Month: November 2021

This is Sam Auinger’s bio on his website

Sam Auinger (1956, Linz) is a sonic thinker, composer and sound artist. He lives and works in Berlin since receiving an invitation to the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD in 1997. His interest is the sonic and auditory as material phenomena that embed information about our shared global interdependence and emotional triggers. Central to his artistic research aims to deepen understanding of acoustic/aural qualities in our urban living environments, precisely public spaces. He propagates “thinking with the ears”. For him, it is a critical daily praxis towards understanding our role in an endangered planetary environment at all levels, from social to environmental. Together with Bruce Odland, he founded O+A in 1989. Their central theme is “hearing perspective,” and known for large-scale, public space sound installations that transform city noise in real-time. (Blue Moon 2004 NY/US, Sonic Vista Frankfurt/D since 2011, Symphonie of Resonances documenta 14 Thessaloniki /GR  2017).https://www.samauinger.de/

Harmonic Bridge

In this installation, Sam decided to use the sounds of a highway separating two towns into the main sounds of the installation. He fed the noise pollution from the road into tuning tubes to create harmonic sounds underneath the highway. The underneath of the highway becomes a lovely place to sit and listen to the sounds. No longer full of noise pollution and invasive sounds but something else instead. I watched the video and listened to the sounds converted from the noise polluting street and I was impressed. This really relates to my audio document and I’ll definitely be quoting his works into it. I wonder how he chose this location? What about pushing him into using it? I know he spoke about the noise pollution separating the two towns that sit between a highway. But what else is there?

Harmonic Gate

Is a new permanent sound installation in Zurich. Sam was invited to come up with a concept for the space surrounding a railway line that the council had set up. Sam decided to use the space for a permanent sound installation that converts the noise pollution of the city into a field of harmonic sounds. As a humane gesture for the city livers.

Using the ideas of sound and the physics of sound. The installation receives the noise pollution from the city and converts it into harmony. All in real-time. This harmonic sound is then delivered at the exact same moment to a specially designed sound speaker designed for this specific sound installation.

I find this idea really interesting. The thought of public permanent sound installations to feed noise pollution into something better for our wellbeing. As cities get more and more populated and as the earth gets less and less landmass I really think this will be the future of City architecture. Or at least involved in it. There have been numerous studies on the negative effect of noise pollution on the human mind. And I don’t see a reason as to why architects and city designers don’t incorporate the thought of noise and sound into the designs.

sonic vista Frankfurt /D 2011

In 2010 the city of Frankfurt invited sam to study the sound sources. He studied acoustics the social usage and social planning and they strove to try to understand what the site offered the users in terms of sound. They found an old railway bridge that connected the north and sound sides of the city of frankfurt and you could see and hear the city as a living organism. From the start of the project, it would require the support of the entire city of frankfurt.

He wanted to design a sphere loudspeaker to convert the noise pollution into again another harmonic permanent installation. They made a low b for the south side with the busses and roads. And a high c for the north side with the construction and pigeons.

Their job was to attract people to slow down. listen to tot eh city as an organism. gain new information about the city. what can you hear when you really listen to your city? The vibrations of power, economy. What does it take for a city to really work? He says we won’t understand ourselves until we truly understand our noise.

Again in similar to the first and second pieces, it seems using permanent sound installations could be a thing cities use on a larger scale to combat noise pollution. Or perhaps as sam says to gain more information or to attract people to listen and slow down. I wonder what the role of a sound artist is in social city planning. Is it to help create and design scientific and psychological instruments to combat noise pollution. To design and understand the acoustics of situations? Perhaps. But it could also be to raise awareness of the subject. To, like sam says. Bring attention to things.

Post Lecture Reflection

Sam begins the lecture reflecting on his past, he thinks it’s important to speak on his past to indicate how he became interested in sound. He was born in 1956. He is much older than us. He grew up on the edge of industrial areas in the countryside and for him growing up in this area sound was information and music was social. This means that people in his area could run a farmhouse or their daily lives and they needed the auditory information to function on their land for example. His grandfather when he was a kid would put hay next to his ear and forecast the weather. This afternoon will be a storm his grandfather would say. He could hear the moistness in the hay and know the weather.

