Often realised by installations of live performers and/or loudspeakers in acoustics not conventionally considered adapted to hosting sound, his work uses structural and formal protocols to interrogate ways we relate to information we hear.
His solo and collaborative work has been installed and performed over Europe and North America, including Q-O2, KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Kaaistudio's, Beursschouwburg, Brussels; STUK, De Singel, Jester and Boeks, Belgium; La Becque CH, Berliner Festspiele Berlin, e-flux screening room NYC, Lincoln Center NYC, South Bank Centre, London, and during multiple US and UK tours.
A double CD edition of his recent collaboration with Slow Reading Club was with released by Ediçoes CN.
Since 2022 he co-runs the project space Winona with Sabrina Seifried and Henry Andersen.
3 pages of sheet music and a live sound performance commissioned for Céline Mathieu and Aaron Amar Bhamra by the Kunsthal of Jester, Genk BE,
for an exhibition curated by Koi Persyn, Fugue.
Released as contribution to accompanying book with Mousse Publishing.
The exhibition loosely related the title's meanings: a musical form, a psychological state of dissociation, a nature of evasion; and brought together works in text, diagram, sound, and sculpture — entities and objects stripped of their functionality and separated from their origins.
Some works were visible only on certain days of the week, or solely to Jester's employees. The pages of sheet music were attached to the exhibition handout. Depending on the visitor's familiarity with Western music notation, here was music presented in an ambiguous space — an oblique schematic bound to the flatness of the page — or shifted to the inner ear's imagined heard-sound.
I extracted the vocal track from the audio of a well-known 90s song. It felt important that the song be chosen for its cultural almost ambient familiarity, being generally 'known', for the content itself to not dominate a reading of the piece. A friend held up a Bluetooth speaker playing back this audio in the three locations. I walked around nearby and recorded the situation. Alongside the song itself we hear traffic, car horns, people speaking, an angry security guard, a boxing club, an underwhelming water feature, an escalator, and the hum of an air conditioning vent.
I fed these recordings through various basic online tools intended for hobby musicians to transcribe the melodies of (recorded) songs into sheet music. But the complexities of these field recordings exceeded the capacities of these tools — the transcriptions captured not only the tune but also the surrounding environment in which it was embedded. Foreground and background flatten. Data, noise, and focus enrich each other. Everything became productive.
So where's the fugue? Fugue is polyphony, a texture, a viscosity. Horizontal — the melodic subject of the fugue — and vertical — layerings of a subject over permutations of itself — smear.
I overlaid passages of the sheet music — superimposing temporalities, pitch registers, etc — then copied them out. I imagined the extremely wet acoustic of the Kunsthal and built this into the notation. The page size (255mm x 342mm) was sampled from classic editions of Bach fugues from the 1940s. And handwriting was useful at this point for revising a by-now tenuous relationship with materials. It's one more way to know and encode data — on an anatomic level; at arm's length, with a lag dictated by the speed of copying. Subjectivity and affective engagements are easier to access. Decisions come.
The performance was a quasi composed-out listen-through of the field recordings and their transcribed piano materials.
Live performance; finnissage, Fugue, Jester, Genk BE, end May 2025
37' loop. Quadruple stereo (8 channel) sound.
For exhibition by Slow Reading Club consisting of installation of flea-market speakers with customised wiring and hardware
(part of work titled All Available Amplification (Slow Reading Club with Charlie Usher)).
Over four evenings in 2024, together with a chorus of students from KASK art school in Ghent, we rehearsed a cover version of one of Cornelius Cardew's choir works; Paragraph 7 of The Great Learning, from 1971. We substituted its original text (Confucius translated by fascist poet Ezra Pound) with the seminal The Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto by Aaron Swartz, where he argues for transgressive approaches to achieving the goals of the open access movement through civil disobedience. He took a stand against copyrights and contracts that restrict redistribution of knowledge.
The score calls for amateur singers. It functions as an open set of rules and relations between singers, both spatially and vocally. Rhythm is defined by the breath lengths of the singers and harmony is a result of each person adjusting to their neighbours. There is no requirement to read music notation or to be able to accurately sustain a pitch.
The rehearsal of Paragraph 7 is not secondary to the piece; the act of gathering to speak and collectively negotiate the score is the piece more so than any specific sound image produced by singing.
