisynose]

Samson Young - Biennale 2018

Samson Young’s work related to one of my first approaches and the general mindset I had taking to the Schizophonic sound project.

This is like another take on the John Cage. Instead of playing nothing, Young has instead subtracted any of the frequencies associated with a musical note from the instruments. Instead, all you get are the physical, raw sounds of the material in contact with each other. E.g. The cellist’s bow makes a scraping noise against the string, or the clarinet players blow air through a pipe. The timbre remains, since the scraping is not the same as the air through the clarinet, but all are devoid of musical significance in the ordinary sense.

Young emphasises the dichotomy of noise instead of the musical sound we’re accustomed to seeing in a symphony. Interestingly, what remains is a meditation on rhythm - it is raw rhythm that remains - made unappealing by the absence of musical completion.

I’ve used ordinary sounds and altered the sounds I’ve captured that still has a kind of musical idea in the sense of its arrangement (I end with thumps then a whimper to “conclude” while parts come in and out).

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Showing the set up for how I made Static.

This formed the backdrop for my sound work. I used other sounds I experimented throughout the semester so far (shown below) to build a world and progression with what I discovered with this sown.

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Visit Original Link

From our sound walk in Lecture 2.

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Crappy amp made worse when connected to computer.

I fiddled with the volume, gain, treble and bass knobs to create the crescendo effect, getting various reverberations as I tried different combinations.

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Visit Original Link

Throughout the blog, and eventually marked with dates for correct chronological order, I will show some experiments with sound I made in my daily life. Something will pique my interest and I would form something around it.

Originally I wanted to make a song, or at least I saw that potential. This was a way I could make percussion, using the different sounds I could make with a knife.

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Reflection on first lecture

The first thing I had written in my book on that day was:

psycho-geographies - Situationists - emotions in landscape.

Having returned back to that after creating the work and formulating the concept around it, I cannot help but see how relevant this is for the direction of my work. My original idea had changed to one encapsulating a dream, and the final product itself didn’t capture the dream in the way I wanted (as more chronological story-telling). It, however, contained the essential parts interspersed throughout the sound work like the feeling of a dream to create a mood or emotional landscape.

It takes time to hear a sound work, and sound is like the misunderstood or forgotten sense that we use to navigate around us. Sounds of ordinary objects and things are very familiar to us and they feel uncanny (a Freudian and Surrealist term) when they appear in a sound work without warning or without extra production around them to isolate them from the real world we’re tied to. In this way, we expect artworks to transport us elsewhere. This is very much in the idea of landscapes. There are emotional significations made by the different effects we would put over ordinary sounds, like reverb in a large room, or pitch-shifting, made due to the association such characteristics of noise have when in the real world: a large room signals isolation and insignificance in proportion; a downward, pitch-shifted sound of someone screaming signals predatory behaviour and therefore fear from the “large, frightening animal” that’s able to produce such sounds so clearly, who must be close if we can hear the gnashing of teeth. In this sense, my work is very much capturing a distant, and indeed dream-like, story in its disconnected, episodic form, even if it is not the clearer, more coherent story I desired. It possesses continuation of sound, but the episodic nature comes from the appearance and disappearance of particular moments, like the throbbing moan that comes and goes, as if some gargantuan creature emerges and almost manages to separate itself from the primordial sludge of noise around it. Indeed, if this is the Id, it is certainly rising from primordial sludge.

The psychoanalytic approach to the dream brings the work also in connection to the first word “psycho-geographies”. Having already established the connection to landscape, and the emotional part, which forms part of “psycho-”, the very psychological nature of viewing the work makes this directly related to it as a psycho-geography. I cannot think of a better word to explain the way I used different sounds to establish a sense of place and associated feeling and then move to other places and other sounds that make us feel uncomfortable. In that sense, that’s an element of schizophonia through this very approach.

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Theodor Adorno said that Kurt Weill was the eminent Surrealist musical composer. Here’s his score for Brecht’s play.

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PROJECT 1: Indignant (2018) - Schizophonia and Dreams

Schizophonia was described in lectures as the separation between the real world and the reproduced world in the context of sound recordings. The real sound or the object that is its source (is never perfectly captured through a recording as it must move through a medium of translation). The real sound or real object of what is recorded is altered by the recording or reproduction process so that there is a shift from the original and opportunity for a new perspective to be cast about the object or situation. The listener, technically, hears something different from its real source, whether they are aware of it or not. It is up to the reproducer to decide whether to make it known. We can view this as the difference between the real world and imitations (a nervous outlook).

I chose to base the production I made off a dream/nightmare. I had this earlier in the week (Monday night). This plays with the idea of schizophonia in two ways:

1) the dream didn’t have a continuous stream of sound or audible, focussed noise. In short: no soundtrack. Providing one means it’s a disconnected form of communication about the event, and a form of representation, meaning it obscures in one way but reveals in another.

2) creating sound about something that doesn’t exist.

I’m creating a piece of noise art to illustrate the dream, but rather than using more traditional mediums like pencil or paint to create a surreal world, like the Surrealists did, I’m using the medium of sound.

So in this sense the production is definitely a result of the filters that are used to create the sound, and in particular the filter of the mood I convey about my own dream, which itself doesn’t have to be accurate.

