During this interview (1971), Ravi Shankar talks about how the 60s counter-culture adopted Indian classical music and created the western view of it being ‘exotic’ and connected to the use of psychedelic drugs.
An instrument imitating the sound of the human voice.
Language of Tabla – The instruments have their own language
Introduction
“What I’m trying out at this stage of my life is new formats, or new settings maybe, or formats and settings that have been tried before but then been forgotten or pushed aside because established formats have a powerful hold on our thinking.”
(Toop p 582)
This article is a conversation between David Toop and Adam Parkinson made in 2014.
David Toop (b. 1949) is an English musician, author, curator, and Emeritus Professor whose practice crosses boundaries of sound, listening, music and materials. His work encompasses improvised music performance, writing, electronic sound, field recording, exhibition curating, sound art installations and opera.
Summary
In the text, Adam Parkinson asks about the usefulness of the term sound art, and what was used before its first application in 1983.
Toop prefers to use the term sound work, instead of sound art.
Toop finds the term sound art problematic for the following reasons.
Toop talks about the British culture of sound arts and what makes it different. He believes that comedy has played a big part in the evolution of sound work in the uk, siting Gilbert and Georges Singing Sculpture, Laurel and Hardy, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers.
He goes on to talk about the influence of the BBC Radiophic Workshop, suppression of electronic music by the BBC but also the poulist effect of using it on state media.
Reflection and Discussion
Adam Parkinson refers to 1983 as being the first use of the term sound arts. Upon research, Alan Licht says:
“The term sound art dates back to William Hellerman’s Sound Art Foundation, founded in 1982, which primarlity seemed to work with “experimental music” or “new music,” although it did organise an early show of sound sculpture and other exhibitable work at the Sculpture Center in 1983″
Licht, A (2007) Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories, Rizzoli, New York
However, according to Judy Dunaway, there seem to be earlier uses such as an Exhibition at the MoMA in 1979 titled “Sound Art”.
Toop’s work is very much based on improvisation and musicking so I can understand that he doesn’t like the concept of a final material object to be the aim of creating. However, for me personally, I find the idea of creating a final piece alluring.
I think this is in the aim of achieving perfection in an object incarnate, but as I think about it there is only so much that can be gained from such a thing.
I recently finished the book The Chrysalids, what ended with the familiar taoist concept that life is water, fluid and ever changing, and as solid as rocks are, they will eventually erode. Experiencing sound in this manner is perhaps what improvisation is about, the fleeting sound of life.
However, if I listen to an album 100 time do I hear the same thing everytime? Sometimes I might hear new sounds that I hadn’t before as I wasn’t listening to that certain thing. This is something that isn’t experienced with the phenonomon of unrecorded anomalous sounds
Conclusion / Future Work
As someone who has never performed before, let alone improvisational performance, I find the prospect interesting. I do however prefer the idea of working in a style closer to that of CAN, where the improvisations are edited afterwards, mostly due to my aprehention to perform, though that might be because of lack of experience.
References (Harvard System)
Surname, Initial, (Year), Title, Publisher City
Small, C (1998) Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT
Dunaway, J (2020) The Forgotten 1979 MoMA Sound Art Exhibition, Available at: https://online.ucpress.edu/res/article/1/1/25/109397/The-Forgotten-1979-MoMA-Sound-Art-Exhibition (Accessed 7 December 2021)
Glossary
Problematic – Analyse the problems that arise from something
Cedrik Fermont is a composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, independent researcher, concert organiser, curator who operates in the field of noise, electronic and experimental music since 1989. He was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) and currently lives in Berlin.
Cedrik manages his label Syphre, where he distributes electronic music, noise, avant-garde, contemporary classical, electro-acoustic, industrial, experimental, sound art specially from Africa and Asia but not exclusively.
Syrphe tries to establish new connections and exchanges between musicians, promoters, galleries, venues, magazines, radio stations from all over the world and tends to spread above all awareness about Asian and African composers. CDs and other formats are now and then published, lectures, workshops and concerts are also sometimes given in various art centres, universities, museums and venues.
Cedrik wondered why industrial and noise music was dominated by white artists. He began branching out and trying to find people from around the world to contribute to these tape compilations. This was before the internet and it took a long time to get in touch and communicate with people.
When learning about electro-acoustic music it was very franco-central. He used the internet to learn about other artists like Halim El Dabh, whose experiments with tape music (The Expression of Zaar, 1944) are some of the earliest known, predating the work of Pierre Schaeffer.
He found that people from around the world owned albums of western experimental music like Throbbing Gristle but was interested in how they knew this western music but none of us heard their music. Wasn’t distributed in the west, so he began to try and distribute it online.