The rehearsals took place in the long hallway leading to the school library. The long architecture of the space moved the singers into specific positions, creating unexpected clusters of tones, and with the help of Christophe Albertijn we made a 9-channel recording of these rehearsals, each microphone placed equidistantly in the corridor to best capture every detail of each of these events.
Learning (Attachments) was created out of these recordings. Fragments of rehearsal, warm-ups, chatter, down time, ambient sound, etc, became agents in an installation consisting of clusters of flea-market loudspeakers spread over four tables. 44 stereo compositions made from radical edits of these source materials were diffused according to conditions defined by the layout of speakers in a sort of crude spatialisation, grouping tables in duos, trios, etc, in complex schemas of attachments, silences, and interruptions. A stereo bounce of the composition exists as a CD and digital release.
Choir members: Veronika Akopyan, Seppe Claerbout, Sarah Debaise, Zoë Dejonghe, Aleksander Iliev, Ward Maas, Mieke Schelstraete, Lucas Van der Rhee, Zeger Vetters, Hilke Walraven, and Tzu-Jo Wu.
stereo speaker installation, sound file, media player
15' loop
Created as an element of an installation by design duo Wang Consulting (Sabrina Seifried and Joelle Laederach), Uncovers (2023) groups three sections of identical length - one moves through, one stands with, and another sits with sounds found in recordings made at various moments of the industrial-scale garment production cycle.
Hard stereo panning in each section undercuts the acoustic deadening effect of Wang Consulting's reclaimed-denim ceiling sculpture, allowing for a shifting synthesis between architectural typologies: the grand surface of high-street retail, the cramped intimacy of the textile atelier, and the cyclical movement between boutique and high street.
Uncovers (2023) was named after Wang Consulting's previous collection, Uncovers.
Remix of Pan (Formulas, Federico Luz 2020).
digital and cassette release
5'14" duration
I step into the unknown
we create our own rules and live far away in the wilderness
we don't care about society and civilization
to sing and evoke the good spirits
to tell the future
to give advice
to teach new rituals
my uniform, I put it on to feel more inside the element
to understand more about the past the present and the future
I am a traveler a hunter a collector
I come from different places
stand by me
Pan stand by me
(original lyrics, Pan (2020), Federico Luz)
speaking voice, flutes: Federico Luz
piano: Charlie Usher
Radio edit of various pieces 2015-2021 -
18' duration
Mixed feelings studio lo-tech
Mixed feelings DO copy
Mixed feelings standing device
Mixed feelings [no title]
Mixed feelings x within a circle
Mixed feelings a touch scroll a slow gaze
Mixed feelings nu chair nu you
Mixed feelings yæself/wæself
Mixed feelings Winona
Mixed feelings a sharp zoom a jump cut
Mixed feelings [no title]
Mixed feelings fresh cuts fresh cuts The essentials (playback, supplementary media (piano, instruments, sine waves, etc)) (ongoing composition)
Sweats (10' loop, installation)
So calm and don't want to end (piano and playback)
'I don't know if you heard the radio broadcast of my work, but here's the mp3 of it (actually a different edit, I prefer it). It's more like 15 different pieces I think. 12 pieces for the ensemble for my ongoing durational group listening format / DIY speakers & sometimes live musician installation Mixed feelings, the group of quite loose/quite tight piano pieces that's near the end kind of in citation marks (story; it's actually born of late-night improvisations from ballroom piano at PAF, I transcribed them for piano virtuoso (Miki Sawada) after), also a version of a installation loop / kind of kit-piece for IRL sound playback (must be recording of commercial/mall space) and some kind of other element (sometimes other speakers with sine tones, sometimes re-tuned electric piano, sometimes live instruments, any sorts of whatever-specificities I guess), and plus another installation loop piece for two cardboard box subwoofers I showed in Galerie Duflon Racz 2019 and then STUK in 2020. The edit is bringing them into some kind of too-good-to-be true straight-to-radio neatness I guess; pieces fit together in ways I like in other ways I wouldn't / didn't expect. That's fun, and that reminds me, I've been wondering how it'd be possible to embrace mawkishness; I've been on to cuteness for a long while, but there's little of both here, just a little / maybe just enough. Of course it's not all about that though. What it is about is hearing and spending time with what I want to hear. Eyes on the phone, closed, or looking at the floor, reverb as a container, unifier, a digital room made your living room. Here we are together!' (email December 2021)
Studio recording by An Assembly BBC studios 2021
Soundtrack for Heart-crack, with Aubrey Birch.