THE DREAM

Mum was accusing me of scratching a bizarre, rune-like message in the floor. We had just done some renovations with a door and wished to keep the house presentable. I was convinced I hadn’t done it but couldn’t explain who did. It turned out there was some taller, stronger, naked, ashen, bald man living under my bed and in our house in plain sight. His skin was like that of a heavy-smoking 60 year old. He was about ten years older than me, or looked so as a result, and connected to me in a way I only emotionally felt (or perhaps I felt responsible by mere proximity). Once discovered, he abused us for our pacifism. In flashback or fast forward, I started seeing instances of his mischief. He was quick to anger and threatened to murder if he didn’t get his way. He ate freely and moved where he wanted for what could have been a day or week. Finally, he sprawled out on the floor where the scratches were, knowing full well his power over my family, making fun of us by taking up the most space he could in the most inconvenient way (my mum, dad and myself the only ones present). I decided I needed to fight it. I smashed it over the head with a plank of wood. I remember the impact and the splintering. I had to become like it to master it.

There are other layers you could use to look at this, like psychoanalysis, which might say I was having a dream battle between my Ego - which is my ordinary self - and my Id - the base instinctual self. The Surrealists already attempted this with revealing it by autonomic processes. In a way, mixing and matching different recordings that were in their own way serendipitous makes this a kind of autonomous composition. It was certainly only done to convey a mood and turned into a vaguer, less literal story than I intended. (That and time constraints). This going with the flow makes it seem like audio automatism. I visualise the work much like a painting with sound. It paints a moving set of places and beings, analogous to a Dali.

Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), c1936.

Each recording, especially once reverb effects are added, has the appearance of having traces of the environment in which it was recorded. This is the way that place is relevant to a sound work. In that sense, it’s never the object of interest alone that is recorded; the place is connected as a part of the sense impression. We can simulate such experiences because they’re based on our real world experiences, which is really what a dream is composed of. Adding reverb to speech or footsteps makes it seem like a wider space. Having various recordings overlaid and overlapping sections with each other creates a continuous morphing space or figure, like in Dali’s Soft Construction.

Parts that represent the dream (and psychana elements):

- the first sound is outside, from the bamboo soundwalk. this represents the more settled, peace-at-mind element of my dream, the more natural but also open free space of my mind. The crunch of the leaf creates the texture of walking in the interior of my mind, like an earthy flesh.

- a door opens, one of two, and these are like opening up doors to the mind. as they open, things get more disturbed. eating occurs, like a sign of the Id, but essential and part of the conscious subject. Signals we’re venturing further inward.

- speech (”Ari”) is my dog, but then audibly reversed = getting deeper into the mind and the foreign language of before-thought. Like Yemaya, I experimented with depth. The reverb is a large part of representing the open internal world of the mind. The inclusion of contact mic recordings furthers this.

- the scratches begin to occur, like a message being written like in the dream, but also like a creature clawing at a wall to get out. my dog scratching near a contact mic may actually have been included.

- sounds of my dad opening a packet of food and eating were included, and reversed, creating a tearing sound. tearing of masking tape over a contact mic was. one of these sounds created what sounded like concrete being dragged across a floor. we’re getting to more symbolic stories of internal struggles, like Sisyphus.

- static from my amp begins to start, and this follows a natural crescendo I created from fiddling with the knobs in a one-off recording (improvisation). The continual distortion represents the deconstructed level of language at ever deeper levels of the mind as well as the fragility and opportunity for obfuscation. It is literal distortion of any medium, the way we might distort reality in interpreting sloughs of sense data. It is an audio pun.

- I used an element of the Lucier I Am Sitting in a Room method on a song from my own band (Crystal Eye) and a portion of the chorus appears here. The natural reverb of the Lucier effect fits in well with the distance of the internal mind. It reminds me of the way I remember melodic hooks of a song and they’re turning in the back of my thoughts. The line shown “I wanna see what you see, through your crystal eye” has a haunting component in context.

- pairs with an aeroplane from the bamboo soundwalk recording. Crescendo.

- Moaning immediately follows, which was me screaming into a piece of mdf with the contact mic stuck on (how I did the scratches). I then pitch-shifted it down to create a demonic howl. In context with the static, it is as if the creature makes an appearance out of the haze of the mind’s babble. I get a real tangible sense of a figure rising out of the soggy fibres of the mind, like the monster in Akira. It’s as if this incoherent sound suddenly manifests, before disappearing again into distortion.

Scene from Akira (1988).

 - knife with a percussive pattern. Shows the violence of the man and the threat, made present and distant by reverb.

- thumps out of my hitting the canvas I stretched for my painting practice rounds out the end. Represents overcoming the monster as well as heartbeats to prepare for flight or fight.

I think I’ll call my final piece Idnignant. It’s a pun on indignant, which this creature certainly was, and the Id. It makes sense as a language that’s distorted, or schizophonic. Disturbed => Idsturbed => It stirred.

[edit: I have since changed this to “indignant” to keep some allure]

Any Surrealist sound artists?

Kurt Weill who did The Threepenny Opera with Bertolt Brecht. Weill had a more political bend.

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MoMA’s first major exhibition of sound art presents work by 16 of the most innovative contemporary artists working with sound.

Fowler and Tsunoda: RIDGES ON THE HORIZONTAL PLANE, 2011

This is a work we found through the class research. It’s by Luke Fowler and Toshiya Tsunoda.

What’s interesting here is the integration of sound in order to create an artwork, both a traditional one and an experimental, multi-modal one. Wind from a fan blows a veil that rises up to hit piano strings and causes sound. At the same time, a video is projected behind the veil, so that the movement of the veil distorts the visibility of the image. There is a fissure between the image seen due to the veil and the creation of the sound made, since no person makes it and it appears random, which may be said to have elements of schizophonia. However, the co-occurrence of these behaviours elevates the experience of the two and ties them together so that the sound is thought to accompany the visual experience. The nature of the fan and veil mean it has the appearance of being autonomous. In this sense, the work is a performance, sound and visual art installation all in one.

The work is also created in collaboration between a Western and Eastern artist, which emphasises the sense of dichotomy. This provides a thinking point for both the idea of Schizophonia and also the final project in making an instrument.