This article speaks on an important exhibition that occurred in Berlin during the 1980s. The exhibition Fur Augen und Ohren took place in Berlin in 1980 and is referred to as one of the main events that gave rise to what became known as sound art in the second half of the twentieth century.
It’s stated clearly that the works for the exhibition were chosen on the premise that they incorporated aural and visual elements simultaneously alongside an emphasis on technological progress. This relates back to the last article that I read and reflected on. Art and technology seem to fuel each other, And art is sometimes what pushes technology to work for an idea that an artist may have.
The article spoke on how work is perceived in a gallery and how this specific curated even changed or attempted to deconstruct what it meant to engage with art in a so-called white cube. “Sealed windows, artificial illumination and walls painted white create a clean and artificial environment in which the artworks are not subject to time and space and are kept disconnected from the world outside of it.” A thought I haven’t thought about before but I do agree with, how does a piece of work in an isolated room give it context to itself. when taken out of its place and is displayed away from what it is meant to be surrounded by does the meaning change? How does the work situate itself within space and time if the space it’s representing isn’t in the gallery? As well as this how does it use the space it’s in to create that sort of dialogue. It seems perhaps I had thought of this before not intentionally but just with my experience with these spaces. I felt like I couldn’t feel represented in these spaces. it’s like, how do you take what is usually not accepted by a higher upper-class population that try to control and dictate the less, and then put us in a room where people that consume our art and are amongst us can’t access or are used to being in there? do you reclaim it? that’s what I think, take it for yourself and bring the time and space into the gallery.
This gallery also brought the subject that ouch is important. Sight and hearing only allow us a certain level of understanding in our environment. Sound means we hear it and sight confirm what we hear. Touch enhances that even more.
I also liked the paragraph on the relationship between curating and exhibiting and I feel it’s just as important as the artists, in curation. there are decisions to be made that affect everything.
I’ll end by stating that this article reminded me of the Basanta article about the ideas and theories of sound installations. This enhances a little differently as it touches on what a white space can do, as well as not just being a visual experience but enhancing that to be audiovisual and touch.
I found the interconnectivity with this article to be the strongest information displayed that interested me. It speaks on japans own relationship with its culture and how that reflects its sound art scene. As well as the relationship with the western world in comparison to for example china avoids the western world and creates an island of itself.
An important part of the article was speaking on.
“Wabi-Sabi which is a Buddhist concept that the philosopher Muneyoshi Yanagi describes as the “beauty of irregularity.” In contrast to Western ideals, characterized by symmetry, equal temperament, purity of timbre, and four-square phrases, in Japan asymmetry imperfections, and incompleteness is considered to be attractive and articulations of beauty.”
I find this is something that has spread across western society, although originating in Japan. The modern age with faster internet and more accessible software and technology has enabled us to interact with other cultures without the need to be physically present in their society. Sampling is something we do not just in a literal sense as in music or visuals but in behaviours as well. DIY scenes across the west have definitely indirectly been doing a similar thing. It’s all about what can we do, not what cant we do. This in term allows things to now be as polished and appreciated for what they are. I do find a lot of sound practices spoken in this article are in relation to other forms and it’s apparent how they connect to the global sound art scene.
My piece currently is the idea of a sound collage of audio I associate with my sonic identity. This article spoke of a similar art practice that occurred in Japan. The composers Toru Takemitsu and Joji Yuasa. Collaborative spirit was perhaps most present in their works such as Another World (Mishiranu Sekai no Hanashi) (1953) made for automatic slide projector or auto-slide produced by the company that would eventually become Sony. The device, which consisted of a slide projector synchronized with a tape recorder, provided the perfect medium for combining abstract photography with musique concrete. The fact that sony before it was even called sony was involved in creating objects for installations shows you the importance of art in developing technology. Usually, technology is used to create obscure things that can in turn be turned into mass-produced products. I’m not speaking on whether I think this is a good or bad thing but rather the idea that art pushes technology forward. And the relationship between technology and art seem a present continuous thing. It seems art pishes technology and technology once it becomes accessible pushes more art to be created. My idea as I said above is similar to this. video and audio combined and to see how they would have done it is interesting. Perhaps I’ll do photos instead of videos. Maybe a video will take away from the piece?
