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This is the last in the Sound Experiment Cycle. It can be listened to alone or as part of the whole.
NOTES ON THE SOUND EXPERIMENT CYCLE
The intention was to construct a piece of “music” that would be difficult to listen to, while simultaneously maintaining a musical integrity. This is to say, I wanted to construct a song from noises that would grate and jar against a person’s listening palate. I wanted people to feel as though they were listening to fingernails on a chalkboard or the sound of metal being cut. I wanted something unpleasant, but specifically industrial sounding in its unpleasant nature. Simultaneously, I wanted there to be form and structure, and that when you moved beyond the difficulty of the sounds, there remained something interesting and stimulating to be found. This of course is not uncommon, and the art world has always explored these difficult areas.
I soon realized I wasn’t getting the difficult sounds I wanted. Yes, the sounds used are difficult and possess a degree of unpleasantness, but each movement, I discovered, is easy to listen to, especially when you have steeped yourself in music of a similar nature. I contemplated stopping until this problem had been resolved, but I also realized that this cycle was taking on a life of its own. Although I might not be accomplishing what I intended, I found myself stimulated by what was being created. I chose to follow it through in its creation. I’ve always been a firm believer in the Dadaist adage of moving with the unexpected twists and results that you encounter while working.
The Sound Experiment is not complex or difficult. It exists in layers. Sounds weave in and out; the sounds themselves are repetitive patterns or pulses and these patterns then repeat themselves while weaving in and out from each other. While each movement is an exploration of new sounds, there are, throughout each movement, two or three sounds that are repeated. The intention is twofold: First, each section is an attempt to move forward, but simultaneously, to reference back to what had come previously. Secondly, a key objective to this experiment is the exploration of the simple juxtaposition of sounds: What happens when you place sound one with sound two? Then, what happens when you put sound one with sound four? And so on. By juxtaposing two things, a third is always created. If one of those two were to change, then a new third is created. The more sounds that are juxtaposed together, the more virtual or other “third” sounds are equally created.
Now, what happens if you look at the cycle in a non-liner fashion? What happens if you look at it as if it were an amoebae-like form where each sound coexists equally at all times? Then at any moment any one of the sounds can come to the foreground or recede from hearing range. The Sound Experiment Cycle then is only a 17-minute fragment of a grouping of sounds that are in a state of continuous permutation.
Ideally, a program would be created to house these sounds, and then, depending either at random by the program or by the manipulation of a person, these sounds and their duration would rise or recede from the foreground, middle ground, or background (or depending upon how many sounds the operator wants heard at any one moment), thereby always creating a new variation or pattern or song.
The core or foundation of this experiment is in simple repetition or the pulse. The pulse, or a simple repeating rhythm, is the core of not only humanity but also the universe. It is primeval. It is the repetition of a person’s daily biological rhythms and the cycles of the planets as they rotate in the solar system. By extension, man has incorporated these repeating rhythms into the beating or pounding of machinery in the industrial age and visually, and this has proliferated remarkably so in the past decades, the repetition of images in the worlds of art and advertisement.
NOTES ON THE SOUND EXPERIMENT CYCLE
The intention was to construct a piece of “music” that would be difficult to listen to, while simultaneously maintaining a musical integrity. This is to say, I wanted to construct a song from noises that would grate and jar against a person’s listening palate. I wanted people to feel as though they were listening to fingernails on a chalkboard or the sound of metal being cut. I wanted something unpleasant, but specifically industrial sounding in its unpleasant nature. Simultaneously, I wanted there to be form and structure, and that when you moved beyond the difficulty of the sounds, there remained something interesting and stimulating to be found. This of course is not uncommon, and the art world has always explored these difficult areas.
I soon realized I wasn’t getting the difficult sounds I wanted. Yes, the sounds used are difficult and possess a degree of unpleasantness, but each movement, I discovered, is easy to listen to, especially when you have steeped yourself in music of a similar nature. I contemplated stopping until this problem had been resolved, but I also realized that this cycle was taking on a life of its own. Although I might not be accomplishing what I intended, I found myself stimulated by what was being created. I chose to follow it through in its creation. I’ve always been a firm believer in the Dadaist adage of moving with the unexpected twists and results that you encounter while working.
The Sound Experiment is not complex or difficult. It exists in layers. Sounds weave in and out; the sounds themselves are repetitive patterns or pulses and these patterns then repeat themselves while weaving in and out from each other. While each movement is an exploration of new sounds, there are, throughout each movement, two or three sounds that are repeated. The intention is twofold: First, each section is an attempt to move forward, but simultaneously, to reference back to what had come previously. Secondly, a key objective to this experiment is the exploration of the simple juxtaposition of sounds: What happens when you place sound one with sound two? Then, what happens when you put sound one with sound four? And so on. By juxtaposing two things, a third is always created. If one of those two were to change, then a new third is created. The more sounds that are juxtaposed together, the more virtual or other “third” sounds are equally created.
Now, what happens if you look at the cycle in a non-liner fashion? What happens if you look at it as if it were an amoebae-like form where each sound coexists equally at all times? Then at any moment any one of the sounds can come to the foreground or recede from hearing range. The Sound Experiment Cycle then is only a 17-minute fragment of a grouping of sounds that are in a state of continuous permutation.
Ideally, a program would be created to house these sounds, and then, depending either at random by the program or by the manipulation of a person, these sounds and their duration would rise or recede from the foreground, middle ground, or background (or depending upon how many sounds the operator wants heard at any one moment), thereby always creating a new variation or pattern or song.
The core or foundation of this experiment is in simple repetition or the pulse. The pulse, or a simple repeating rhythm, is the core of not only humanity but also the universe. It is primeval. It is the repetition of a person’s daily biological rhythms and the cycles of the planets as they rotate in the solar system. By extension, man has incorporated these repeating rhythms into the beating or pounding of machinery in the industrial age and visually, and this has proliferated remarkably so in the past decades, the repetition of images in the worlds of art and advertisement.
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atonalis
some of the best art i have seen is one with pen to paper while they are talking on the phone........ a colage of beautiful abstract unconscious...... this gives me that feeling absolutely beautiful.