Well, hay absorbs the moisture levels and changes very fast. If you know the difference between dry hay and wet or hay with moisture then you would know. Another example of auditory information would be the goose making noises when someone foreign approached the farmhouse. He would also read comics, which wasn’t appropriate at the time and he would know the steps of his parents and have that as information to his comic book so for him sound has almost always been a daily practice. I find the idea of sonic information in even the littlest things to be really fascinating. I usually only associate sonic information with bigger things. But we underestimate the power of sonic language.

In contrast to current times, it’s getting harder to know what sounds we are hearing. What aesthetic are specific sounds? And when we start embracing the auditory in the environment. What we can hear is sometimes very different to what we can see. And he notices as he gets older how he still relates as a child to the same mentality of auditory information.

He begins to speak on his work. At first, he says, “Imagine you have to build something and have to be able to hear someone do public speaking for 200 people? Well, architecture needs to be planned with the acoustics in mind for the sound.”

He says to take it as a question about the science and physics of sound. Do we think about these things when working with sound?

Going to a music university in the early 80s. Just doing sound at that time. You had to think about how to describe the sound. What are the contexts and properties of sound you are skimming through? He had no idea at the time and he was shown artists such as Pierre Schaeffer doing music concrete and he didn’t know about any of these experiments.

One of the most interesting experiments for him. Was when they started cutting parts of the tape and took away the attack of the envelope of the sound recorded. And the human ear wasn’t able to identify the type of instrument it was. So it took quite a long for us to understand the envelope and how important it is to us. When trying to design an imaginary sound with synthesis its difficult to imagine something that hasn’t been done before. It’s almost impossible once you know the principles of sound. It’s repeated over and over. Why do we react to specific types of sound?

When he started doing the permanent sound installation works such as blue moon there was no sound artwork released. Only people working with sound. There was nothing like sound arts. So where ever they could do these types of things was mainly media festivals that allowed them to take part.

With blue moon. He realised in Manhatten was full of huge skyscrapers. And the acoustics of the materials reflected sound in horrible ways that caused mass noise pollution. The harbour in Manhattan was beautiful but open. Which aloud all the sounds of the city to reflect to that specific spot. They found a location which was beautiful but conflating as it was open but had noise pollution.

The Blue Moon his installation had harmonic pipes which moved the tide and changed the pitch based on the blue moon which was on at the time of his installation. He has a few permanent sound installations that have been at their locations for years and he thinks it works because they have become part of their environment.

He speaks about the pebble he carries around to use to learn sound in general. He taps surfaces with his pebble and it becomes a reference point. And you can tap places and hear what it sounds like and after a while, you know what things sounds like. You can walk into a room and be aware of what things sound like. Letting the pebble fall or tap on walls. The space will be known and the resonance of the materials will be saved in your brain.

We did the pebble exercise and I found myself intrigued by the sounds and the resonance and curious to see what they sound like. I want to carry my pebble around now as a daily practice to listen more to my environment and how sound reacts with surfaces.

Q&A

In the sonic commons essay you write of how upon leaving the tuning tube installations, both yourselves and visitors would continue to hear a trace of those harmonies even after leaving the sites and walking around other parts of the city.

I was curious if this trace of the sound that would arise is something that only lasted momentarily, or if the work acts as a way of training the ears to perceive these harmonies in the city soundscape at will, in any moment?

He says you might notice this phenomenon when people work in music specifically. He speaks on chords and that after hearing a major chord you can never unheard it again. 

What was the technical process of harmonising ambient urban sound with tuning tubes?

What pushed you to go into the noise and create harmony out of it?

He says the tubes are acting like resonators. The tubes hanging on the wall, When they resonate you not only hear one note but you hear a spectrum of overtones. Overtones are defined in this installation.