I found how the article reflected on the technological advances of society and how they related to the development of sound arts to be intriguing. I didn’t know a lot of what was written, about the machines built to have very basic versions of what we currently use. Things such as synthesisers and sound for screen back then were impossible and these sound artists created basic versions of what we now have in abundance. The tools and ideas that they had were for me inspiring, to see the vision they had of what they believed could be possible and execute it.
I can see how this article can relate to modern sound installations. As well as how it has a historical importance on the equipment we use currently and decisions made when designing a space. I found the idea of a noise orchestra and using the city and its objects to create an organised sound piece to be something i’d never consider. But since hearing this view I can do agree that a lot things can be used as instruments and what does separate us from thinking it is or isn’t an instrument?
Composer, vocalist, multi-instrumental electronic musician, and multimedia artist Christina Wheeler’s spans an array of styles and forms. She blends a mix of songs and improvised electronic music from vocals, sampler, theremin, QChord, autoharp and Array mbira. A Los Angeles native, Wheeler has performed and recorded with a variety of artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Chaka Khan, John Cale, Laraaji, Roscoe Mitchell, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Matana Roberts, Marc Ribot, Murcof, and A Guy Called Gerald. Wheeler’s work with David Byrne included international tours and appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman and PBS’s Sessions at West 54th Street. MTV’s AMP featured her music. Recordings include work with Fred P, Benjamin Brunn, Shinedoe, Ripperton, Vernon Reid, DJ Logic, Mocky, and Jamie Lidell. Her duo with Nicole Mitchell, Iridescent, opened the Angel City Jazz Festival. Next, she will release two albums, Songs of S + D and Tres Es un Número Mágico: Kaleidoscopic Triptychs.
By the sounds of her work, I’m interested to see her setup when performing with all these instruments. As well as how she makes this balanced. I find sometimes that with an abundance of instruments and objects for a performance things can become overly complicated.
I read through the writing she has written. I have no backstory except being told to read it before the lecture. I found it had similar ideas to the Bonsata article we went through in Milos lecture a week ago. I do find that thinking about performances in this way and being very critical can help us understand what we are doing and why. Even if we do things unconsciously I do believe that once we can understand there is always room for elevation in terms of message or aesthetic decisions being made.
“Are you performing in a traditional theater? If so, where do you want to be and perform? Onstage? In the audience space? In the balcony? A combination of those places?”
Christina Wheeler
I found this specific quote to be interesting. I’ve always thought about the performance position as something really interesting. The typical stance is to be on a stage as a musician. To almost be above the crowd. I prefer always to be in the space of the audience, to be amongst the people I am performing to. I feel a lot more connected and I feel it creates a sense of equal power play in the space.
Christina Wheeler TheLabSF Performance
In this performance, we can see her setup easier. Although far away I can pick up a theremin on the right with the antenna. perhaps a synth and her laptop I presume running Ableton. I listened for a few minutes and felt really captivated, she creates soundscapes using effects and daisy-chaining them until they become massive. The drone-like sounds really bring you into a state of trance while listening. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Post Lecture Reflection
She beings by speaking about her childhood. She was born and raised in a household surrounded by musicians in LA. Both parents played instruments and so it was always assumed she would do music, it was almost exciting for her to be able to choose what she wanted to play.
After high school and studying and doing music throughout her teenage years she studied at Harvard, following that a masters in New York. She continued to speak about how she ended up in Berlin and doing what she does currently which is performing and producing scores for films.
The very first instrument she got was the theremin, the reason why she enjoys using the theremin is because it has a sine wave. You can do a lot of manipulation with the instrument and its very performative. I havent seen someone use the theramin as she does.
Theramin E is the next instrument, its an eletric version of the original thermain. You can set in a scale, and select a variety of modes as well. So its an updated version of the classic theremin. It also has variety of effects. She uses the effects on the theremin and then sends it to her laptop to create another layer of effects to really push it beyond what its designed to do.
