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updated artist statement

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END OF SEMESTER REFLECTION

by auguste nomeikaite

I think that learning about Brenda Hutchinson’s and Bertoia Sonambient’s unorthodox, self-discovered musical instruments was an extremely nice way to end the semester. I felt like it reinforced the biggest lesson I ended up taking away from this class: art does not have to be solemn to be meaningful. More than anything, this semester and the Sound Art class has encouraged me to embrace playfulness in art - whether it was the silly test recordings I did asking friends to sing into a tube, or the performance recordings we have watched as a class. I found it so fascinating how artists like Christian Marclay, Ben Patterson or even Tarek Atoui could so confidently perform pieces which looked more like a child’s game than an “artist’s” craft, while still conveying and putting forward meaningful and politicized messages. I loved the brief bit in Hutchinson’s YouTube video where she recalls the numerous comments she got from people - all along the lines of “My kid could do that!” - and her being so affirmative of that simplicity, saying “I like that!”

Another idea I found myself constantly grappling with this semester was the relationship between visuals and sound, which was one of the main reasons for why I took this class in the first place. I am majoring in film, which is a medium based on the marriage of the two - yet so often I see visuals being prioritized over sound, especially in student work. Interestingly, while the past 14 weeks definitely forced me to consider the sonic before the haptic, I also realized that the two are inseparable, much the same way that our senses are biologically wired to be connected. Whatever the piece, there always is a visual aspect, which might sometimes be clearly absent - like in Max Neuhaus’ pieces, for example - and that carries its own weight. The most important takeaway in this respect was probably the idea that visuals and sound, though connected, do not always have to be in harmony. Neuhaus’ installation at Times Square is such a quiet, peaceful rebellion to all the visuals, all the bustling environment that it is set in. And so, even though the piece has nothing visual about it by itself, it alters the space it is set in, including the visuals - Neuhaus himself is cited in Alex Potts’ essay, saying “I use sound to change the way we perceive a space.” To me, it was a powerful reminder that sound will always create an extra layer of meaning, and that instead of simply “accompanying” visuals, it can be used to charge or challenge them.

This leads me to the politics of sound, which was another idea that deeply affected me. Obviously, I have always been aware of the political power of art, however, when it came to anything audiovisual, I constantly found myself focusing on the haptic aspects as the main political vessel. This class made me reconsider that, and it is very closely related to this sense of “altering space through sound” that Neuhaus talked about. Besides that, I have also been forced to reflect on the ethics of sound, together with its politics. It first struck me during our discussion of Vito Acconci’s “Seedbed,” where I first saw how powerful - and powerfully problematic - sound may be. A different way of seeing it was through the analysis of Fluxus, their mission of democratizing art, the libertarian approach to their “Happenings” and how specifically that was communicated through sound.

Finally, I want to come back to the idea of playfulness in art. What this class made me seriously reconsider was the very notion of sound, and sound-making objects. In some sense, riding that same democratic wave of thought, anything can be turned into an instrument. I remember how at the very beginning of the semester one of the readings introduced Joseph Bertollozi’s “Bridge Music,” and that seemed like such an unusual way of thinking about music or sound art to me. Now it was not just an object that made sound - it was a huge man-made structure with an urban function that too, in its own way, produced sound. However, perhaps the most mind-bending approach to non-instrumental sound for me was Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting in a Room”. Just like the permanent presence of visuals, this piece made me consider the constant presence of sound, which, in its own right, is also sound art.

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INNER SOUNDSCAPES

By Auguste Nomeikaite

For my final project I decided to look into the sounds - or the soundscapes - that people find themselves clinging onto during these quiet times. It all started off with a conversation I had with a friend, during which we began fantasizing about all the places we will finally be able to visit again when the current restrictions are lifted. The progress sketches that you’ll find a few posts below explain the thought process a bit better. I interviewed 15 people in total - family, friends, their families too - and chose 10 answers for the final installation, which I felt captured the variety of these soundscapes best. For the sound tracks themselves I used Aporee - I used it to search for recordings which most closely resembled sounds from the different places that my friends mentioned. For example, one person said they were longing for a specific park in their hometown in Ukraine. Through Aporee, I managed to find a recording from that exact park. Below is my artist statement which explains the idea in a bit more detail.

