Uncategorised – Ben Thorn [ Sound Art ] https://benthorn.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

DIY

I grew up on a smallholding farm. My Dad is very hands-on and practical, he’s worked as a landscape gardener, fencer, teacher and more. Although some things he does are quite ‘bodge-y’ he fixes and installs things himself, including plumbing and electrics. He isn’t very good with computers so I ended up filling that gap.

My past experience in games design is also very informed by DIY, with the indie game scene being one of the most ‘DIY’ modern cultures in my opinion, as you have to learn how to make every part of a game (the mechanics, design, visuals, audio, etc) all on a limited budget. Thus there is a reliance on open source and free to use software, with a close connection to the culture of forums and sharing code.

Personal Manifesto

In out previous project with Ingrid we looked at manifestos. I don’t have a written manifesto of my own but I often try to follow the same principles. Below are some that I consistently try to follow.

Don’t use synth presets (effects presets are fine)

Don’t use sample packs. Sampling is fine but I must source the myself.

The Album Format

I like the format of albums and am a fan of when tracks flow seamlessly into the next, this might stem from the first album I bought on iTunes, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Time limits are no longer constrained in the digital domain, with the medium itself allowing for ‘unlimited’ storage.

The general consensus seems to be that streaming caters to ‘low’ attention and instant gratification. The trend of shorter pop songs, Tik Tok, and streaming income.

I was talking to my flatmate about how we each listen to music:

I usually listen to albums as a whole, from specific artists while she said that she usually listens to individual songs in genre playlists, both curated by herself and others (ai curation?).

Yan Jun

“I wish I was a piece of field recording.”
Yan Jun

Yan Jun is a musician and poet, born in Lanzhou in 1973 and currently based in Beijing. His work transcends the boundaries between improvised music, experimental music, field recording, performance, organising and writing. Alongside performing in venues, he also runs a project called Living Room Tour, where he goes to the audience’s homes to play with the environment and whatever else is available in the room.

He is a member of FEN, Tea Rockers Quintet and Impro Committee, and founder of the guerrilla label Sub Jam.

Yan Jun’s work was accompanied by a sense of humour and focus on performance and subverting the social and performative expectations of certain environments. He talked briefly about Tan Ping, a current social movement/behaviour in china where the youth are choosing to reject the pressure of long hours of stressful work. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60353916)

He alluded to the humourous nature of his work taking this absurdist perspective, as opposed to the seriousness of making outright political statements. I found these two political angles interesting, they tackle the same issue with opposite approaches.

My opinion on the Digital

As I’ve previously mentioned, a lot of my perspective on the digital space is rooted in escapism. As a child, I would look out the window at the landscape and wonder what it would look like without human interference.

I think the internet is a great demonstration of mutual aid in terms of learning. I’ve taught myself many things this way.

NFTs

I do not like NTFs, to me they are their use is the antithesis of what makes the internet good. Ownership and digital scarcity. I personally don’t can’t think of what ‘value’ they have in society. Most of what I see about NTFs is driven by scarcity consumerism and economics. Kinda Crypto-Anarchism/ Ancap.

Fallout

As the threat of nuclear weaponry once again rises to the top of our collective worries, how about a more ‘lighthearted’ but topical tangent – the Fallout game series.

Oral tradition of handed down music as well as surviving media. The radio stations in the fallout game series create a stasis of culture, late 1940s popular music.

Set Fire To Flames

small steps against inertia

Music To Play In The Dark – Coil

During the creation of my radio piece I was inspired by Coil’s music to play in the dark, and John/Jhonn Balance’s spoken performance on tracks such as Are You Shivering? and Broccoli.

Collecting Thoughts.

My recent blogs have been quite meandering so I thought I’d collect and link a few things together:

My attraction to soundscapes, Chantel Akerman’s D’Est, agoraphobia, travelling through soundscapes, KLF’s Chill Out, Boards of Canada style plundering of a disconnected soundscape.

I’m not a well-travelled person and I’m often a bit of a recluse.

However I do try to read. Practical versus theory.

Below I uploaded something I made in 2020. I created it during a period of personal isolation, I often wouldn’t leave the house for weeks at a time (apart from walking the dog at midnight) and it probably reflects this – Looking through the crack of curtains at night into pure darkness.

It was made through sampling my favourite moments of D’Est, and was inspired by my listening to a lot of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Grouper, William Basinski and Tim Hecker.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I0BnyykKX4SwrHkgldOHjIFn2k7XzaeC/view?usp=sharing

Soundscape. Akerman.

Listening, waiting for something to happen. Slow paced, patience. Not tension or anticipation. boredom, mundanity, human perception.

Drifting.