Next is the autoharp. It’s a traditional instrument, you can hold it or play it on the table. There are lots of different gestures. So when its on the table its more delicate. When holding you can dig into the string and get more texture. It has a pickup so she’s able to send the jack stereo outputs and process it through a variety of guitar pedals. This has 36 strings so it can fufill this desire that she wants. For example to do huge walls of sound as well as extended technique playing. If you press the buttons and strum you get chords. They are simple and only triads. It references folk music and pop music.
I found her lecture interesting to see how someone else has their setup for performance. Mine is currently very simple and to the cannon of a hip hop artist. I’ve allways had thoughts of how to expand it but the space of a normal show doesnt allow me to expand my thoughts and ideas like a gallery or private space would. I never want to play on a stage with bright lights on me but more amongst the crowd with a designed space.
TECH SPECS: Projector, Mac Mini, Keyboard & Mouse, HDMI Cable, Two Speaker Cables, Two Amplifiers, Blackout Cloth for one small window.
WORK DESCRIPTION: My proposal is an audiovisual piece that is formed around identity. When first deciding my ideas for gallery 46 I felt uneasy about presenting my work inside of a white gallery space. I am used to playing DIY Rap shows and doing most of my artistic work within spaces I feel comfortable. I found myself questioning if my work would be accepted as typically rap/hip hop work coming from a working-class background presented in a gallery is not the norm amongst general galleries. I spent some time researching different art gallery pieces, such as the JAY-Z piece Picasso Baby performance in a gallery. Where he performs in front of a small personal crowd of people, with one by one people coming for a one to one performance. My piece is heavily inspired by artists such as Madlib with his Medicine Show series where he curates records and samples, as well as travelogues and uses bits of speech acquired from old tv shows and films to create a narrative and showcase an audio documentary of which country he is in collecting vinyl. I decided to present my work in a similar context.
To create a sample-based audio piece, Taking parts of my Brazilian heritage and my English upbringing as a teenager in a piece. I have related my identity to my sonic landscape and used Brazilian music, Tv Shows and films to create a sample collage of things I associate with my identity. I decided to use gallery 7 as it’s small and intimate, away from all the other rooms. This would allow for my piece to be potentially missed which is fine, I like the idea of having something hidden away on the top floor. I want to blackout the room as there is only one window so it should be easier than a larger room to do. The projector will be placed on the floor pointing up against the wall as shown in the diagram. Then four cone speakers are drilled into where the projector will be shown on the wall to create a distortion amongst the projection. I will have a mac mini hidden behind the small area between the window and the wall. Alongside two preamps to power the four speakers and keep the cables neat and tidy. I have chosen to use four cone speakers as I will be automating each speaker to play different parts. So it will be a quadrophonic piece but positioned in a different way than usual. Instead of two speakers in front and two from behind, they will be all on the wall where the projection is projected onto. I also chose these cone speakers as they would allow me to have the speakers within the projection square that is projected.
I have attached a short four-minute draft of the audio. The final version will be ten minutes long. Alongside a ten minute video of sample collaged visuals that will be looped on quicktime on the Mac Mini.
Another proposition I’d like to do alongside this is a performance of music I make as a rapper. I would like to perform some songs with a projector playing visuals i have designed, in gallery 5. In specific my latest album which is about identity and how we can lose ourselves amongst the music industry and our own ideas of who we want to be.
Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett has been working across the field of audio-visual collage, repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with an equally dark and witty take on popular culture. She sees sampling and collage as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant.
In 2006 she was the first artist to be given unrestricted access to the entire BBC Archive. People Like Us have previously shown work at Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, The Barbican, Centro de Cultura Digital, V&A, Sydney Opera House, Royal Albert Hall, Pompidou Centre, Venice Biennale, Maxxi and Sonar, and performed radio sessions for John Peel and Mixing It. The ongoing sound art radio show ‘DO or DIY’ on WFMU has had over a million “listen again” downloads. since 2003. The People Like Us back catalogue is available for free download hosted by UbuWeb.