Text-film Heart-crack was a commission for writer Aubrey Birch by Theater Neumarkt for their online platform 100 Ways to Say We;
a pre-enactment of multiple future visions, a speculative-utopian take on the possibilities of the concept of We. Artists, theorists, and activists from around the planet share diverse ways of living together – from the perspective of an imagined future: a map of voices, stories, and opinions that revolve around the idea of a diverse, contradictory, and ambitious We, which eventually creates an Archive of the Future.
A co-production of Theater Neumarkt & Goethe-Institut / Performing Architecture in collaboration with Sale Docks & Florian Malzacher.
17th Architecture Biennale 2021 - La Biennale di Venezia.
Sound for resonating transducer sculptures by Nina Emge, 3-channel playback, 17' loop
created for group show Modern Nature at La Becque, Switzerland, curated by Elise Lammer.
Modern Nature: An Homage to Derek Jarman is a three-year project which comprises the development of a garden and an artistic programme inspired by the life and work of Derek Jarman. Created especially for Modern Nature, the garden located on the lakeside grounds of La Becque is a tribute to the garden Jarman developed at Prospect Cottage. Far from a perfect copy, La Becque's Jarman-inspired garden is actually a reinterpretation of the principles that guided him throughout his gardening process, i.e. working with local and native species, creating scenography based on found elements, devising efficient biodynamic arrangements and avoiding walls or fences.
samples from various Derek Jarman films and iPhone recordings made at Prospect Cottage
Twin subwoofers in their cardboard shipping boxes placed on the floor with identically coiled black cables on side furthest from the nearest wall, amplifier, .wav file, media player, samples from Francophone R&B, wet acoustic.
Et on y va, et on y va
Et on y va, et on y va
(Cevi (2018), Marwa Loud)
Inserts in recorded text piece by Slow Reading Club (Bryana Fritz and Henry Andersen)
Featuring various audio protocols from Mixed Feelings
audio files
stereo sound, live speaking performer, visual clock with seconds
20' duration
An amplified voice reads the time at the moment of the performance alongside a soundtrack providing 3 pulses deliniating the last 3 of each group of 10 seconds. This is the format of the speaking clock, a still not quite redundant telephone service allowing, for example, those with no access to a clock, people synchronising clocks, or people with visual impairments, to know the time.
The soundtrack is embedded with multiple copyrighted materials - chart songs, field recordings, harmonic pads, sine tones - all revealed through and between the pulses, as much in negative as in positive space. I guess it's all a kind of copyright detection algorithm signal jam. Copyrighted time becomes real time becomes free time.
text from the premiere:
A live speaking clock, performed by Berlin residents on the Grand Stage of Haus der Berliner Festspiele, accompanied musically by pre-recorded compositions from all around the world, will be the closing event of MaerzMusik – Festival for Time Issues 2021. The project, called TIMEPIECE, is based on a work by Peter Ablinger, who articulated the idea to perform live and in real-time the text of the BBC Speaking Clock in his composition TIM Song (2012). TIMEPIECE takes up and extends this idea into a 27-hour video-streamed, multilingual and musically diverse live performance situated in a slow-moving space on the revolving stage of Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
Realisation of Peter Ablinger, TIM Song. A Pop Song for a speaking voice and accompaniment (2012)
Artistic direction: Berno Odo Polzer in collaboration with Daniel Kötter
Scenography: Elisa Limberg
Light: Marcel Weber
Music curation: Berno Odo Polzer, Harry Glass, Laurens von Oswald, Lendl Barcelos,
Baba Electronica, Henry Andersen (Q-O2)
mono to 10 channel speaker installation grouping works Elky, Tongggggues, Sweats, etc, tsunami multi-channel .wav player
Mixed feelings is a multi-format context for group listening, bringing together heart-on-sleeve cultural samples, detailed montage protocols, DIY sound systems, live instruments, vintage Leslie cabinets and horizontal time structures
Mixed feelings is a hosting format, a context for placement of multiple unrelated pieces.
The majority of Mixed feelings consists of A-Zs and Reels.