In turkey, he was kicked out of a venue as the owner and customers didn’t think of the noise and breakcore as music. However, in these scenes, lots of attendants were musicians themselves who wanted to get ideas for their own music.
Cedrik says that through propaganda western media made out that the eastern block completely oppressed music and art. He didn’t believe it so has done work on this topic, documenting the music of the cold war era in eastern (and central) Europe.
In the digital age, accentuated by the conditions of COVID19, online meetings often end abruptly and do not allow for the proper connections that in-person venues allow.
I asked Cedrik the following question:
How do you think the internet changes the concept of ‘scenes’, ‘genre’ and ‘outsider music’ in music?
the Internet allows instant communication and access so much instantly. new genre combinations. Allows new combinations from around the world to exist. no borders. In the past, you had to access music from record stores and sound libraries. Records used to last longer. 6 months is now considered older.
Scenes occur everywhere and everywhen. Dada and Pop Art. Noise music around the world. Reminds me of Brian Eno’s thoughts on the scenius, that we think of individuals as the genius opposed to scenes that form around the thinking of groups, what are the true ‘genius’.
Afterthoughts
Cedrik’s involvement and commitment to his cause of decolonising electronic music is very respectful and his dedication is inspiring.
I recently watched the film Solaris (1972) directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The soundtrack was created by Eduard Artemyev (b. 1937).
Artemyev was a Russian composer who created the scores for Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Mirror, and Stalker, as well as many other films over his career. His scores are famous for the use of the ANS synthesizer.
Solaris is a science fiction film set on a decaying, derelict space station that observes the ocean planet of Solaris, where, as a result of radiation experimentation, a replica (though not a continuation) of the protagonist’s deceased wife is materialized. Like most of Tarkovsky’s work, the goes into philosophical questions such as questioning the necessity of knowledge and science, its morality, as well as of treating beings (in the case of the film, the protagonists manifested ‘wife’) with respect, what draws a parallel with the questions of respect for AI, a common theme in 21st-century sci-fi.
The score for Solaris is a mix of more traditional instruments for the returning theme throughout the film (voice, organ, strings, marimba), field recordings (birds, people talking, clattering metal), and electronic synthesis. Throughout the film, the synthesizer is used to create dark drones as well as sound effects such as futuristic cars from combining it with what sounds like clattering trains and machinery such as air conditioning fans. Another sound that is created sounds like a howling wind.
The ANS Synthesizer was invented by Evgeny Murzin (b. 1914) over a period of 20 years (1937-57) and is based on the method of graphical or drawn sound. This made it possible to visualise a sound wave, as well as create a sound from a drawn spectrogram.
The sine waves are generated from printed glass disks. Each disk has 144 tracks, for a total of 730 microtones spanning 10 octaves. The interface displays these vertically through projected modulating lights with the lowest frequencies being at the bottom and higher frequencies at the top. The horizontal axis plots time. The user ‘draws’ on a non-drying mastic glass plate that allows light to pass through.
Notably, the influential experimental music group Coil also made use of the ANS in a box set released CoilANS. The instrument was used to create drones similar to other work created by Coil like Time Machines. Below are some of the images used to create the boxset.
Sam Auinger is a sound artist and composer, currently living and working in Berlin. His work highlights the acoustic qualities of public urban environments.
In 1989 he founded O+A with Bruce Odland.O+A’s work is based on the perspective of hearing, where sound installations in large public spaces alter the city noise in real-time.
In the work Blue Moon, the sound of the tide at the harbour outside the New York World Financial Centre is harmonised with 3 tuning tubes. Speakers were then used to distribute the sound around the plaza. The speakers doubled up as furniture.
The idea of Blue Moon was to retune the environment to make it more musical so that people could connect to the world around them.
Voices, boats, electrical hums, planes, helicopters, and the tide of the water
“People thanked us for reminding us there were tides.”
Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening is an album that I have been familiar with for a while. I first listened to Deep Listening in 2019, while looking for drone-based music to listen to, as at night I like to listen to ambient and drone music to sleep to.
The audio document outlined a history of sound art.
I am interested in sound arts roots of Dada .
I am aware of the following artists that appear in the video and will likely research further, and write on the works of John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Hugo Ball, Morton Feldman, Pierre Schaeffer, Pauline Oliveros, Karlheinz Stockhausen, La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier, Throbbing Gristle, John Oswald, Negativland, Carsten Nicolai.
Joe Banks (Disinformation), Hildegard Westerkamp, Steve Roden, John Oswald.
The inclusion of music was entertaining and is something that I am interested in.