From her bio, I am interested in how she uses visuals with audio. As well as this her thoughts on sampling media are refreshing and something I can agree with. Collaging audio and visuals is also something I do in my own work and to see others have common thoughts is reassuring. I’m excited to look into her work.
Wire Interview of People Like Us
This entire interview is an in-depth historical account of the experience People Like us went through on her journey of becoming and developing her artistic practice. I found it really humbling, the way she speaks and her progression. She speaks in a way that is conscious of her decisions and her stance on her place in the art scene. She mainly uses sampling in her work and combines audiovisual elements together to create something new. I have a few pieces of her work that were mentioned that I will take a look into and see if I can find a video to experience them. I’m also interested in her ideas of sampling ethics and how she uses others works to create something. She does state that she doesn’t see it as using someone else’s work because the work is only the person’s final outcome. We are all sampling each other and the important part is adding to the process of another.
DrivingFlyingRisingFalling
I researched People Like Us on Youtube and found this piece. Titled DrivingFlyingRisingFalling. It was really humorous, I found the use of video to create a different message and narrative engaging. I feel perhaps if I knew the film it would create a bigger context? I was concentrating on the audio as well and it does contrast what’s going on but also occasionally feels ironic. The dark nature with the old people laughing and the music being upbeat.
Post-Lecture Reflection.
PeopleLikeUs began the lecture similar to the Wire interview, speaking on how she began her career. She did a fine art course In Brighton and the course was an Offshoot of fine art. This course showed her that she really enjoyed working with time-based media, media that moves. After dropping out due to personal issues she was unemployed and all the equipment she was using became Unaffordable. So she started with what was at home, and that was HI-FI. Her work is inspired by sampling during the 90s. She used Tv audio, a radio tuner, and a cassette double recorder. Making mixtapes and sharing them with other people was the earliest form of sharing she can remember.
So she experimented for years doing cassettes. Which lead her to work into radio doing hip hop and experimental music with sampling. The first role she was Given was at a radio station from midnight – 3pm. Radio has always been the foundation for her, the mixes that she makes using sound beds made her Realise it was becoming more than the thing she was making.
This leads her to ask is this something releasable? She saw others releasing sampling, in art but was unsure of the issues with sampling legally. She ignored the matters and pressed 100 records to see what would happen. Back then she says that it wasn’t saturated as much, now it’s different. Publishers wanted to buy all the records.
She used to listen to Sussex radio, and one specific show was all talk. A lot of padding was going on the radio and phone-ins would happen and you lost the point of the show. To her, it was the height of boring listening, but perhaps interesting in a John cage kind of way. So she began recording Sussex county radio without listening.
In one of her pieces, she sampled someone who phoned in and didn’t realise it was a Sussex radio phone-in, the caller was trying to connect to the office. She used the piece and played it on the radio and received love from BBC radio who enjoyed it a lot.
Proceeding this after 1994 she signed to a label in the Netherlands. And they told her about plunderphonics and John Oswald. This reassured her that what she was doing was a movement. She didn’t make the same sort of stuff as John but to see others using samples in experimental form confirmed and pushed her even further.
The next drastic change in her career was when society shifted into the year the 2000s when technology and fast broadband finally arrived. Expensive equipment was now much cheaper and enabled her to expand her practice and allow for more complex ideas to be achievable.
On specific piece became an idea when she was watching the sound of music live on Christmas Day, and it reminded her of Apocalypse Now. So she downloaded the audio from both films and found it to be in the same key.
She then proceeded to create and merge both the videos. This involved a lot of rotoscoping to combine the parts she felt worked together in a collage style.
Randomness in the creation ended up working in synchronicity. This responds and Reflects on an interconnected world in art. Opening up to unexpected Surprises is key. So when they arrive it allows them to manifest so that when you leave space for things to happen things that aren’t your usual pattern of working can occur.
She loves using pre-existing material. To her, it has had a previous life of its own. But there is no order to the thing. Originality is not very important, Uniques and originality are important. We don’t own ideas, we breathe them in like air. Limiting the thought of being unique is the worst thing to do. The world of ideas that can happen can occur because we are surrounded by surprising things. Give back and we won’t run dry.