The slow gaze, a touch scroll, a sharp zoom, a jump cut / Juliana Spahr: things of each possible relation hashing against one another / Chris Messina: it's born of the internet, and owned by no one / Radical Software: an x within a circle, the Xerox mark, the antithesis of copyright, which means DO copy / Genesis P-Orridge: Information is like a bank. Some of us are rich. Some of us are poor [...] rob the bank.
See A-Zs, Reels, all pieces named Untitles (___) for audio
solo reader, finger clicks (one hand)
or, two readers, finger clicks (one hand each)
always unamplified
score:
Text cropped from Cocteau twins song Lorelei (1984).
The text has been distributed over several minutes, in pieces of 13" separated by a one-second gap.
One hand clicks the beat. The voice follows the placement suggested by the score.
When performed as a duo, reader A) is to start after reader B), reader B)'s tempo slightly faster. At one point they should meet up and diverge.
You come to me broke
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
Without a doubt
(Lorelei (1984), Treasure, Cocteau Twins)
Specified or unspecified solo or grouped live instruments, or specified or unspecified solo or grouped live instruments and mono or stereo playback,
in addition to requirements pertaining to Mixed feelings (exhibition)
13"-long pieces, stand-alone or to be incorporated amongst A-Zs and Reels.
Most pieces unperformed and unrecorded.
Mixed feelings All that is mine is that which I don't know
Mixed feelings a sharp zoom a jump cut
Mixed feelings Autumn as the fabric
Mixed feelings Autumn as the green image
Mixed feelings Bach, like counterpoint
Mixed feelings Bamboo forum
Mixed feelings Beta cities
Mixed feelings Beta tones
Mixed feelings Birds and humans
Mixed feelings Bleu nature
Mixed feelings Body and mind
Mixed feelings Brain and body
Mixed feelings Brain and mind
Mixed feelings Calm, and the earth
Mixed feelings Calm, green, walk
Mixed feelings Calm and the green
Mixed feelings Celebrate these uncertainties
Mixed feelings Chair (1948)
Mixed feelings Chair (1981)
Mixed feelings Chords defying a ground
Mixed feelings Colorflame of mother
Mixed feelings Colour, home, and algae
Mixed feelings Colours are replaced by words
Mixed feelings Colours enhance the memories
Mixed feelings Days on fire
Mixed feelings Dead cities
Mixed feelings Debussy, like colour
Mixed feelings Desert city
Mixed feelings Desert green image focus strength
Mixed feelings DO copy
Mixed feelings Earth, soil
Mixed feelings Earth and soil
Mixed feelings Elders and our fragmented history
Mixed feelings Electromagnetics
Mixed feelings Everything I know I've stolen, and I call it information
Mixed feelings Feel at home
Mixed feelings Financial troubles and worries
Mixed feelings Fingertips, hands, and arms
Mixed feelings Focus on green
Mixed feelings Form, tenderness, content and tenderness
Mixed feelings Frequencies that change us
Mixed feelings fresh cuts fresh cuts
Mixed feelings From now to soon
Mixed feelings God in Kenya
Mixed feelings Godfreys *
Mixed feelings Godfreys **
Mixed feelings Godfreys ***
Mixed feelings Godfreys ****
Mixed feelings Godfreys *****
(set of 5 pieces for solo concert harmonium)
Mixed feelings Gone forever
Mixed feelings Good news
Mixed feelings Great for being
Mixed feelings Great joy
Mixed feelings Great joys
Mixed feelings Green distance
Mixed feelings Green forever
Mixed feelings Green moss
Mixed feelings Ground of our beings
Mixed feelings Images are replaced by colour
Mixed feelings Images replace memory
Mixed feelings Isochronic tones
Mixed feelings Light, the quiet and some time
Mixed feelings Light and algae
Mixed feelings Light Brussels, think fast
Mixed feelings Light green
Mixed feelings Live an idea and the idea will change
Mixed feelings Material as the fabric
Mixed feelings Maximise and honour difference to acknowledge a rich heritage
Mixed feelings Mind and body
Mixed feelings Mind and the earth
Mixed feelings Morning where motels colour the image
Mixed feelings Moro and Tarocco
Mixed feelings Motels, colour, and the factories
Mixed feelings Music as a trace on your day
Mixed feelings My cautious teens
Mixed feelings My quiet life
Mixed feelings New green
Mixed feelings New home
Mixed feelings Nikola Tesla
Mixed feelings Now and then
Mixed feelings nu chair nu you
Mixed feelings Only know change
Mixed feelings Other time
Mixed feelings organinos *
Mixed feelings organinos **