Here is the floor plan/a sketch of the “domes” that make up my installation

And here is a virtual version of the installation itself!

INNER SOUNDSCAPES: https://www.thinglink.com/card/1316268678227951619

Hope you enjoy! Will present a bit more material during my presentation tomorrow.

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SOUND ART INSTALLATION SKETCHES

Hi! Here are some of the initial sketches on my ideas for the final class project. I started off thinking about confinement and how I could capture this current lockdown sonically. At first I was thinking about all the people who left but were present just a few days ago, how day by day the campus falls more and more silent...

You can see some of my thought process in the sketches below, but to put it briefly, I eventually decided to focus on the soundscapes we are making up in our heads while in this quarantine. The other day a friend asked me what is the first place I want to go to after all this is over, and I realized that at this point thinking about the future/projecting my imagination onto it has become a way of coping with the mental pressure of this lockdown.

In my installation, I want to recreate soundscapes of places my friends are wishing they could visit but can’t because of the quarantine. The soundscapes will be played through individuals speakers bound by a dome that would isolate the sound so that one could only hear it while standing directly under the dome. There will be four speakers (so four soundscapes) in the same room - I want to address this collective dream of going back to normal that we have yet also capture how subjectively/personally we understand it.

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The Lullaby

From the very beginning of the creative process, I had this one Lithuanian lullaby persistently stuck in my head, which I then decided to somehow incorporate into my graphic score piece. However, initially I was also set on finding some sort of object to center the work around - my first idea was to use masks to play around with voice and texture.

After running a few tests, however, I decided to not restrict myself to thinking about physical objects, and instead focused on the lullaby itself. Coming up with different ways of adapting/transforming it, I eventually tried getting rid of any words and limiting it to only humming - seemed fitting for a lullaby.

I tested different ways of visualizing the musical score.

Here is a quick ‘making of’ video that I made:

As I mention in the video, there are two instructions to interpreting the score:

i) It has to be hummed ii) Has to be recorded on a phone It was important for me to contrast the intimacy of humming a melody and the disconnect of listening to it through a phone.

Here is the final score, performed by my friend Ilia:

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Pink Noises: Riz Maslen

By Auguste Nomeikaite

Riz Maslen, also commonly known as Neotropic, has been one of the most prominent female musicians in the British electronic music scene since 1990s. Her music style is characterized by ambient, post rock, cinematic influences.

Maslen’s first introduction to musical practice was learning how to play the flute at six, which she kept playing until she was seventeen years old. As she mentions in the Pink Noises interview, that structurized way of learning was limiting but proved to be formative in the end. Recalling that time, Maslen says she was yearning for a more carefree musical lifestyle, like what seemed to be “happening on the streets.” However, the required work ethic at music school instilled a strong sense of discipline in her, teaching her to take musical practice seriously.

At sixteen, Maslen quit highschool: “Bloody hell it was tough for me. I jud didn’t feel like I could fit in, and subsequently got bullied for it.” Coming from Kempsford, a small town west of London, she felt the need to get out into the wider world, so she went traveling around the UK, meeting people from all around and searching for like-minded thinkers.

Eventually, Maslen settled down in London, where she first got into the studio world through personal connections. While working for a friend and learning how to operate a professional studio setting, she crossed paths with Future Sound of London, one of whose members she greatly admired. Surrounded by experienced and encouraging professionals, in time Maslen decided to take a leap of faith, take out a bank loan and set up a recording studio of her own.

Maslen’s mother is from India, and her mixed background was one of the major obstacles to fully integrating herself into the community back in Kempsford. The experience of discrimination early on in her life made her aware of the struggles that people coming from ethnic have to go through. Besides her personal musical career, she also teaches at Asian Dub Foundation’s Education Network, with which, as she explains, she aims to uplift British teenagers coming from diverse backgrounds, but also provide an “alternative to drugs” to those who come from high-risk families.

Here is a video of one of Maslen’s more recent performances; you can see her early influences merging with a more mature approach, as well as a shifting focus towards an audio-visual performance:

Some other links to check out! “Beautiful Pool”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM_pa_8GILI “Do You Know How to Waltz?”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgH8oeX2EEE