She ends by relating her work to her inspiration for folk art. How we are always sampling. Humans mimic, that’s how we learn to speak. And this is why it’s so Important to publish and share your work.
I found PeopleLikeUs had great points to add to my ideas and philosophies of sampling. I love to sample and use other peoples work to create something new. I find it interesting to take something out of context and create your own meaning with your relationship to the sample. Although she spoke about audio and visuals and it did tend to lean more towards the visual I did connect with her ideas. The only thing I was tempted to ask but strayed away from was the ethics and what boundaries are there when sampling? What would she never sample due to these samples being sensitive topics?
My friend Alex Messer approached me with an opportunity to be a sound supervisor on his module for his Ba Photography degree. Moving image.
I was given the film treatment about the idea. The idea was based on Alex and his colleague’s ideas about wales. One of their colleagues grew up in wales and has experienced the deprivation of the country.
I read into the brief and really liked the idea, it gave me thoughts of using the atmospheres to really bring the place to life and showcase its vacancy.
Alex told me they had booked an Airbnb for 5 days in wales and for me to prepare my equipment to take to record sound on set. I decided to take the sound devices mix pre 8. MS set up with the 418 Sennheiser. I also took with me a set of DPA 4060 Omnidirectional microphones. I chose the 418 for directing the mics at specific sounds. The area we were going to was going to be very rural, even farmland at times and I felt the super-cardioid polar pattern allowed me to capture things more directly, and with the side figure of eight polar pattern for a wider range. The DPA mics were for a great field capture. They capture an area amazingly and are very hot on the gain. I’m going to be using the coat hanger method from Chris Watson.
The three days recording went well. Numerous locations in extreme / casual weather. This trip taught me even more so about gain structure than the previous work. Recording in extreme wind and figuring out how to avoid it. Recording animals and landscapes. Handling equipment and organising my bag. What to bring on a hike to record audio and how to look after my equipment on a solo mission. Making sure the files were backed up and safe. Supervising all audio on set.
I’ll update once we’ve started working on the post production. I’m waiting on the first draft to come through before I begin editing the audio.
An artist based in London, Rebecca Lennon works across media to produce large-scale multi-channel sound and video installations, musical releases, performances, texts and visual scores. Using rhythm and musicality within video and sound editing to disturb narrative flow, Rebecca evokes a psychological and neurodivergent relationship to language, words, loops and noise – meditating on memory and its voices, while spatialising layers of sound, vibrations and visceral texts that fragment and repeat. Recent video and texts focus on entanglements of ownership, forms of housing (and their collapse), embodiment, porosity and questions of what constitutes a voice. Rebecca graduated from the Slade School of Art London MFA in 2010, and is a visiting lecturer at universities such as Arts University Bournemouth and Royal College of Art, London. Upcoming/recent exhibitions include: Cafe Oto, London, 2022, Galeria Duarte Sequiera, Braga, Portugal, 2021, Kaunas Film Festival, Lithuania, 2020 and Whitstable Biennial, 2018 with solo shows at Southwark Park Galleries, London 2021, Primary, Nottingham, 2020, Almanac, Turin, Italy, 2019 and Matts Gallery, London, 2018. Rebecca recently featured in ‘On Care, an anthology of artists writing’, published by MA Bibliotheque, 2020, BBC Late Junction 2019/2020 and on a collection of artist interpretations of scores by writer Salomé Voegelin, released on vinyl in 2022. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Goldsmiths across departments of Fine Art and Music.
DUMB 2019
I find this work not that engaging. I think art is subjective so I’m not saying I don’t completely enjoy it. I get her piece to an extent, it speaks about the lesser needs of the working-class and minorities. But I find this sort of performance to be clichè. She repeats the statement and shouts dumb after. That the statement she makes is DUMB. I also find that from reading her bio she is more of a live performer and her installations and multi-channel work might have enhanced this piece more. I’m listening in stereo currently so I’m not as immersed as she might have wanted to with her ideas of this piece.