Mixed feelings organinos ***
(set of 3 pieces for solo Hohner Organino)
Mixed feelings Piano, green, focus
Mixed feelings Queer finance
Mixed feelings Read fast think fast
Mixed feelings Real world sounds
Mixed feelings Rooms with tones
Mixed feelings Salt red
Mixed feelings Same time
Mixed feelings Sand, ground, and focus
Mixed feelings Seaweed and algae
Mixed feelings She need your help
Mixed feelings Simplicity, ground, and focus
Mixed feelings Slow distance
Mixed feelings So calm and don't want to end
Mixed feelings Stoel (1966)
Mixed feelings Strength, heritage, body, ground
Mixed feelings Strength, simplicity, body, ground
Mixed feelings Strength with all sisters
Mixed feelings Studio lo-tech
Mixed feelings Super, green, and gone forever
Mixed feelings Susumu means 'advanced'
Mixed feelings standing device
Mixed feelings Tavolo (1974)
Mixed feelings Teenager tearjerker
Mixed feelings The algae you see
Mixed feelings The desert don't want to end
Mixed feelings The green - believe it exists
Mixed feelings The long time
Mixed feelings Then and now
Mixed feelings The photo versus the caption
Mixed feelings Toes, feet, and legs
Mixed feelings Tones for a year
Mixed feelings Transcendence where form and content separate
Mixed feelings Uncanny, or too good to be true
Mixed feelings Walking through the image
Mixed feelings Walk through fog
Mixed feelings Walk through the home (11'10")
Mixed feelings White Green
Mixed feelings Winona
Mixed feelings x within a circle
Mixed feelings yæself/wæself
Mixed feelings You are everything you see
Mixed feelings You are green you see
Mixed feelings Young Leo
stereo playback with supplementary media, laptop and audio interface or media player
multiple versions:
solo piano,
solo electric piano,
solo viola,
6 instruments,
3-channel sine tone installation
3' duration
A recording of the reverberant interior of a shopping mall steadily pitch-shifts up one tone during the course of the track.
A low, ambient 49Hz drone produced by the building's air conditioning is coincidentally the root note of songs being diffused from shops in the mall.
Pitch materials being played alongside (sine tones or by live instruments) superimpose chords which, due to the pitch shift, gradually lock in to the harmonic space proposed by the pitched materials heard in the mall.
Studio recording of version for 6 instruments. An Assembly, BBC studios 2021
Version for sines waves and playback
[A VERSION]
guitar-zither (in Coyote tuning), amplification, resonant box, mono audio
27 works for guitar-zither:
A loudspeaker diffuses a playlist compiling various fretless bass chords sampled from Joni Mitchell's song Coyote.
The tuning of the zither is devised to lock in with the harmonic space outlined by these chords.
guitar-zither (tuned depending on context), amplification, resonant box
27 works for guitar-zither:
The tuning of the zither is devised to lock in with the harmonic space outlined by materials within which 2019-2020 guitar-zither recital (2019 - 2020) [B VERSION] is played (see U Smile).
Backing track (2019) is a procedure for generating 27' of vocal content for application in various other contexts.
Backing track doesn't exist in isolation from other works, and is only activated by its use elsewhere.
Online stem extraction tools are used to extract the vocal layer of a song. Any tool is possible, 'high quality audio' isn't priority or even desired, and all accidental noise/glitches/artefacts are welcome.
Each subsection of the song (not as in, verse or chorus, but as in, each individual vocal phrase) is cropped and labelled A, B, C, D, etc,
and re-ordered as following:
A B C B D A B C D B C D B C E D E F D C E F G, etc,
moving crab-wise through the sections until the end of the song is reached.
The most identifiable material from the vocal layer source is repeated twice in entirety to mark the end of the procedure.
stereo playback with supplementary media, laptop and audio interface or media player
27' duration
U Smile is a hosting / contextualising format.
The content created by the protocol Backing track is diffused in such a way as to be equally present throughout whole performance/installation space.
During its diffusion, according to a specific structural schema, vocal and instrumental interventions of 13" take place at regular intervals.
For example:
A)
For reader, microphone, mono audio (diffused from one or multiple speakers), autotune.