Overall I found Sam’s work to be really interesting and specifically relates to my audio document as I want to speak on noise pollution. The well-being and also speculate on the role of a sound artist in sound designing cities. I think I want to do some more research into his work and include that in my paper as he is a literal working practitioner trying to combat noise pollution with permanent sound installations. It’s an interesting reflection in contrast to the last practitioner as her work was more about bringing awareness with sound installations to the planet and its issues whereas in this context it’s actively using noise pollution as a source to create sounds.

I thought I’d keep an update on my thoughts on my audio paper. Since the initial few ideas that I had on writing my audio paper. Either on escapism from reflecting my mental health blogs on my first-year website. To hip hop and how the culture uses rapping and freestyling as escapism from their existence. Escapism in sound art and the thoughts around using sound and art to escape negative thoughts and a sad reality.

I wanted to write an audio paper script that challenged my ideas instead of rehashing information I’ve gained over the years. To dig into something relevant towards the twenty-first century and with current social-political messages about current sound art practice. I thought about using sound and nature as escapism and took out a book from the library on escapism which lead me to think about nature. The book speaks on graphical escapism from original nature to cities and now cities to nature to feel safe.

This thought process lead me down to the path of acoustic ecology. how we react to our environment. How has that changed? How do modern cityscapes make us feel in terms of our wellbeing? Is our brain wired to experience such loud noise polluting sounds daily? These were questions and ideas I had towards my paper and something I wanted to research more but was unsure about.

I decided to pursue the idea of noise pollution our mental health reaction and how sound artists can play a role in sound designing cities. What are the effects of noise pollution? examples of sound designing cities.

I’m in the process of gathering information that will lead to the initial draft by the end of this week. Record the first rough recording next week and begin to whittle down the roughness and make it concise.

In regards to the tutorial, it helped me a lot to gage a plan on the structure which I need to also write before doing the script. The loose amount of time I want to speak on each subject and possibly convert it to words. The loose structure currently is to speak on noise pollution and how it affects our wellbeing. The ways we can combat this. And my thoughts and speculation on what role a sound artist can play in fixing the issues towards cities.

Richard Pheonix’s bio is this.

Richard Phoenix is an artist whose practice includes painting, music, writing, and collaboration. His current interests include looking at access, learning and structure and how art and music can create spaces that remove barriers and make new forms of normal. He looks to create nuanced and impactful ways to evaluate and communicate his role in different collaborations: as an associate artist within learning disability arts organisations; a musician within D.I.Y. punk bands; working with school groups within an arts institution; as a “student” within non-institutional arts education. Recently a part of the Conditions Studio Programme in Croydon, he also works for the learning disability arts organisation Heart n Soul as their Associate Artist. He was an artist-in residence within Tate’s Schools and Teachers department; founded the not-for-profit organisation Constant Flux and wrote DIY as Privilege: A Manifesto which was published by Rough Trade Books in 2020.

Fusing Time / Tentative Ideas

This piece is a piece of text adapted from Derek Jarman’s artist manifesto “Tentative ideas after one year at an Art School”. He speaks a lot of themes and ideas about how art schools teach us perhaps the wrong thing. Intercommunication and how arts must stay together. The lack of audience interaction.

“The painting school says you are not a painter. I am proud” I felt this deeply. I feel we are always told what to do. What the correct work is, how we should execute things. Art is always subjective there is no right or wrong. Better or worse.

I found the piece engaging and captivating. I always try to look beyond production and with this video even though the sound recording was not that great I decided to listen and embrace his words and the video rather than nitpicking. It felt at times a waffle of information and catchphrases. But the structured poetry words really hit home after I paid attention. It was like little messages of beautiful wisdom.

I really enjoyed the drumming and saxophone playing in the background of the vocals. Really set the scene.

D.I.Y.as Privilege – 3 Point Manifesto for Musicians

Richard Pheonix published a manifesto via Rough Trade Books about his experience working since 2006 with and supporting people with learning disabilities. He wrote the manifesto after watching a band play in Brighton on stage. They were all people with disabilities and he said it was one of the best gigs he’d ever seen.