Using lyrics from the source track of original as the input, free online neural network text generation tools (Talk to transformer, InferKit, as of 2021) produces more text content.
The reader's voice is autotuned to the same key of Backing track.
During the 13" blocks, the reader reads through text. Passages can be repeated if necessary.
B)
Various 13" pieces from Mixed feelings (instrumental pieces) can be performed.
For example, 2019-2020 guitar-zither recital [B VERSION] is designed for this.
C)
Various 13" crops from A-Zs or Reels can be diffused. If these crops contain pitched music it should be in the same modal/harmonic space as the content used to make Backing track.
D)
13" blocks of identical softened brown noise can be diffused over one or more speakers positioned equidistantly throughout the performance/installation space.
E)
A drone can shift from one state to another, for example, from one side of the room to the other, between adjacent rooms, or from one harmonic relation to content used to make Backing track, to another.
Short version with A), C) D), E).
Headphone mix 2021
1 or 2 Genelec monitors on custom-made Genelec packing box shelves placed at head-height of composer either alone (mono version) or at composer's arms width apart, relatively wet acoustic, wav files and sound editing software, media player
loop of flexible duration
Tongggggues only appears tethered to several other pieces:
In the context of Mixed feelings, it plays A-Zs and Reels, or any of the Untitles (___) pieces.
Installed in isolation of other works, Tongggggues can only diffuse any of the pieces named Untitles (___).
mono or stereo sound system, recordings of speech, music, or field recordings
score (version using K-Pop fan materials):
A recording of a K-pop track is cropped into overlapping 13" fragments, and placed in a folder named /001[K-POP-source]/.
A whole area of K-pop youtube is populated by videos of teenagers singing along a cappella to K-pop songs, the original listened to with an earphone so as to be unheard by the viewers of the video.
A cover version and its source track is to be selected. Synchronisation between the two tracks is essential.
The a capella audio is to be ripped from the youtube video, and the same cropping protocol is to be applied, and placed in a folder named /001[K-POP-cover]/.
The crops shouldn't ever be of exactly the same moment of the source track. A difference of 4"-5" is preferred.
The exception of this should be the climax of the song, for which both the cover and the source should be perfectly synchronised.
The aim of the parsing and interaction of these two categories aim to create various steps of reveal, and to render the relation of the categories more and more tangible.
Isolated crops of /K-POP_source/and /K-cover/ will be parsed amongst other materials, at regular intervals.
Gradually, similar lyrics are heard, and the reveal happens when we hear, at first, the climax crop of /K-POP_source/ and of /K-POP_cover/ in succession, and then simultaneously over seperate speakers.
The tethering of /K-POP_source/ and /K-POP_cover/ to specific opposing speakers is optional.
A-Zs and Reels leading to Untitles (Piano concerto)
headphone (dual-mono) version 2021
Widen every equally-tempered semitone across the whole compass of the keyboard so that the notes at the extremities of the range sound one semitone lower (bottom end) and one semitone higher (top end).
[B VERSION]
Tighten every equally-tempered semitone across the whole compass of the keyboard so that the notes at the extremities of the range sound one semitone higher (bottom end) and one semitone lower (top end).
Infinity backdrop (2020), a keyboard tuning schematic, is an alternative equal temperament, extending the proposal that a piano's tuning, fixed in place, a grid, is itself an agent of the platforming or hosting of the music potentially realised within it, as opposed to an often-given premise that the music itself be the agent obliging on a tuning a the instrument.
Pianos are tuned with stretched octaves, octaves slightly wider than the 'rational' octave as outlined in the harmonic series. This is where tuning shifts discretely into texture and tone; the sound of the piano has added brilliance and carries further.
Each key of a piano triggers the release of a hammer, which in turn sets in motion two or three strings, each vibrating at the same frequency. Their oscillations are disturbing the air around them, and these turbulences push and pull the vibration rate of each of the other strings' pitches out of sync, these pitches start to beat; the sound starts to glow.
Piano tuners also create a sort of infinity backdrop for the music the piano will at one point host, by stretching the tuning, higher notes tuned slightly too high, lower notes too low.
The goal, a piano tuned perfectly to itself, locking-in, then nudged just back to the edge. The texture of the sound is shimmering, an aura, and there's the bloom: the beginning moment of the tonal envelope; where the 'chiff' occurs, the expansion of transient sounds through the initial oscillation to the tonal corpus.
One or multiple Bontempi chord organs, Tapo P100 wifi timer switches, sellotape, bubblewrap and packing beads, cardboard boxes
Taking its title from the 'loading screen', a visual display that appears on a computer program whilst it is loading or initializing, Loading screens is a filler device existing to allow other operations to take place, i.e., switching over of sound files in live performance, changing of performer or loudspeaker positions, etc etc.
The auto-chord buttons of one or multiple Bontempi chord organs taped down so as to be activated.
One or multiple Bontempis are simultaneously switched on and off at intervals either automated (with Tapo P100 wifi timer switches) or manually (depending on other operations).
The packing beads are used as sound insulation, the quantity of which is adjusted to adapt the sound level of the organs to the performance/installation space.
mono or stereo sound system, recordings of speech, music, or field recordings
A recording is cropped into overlapping 13" fragments, and placed in a folder named /001[categoryname]/.
In the context of Mixed feelings, each recording is parsed evenly amongst fragments belonging to other categories. The original order of the content of the recording is retained, so for example, taking the recording of the following text as source:
I occupied a busy street corner in Asheville, North Carolina, to bless children with bubbles that will make them queer. Not gay and lesbian, but QUEER! Bubbles of course do not have such powers, bubbles have only the power to be bubbles, and
some parents knew that and thought the whole thing was funny and would say, "That's cool, I will love my children no matter what." I took notes for the poem.
But MOST parents were not happy about Queer Bubbles at all: "Ooo bubbles, look at the bubbles sweetheart, look at the pretty bubbles." I would blow bubbles for their little hands and say, "These bubbles will assure that your child will grow up to bea healthy, happy, revolutionary Queer who will help rid the world of homophobia, misogyny, racism, and other forms of stupidity." Parents pulled away
nervously saying, "Sorry, sorry." One mother abruptly yanked her blond son's hand, "C'mon honey icecream, icecream!" The boy cried, reaching for the bubbles as she refused to look in my direction, pulling him from the queering of the bubbles. Most parents though just said "Sorry, I'm sorry" as they walked away. I took notes for the poem.
(CAConrad, Power Sissy Intervention #1: Queer Bubbles, Wave (Consortium, dist.)
cropped according to this protocol the text would appear like this
I occupied a busy street corner in Asheville, North Carolina, to bless children with bubbles that [cut]
children with bubbles that will make them queer. Not gay and lesbian, but QUEER! Bubbles of course [cut]
gay and lesbian, but QUEER! Bubbles of course do not have such powers, bubbles have only the power [cut]
not have such powers, bubbles have only the power to be bubbles, and some parents knew that and [cut]
knew that and thought the whole thing was funny and would say, "That's [cut]
would say, "That's cool, I will love my children no matter what." I took notes for the poem. [cut]
The tethering of each /001[categoryname]/ to specific speakers is optional.
A-Zs and Reels leading to The Essentials
headphone (dual-mono) version 2021
field recordings of public and/or commercial spaces, stereo playback, media player, sound editing software
score:
Any public domain field recordings of public space are edited according to the following protocol.
Mono version:
A field recording and silence alternate very rapidly, 5-10 times a second.
Heard from up close, we register white noise alternating with silence.
Heard from further away, filtered through the room and its acoustic, the white noise is revealed as a field-recording, gaps are filled and the sound appears to be continuous.
Dual-mono version
A field recording hard-pan between each speaker very rapidly, at 5-10 times a second.
Heard from up close, we register white noise alternating with silence.
Heard standing and equal distance between the speakers, the ears sense but fail to read the stereo image.
Heard from further away, filtered through the room and its acoustic, the continuity of the field recording is intact.
Headphone (dual-mono) version 2021
field recordings of public and/or commercial spaces, stereo playback, media player, sound editing software
score:
Public domain field recordings of public space are edited according to the following protocol.
A stereo field recording is chosen. The texture should of a constant viscosity/level of activity/general level.
The left and right channels are split into individual mono files, files A) and B).
A copy of the same recording has the following formatting protocol applied, creating the following files:
file C) The left channel's waveform is formatted to fade in and out in the shape of a sharp triangle wave, a 1.5 times a second.
file D) The right channel's waveform is formatted to fade in and out in the shape of a sharp triangle wave, a 1.2 times a second.
Montage instructions:
L channel: file A) is triggered, and fades in.