The manifesto is about the privilege of doing DIY work. The idea that anyone can do it themselves. The manifesto speaks about how to rethink the idea of DIY scenes and work in the points back in the scenes. How they are not just a linear concept. Its fluid. I also feel like it’s been made to redefine how we can help people with disabilities. Amplifying voices and sometimes being invisible helps others be visible.

Here are some of my favourite manifesto points.

7. Don’t assume what’s accessible; ask and learn.

9. There is an audience for everything and ideas of what is ‘good music’ will always be political.

1. See the privilege in being able to Do It Yourself.

12. The more invisible you make yourself, the more visible others will be.

Post Lecture Reflection

Richard had a very calm aura about him. He seemed dedicated to everything he spoke about. It was very nice to see a practitioner stand behind his ideas and his work and seem really proud of what he’s doing.

Richard began the lecture by speaking on his background and growing up in Watford. At age 16 starting punk bands with his brother and his best friend. He began getting involved with the DIY punk scenes in the area and had a real sense of the community. Through all this work in the DIY scenes, he really came to understand the scene.

Richard then moved to Brighton and started working with Carousel. A charity that works with people with disabilities. He remembers the first important moment that sparked his thoughts on the whole idea of DIY privilege. He saw a band playing live in the Blue Camel Club. Disabled people were the complete band and it surprised him. He had never seen a band full of disabled people and it made him wonder why we never see that. He says it was one of the best gigs of his life. I can understand this statement he spoke of. When I think properly I can relate to what he’s said. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a live musical performance with solely disabled people. I wonder why that is. Do we as a society exclude these people? Or are the barriers too large for them to overcome that society sets?

After this moment he decided to start creating a scene and help disabled people. He contacted a finish band and got them involved in the London scene to tour with another UK band. He said he loved facilitating and wanted to help other people.

It came to a point where he moved back to London and one of his friends put out an open call for a zine for artists to do a one-page submission. He started thinking about his work and what he does and where he stands in the scenes. He wanted to engage in the scene that he came from and really talk to that scene and almost ask them and himself a question.

He did a one-page print relating directly to DIY scenes and what they are part of. What can they do to make the scene more accessible? The privilege was the idea. What is the DIY privilege? He decided to write a manifesto. He then felt he hadn’t written enough and followed up his manifesto with a full book pitch to Rough Trade Books. It was accepted.

He also speaks about chapter 9 in his book and the idea of mainstream music and his hatred for it. Coming from an underground scene he found it tasteless and not as interesting or as much depth as the other things he would listen to. Through working with a young disabled woman. He found himself loving the classic cheesy pop music he would hate when he was younger. This sparked his thought process to think about the privilege he has to be able to find and listen to underground music. Perhaps his hatred for it had been ignorant. Not thinking about why people like mainstream music. The access? The ease? This made me think about my own passions and weigh the differences between them. I’m questioning my own privilege.

He then spoke about what he does now and he works for a charity in Deptford helping disabled young people create music and he also paints and does other things. He showed us some of his work and I was really amazed. The band he works with who are entirely disabled have toured the world. I wonder why I’m amazed by this? Is it societies expectations of disabled people that have already given me an idea of what they are capable to achieve? Richard said something that really struct with me which was about the story the media chooses to present about disabled people. It’s always about a disabled person overcoming their disability or someone really struggling. It’s never just that they are normal people. It’s almost impossible to be normal in the media narrative of being a disabled person.

I found the lecture to be really uplifting. It gave me food for thought of my privilege and how society can hinder progress and make people disabled as Richard put it. I will put more accessibility decisions into anything I plan now. I think it’s important to be inclusive.

This audio document investigates the role of a sound artist in the fight against noise pollution. More specifically the noise pollution of cities. Through research of books and academic journals. Websites, podcasts and videos. And personal experience. I will reflect on the well being of the average person who is affected by noise pollution. The negative impacts it has on us and our mental health. Then speak on the ideas and speculate what role a sound artist has to sound design cities.