R channel: file B) is triggered, and fades in at the same rate as file A)
The two are synchronised and simulate a stereo recording.
L channel: file A) cross-fades into file C). File A) is therefore no longer present.
R channel: file B) cross-fades into file D). File B) is therefore no longer present.
L channel: file D) fades in and plays simultaneously with file C)
R channel: file E) fades in and plays simultaneously with file D)
Installation of this piece requires two large, identical speakers at around head height, facing slightly away from each other.
Diffused at a high level.
Elkatone brand rotary amplifier, media player, lamp inserted into body of rotary horn compartment, timer switch
In the context of an exhibition-format of Mixed feelings, the speaker can be used to diffuse any sections from A-Zs or Reels, or Untitles.
As a standalone work, it and its lamp are to be plugged into a Tapo P100 Wifi timer switch programmed to outline the opening hours of the space, with blocks of an equal defined duration alternating on and off. Its rotary mechanism pedal is to be set to the fastest increment of the 'slow' setting. A media player attached to a separate power source loops a mono track of a duration longer than the length of one of these time blocks. The track is never revealed in full.
flute, clarinet, soprano saxophone, piano, electric piano (or 2 electric pianos), 2 violins, viola, double bass, playback
45' duration
122 thirteen-second pieces; each in one dimension, anecdotal (oh, that piece in which...) and a state of being or a presence. There's no time to sink into them, and we step back and look at the whole. Hopefully it's all just *there*, as present as the fern on your windowsill.
So how to lay out 122 pieces, to not stand in their way? Symmetry, each piece as far away as possible from similar ones, to create a sense of flatness, everything on the same plane, to level everything out. The two long exceptions are there to leave traces, to throw everything into a new light. I guess we're here, I guess we're somewhere else. I want to set aside time that's undefined, like the infinity backdrops for a photo shoot. It's no longer about duration or scale but time there for exposure, to chew over the ideas; time to spend some time.
The 122 titles: they're there to shade the content, to bring in the outside world. They're taken from passing thoughts, current interests, things people said, just as the music is composed, lifted and transcribed from other music, non-music, furniture, objects, ideas, and other people's work. It's ambient thought and ideas, the spirit of our day.
Donald Judd designed furniture and said that a good chair is a good chair. When the good ideas don't come I make furniture. Donald Judd made good chairs; the plans are online and I've been building them. He said he's criticised as they aren't comfortable; I agree with his defence that they're good for eating and thinking. I made them for my studio and now I think in them, and listen to things too, and the good ideas come.
I guess music can be just like the chairs, the fern, the spirit of our day, and the photo shoot;
it's soft knowledge / no hard fact.
An assembly (Mixed feelings) performed by An Assembly, conducted by Jack Sheen 2018
grand piano, playback (option 1: mono speaker on stand next to piano / option 2: transducer on sound board of piano)
6' duration
program text:
5 minutes of piano for Miki Sawada -
the (audio) slideshow in a darkened room, game of dissociations;
find that link, stand back, the filmic reveal (maybe music can do it after all),
old-time story-time and a race against infra-time.
Studio recording by Joseph Havlat, BBC studios 2021
Playback, 4 solo voices, grain-percussion, highly resonant performing space; optional 8 extra amplified voices voices with auto-tune / pre-recorded keyboard
11'45" duration
program text:
Michael Nardone keeps his receipts for a year and publishes it,
then he says:
From silt casts of our bones potential palaeontologists may someday infer the genealogy of our age, though not the suffering of its inhabitants. From the archived bits of paper we produced as a byproduct of continued existence potential archaeologists may someday infer what we did and where we did it, thought not why. From the whiteness of our teeth and the distance between them, a cashier may infer the extent of our means, though not the ways in which they came to be considered ours. And what can we know about someone besides what they do, anyway?
and I think about:
music as reportage / storytime versus documentary,
illuminating versus staging of text / speech melody versus music melody,
4 people versus 1 person carrying a message.
Live recording.
Performed by EXAUDI directed by James Weeks October 2015
composed in Voyetra Midi Orchestrator Plus piano roll view.
Rational and free shapes and forms (words, triangles, squares, faces, etc) encoded in sound; drawn in piano roll view, copy pasted, edited freely or according to various protocols, transposed, modified through midi operations, ie. pitch and rhythm randomisation (0 - 100%), inversion, etc.