Liquid i
This piece has the use of the voice, and most definitely would have also been multi-channel. You see mosquitos flying and the buzz of the wings emulated by I assume Rebecca. The majority of her work isn’t described on her website simply shown and perhaps this is also intentional. As stated previously her work is mostly live and has multi-channel speakers in the room to enhance what’s being shown. And as much as I like abstract work I don’t enjoy this sort of work without a context. I think the visuals and the audio by themselves are interesting and not terrible but overall it’s not something I would go out of my way to watch.
I’m interested to ask her about her live installation work. The thought process behind it. Is it site-specific like the other visiting practitioners or simply how to adapt your ideas to the space?
Post Lecture Reflection
Rebbeca begins by speaking about her work Mouths. She performed behind a red screen and this is because she likes to obscure herself in performances to produce distance. For Rebbeca rehearsal is form. She likes to think of her work as rehearsals, sketches or taking different forms. She wanted to create a relationship between her writing and her performance and she used contact mics on her throat to portray her anger at being silenced.
There are many themes in her work, boundaries, landlords and the tenant appears in this work of different kinds of ownership and containment. Her mouth is covered and instead, you hear another mouth.
She was working with layering voices in stereo. She tested her idea of six speaker poly performance and found it incredible to work with. Speakers were arranged in a circle while viewers stayed in the middle, the vocal dissociation given by the speaker set up created in an immersive experience.
Rebbeca work is very interesting and multi-layered. I find her ideas quite fascinating as they truly are beyond my own understanding. The fine art aspect is something I’ve always been pushed away from due to exterior factors affecting me. Such as social and political settings involved with the higher fine art society. But after re-listening I do think there is always something to take from someone’s work. I think her motivation and choice of doing what she lives is inspiring in itself.
Cedrik Fermont is a composer, musician, mastering engineer, author, independent researcher, concert organiser and curator who operates in the field of electroacoustic, noise, electronic, experimental and improvised music since 1989, born in Zaire (DR Congo), he mostly grew up in Belgium and currently lives in Germany. Through his label and platform (Syrphe), Cedrik publishes and promotes electronic, experimental and noise music from Asia and Africa and to a lower extent Latin America. His writings focus on music from Asia and/or Africa: Sound Art in East and Southeast Asia. Historical and Political Considerations (with Dimitri della Faille) (2020), Power through networking: Reshaping the underground electronic and experimental music scenes in East and Southeast Asia (2015-2016), An introduction to electroacoustic, noise and experimental music in Asia and Africa (2014-2015), Not Your World Music: Noise In South East Asia, book written and edited together with Dimitri della Faille (2016), winner of the 2017 Golden Nica – Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Musics & Sound Art category.
Cedrik has performed and collaborated with artists across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. He also performs in several projects such as Axiome, Tasjiil Moujahed, Marie Takahashi & Cedrik Fermont, etc.
A singularity of noise music in Asia and Africa.
I read a small four-page essay on the ideas of western society and the alienation of noise music from Asia and Africa. Some of the points made me consider even my own listening habits as I tend to mainly listen to western and south American music. But also why I don’t consider African or Asian countries versions of the music I enjoy.
I also read online while finding this essay about how Cedrik really fights for the awareness of Asia and Africa to be included in conversations. The western world can really isolate developing countries in their work and attempt to make them not relevant has succeeded in the past.
Now the question I have is. Are our western societies self-aware of this? Or just choose to ignore it?
This is not intentionally music’. A Cedrik Fermont Interview
Cedrik speaks on his daily life, working on the label and touring. He is a noise nomad he says, touring the world and engaging in cities he finds himself in. He usually likes to engage with the audience, the organisers and the politics of the area he finds himself in. He finds when touring he is so much more aware of the scenes around the world and in his head he can contextualise this when he researches about the cannon. He finds that a lot of non-western artists are left out of the narrative when speaking about the foundations of scenes.
Cedrik speaks on his love for field recordings. He says they are more detailed than a photo or a film. For him when hearing a recording it can bring him back to the place where he recorded it or even imagine how a place would be like when listening to someone else’s recordings. They are more vivid than a fixed image or film.
I agree with this so much. Field recordings really immerse you within the environment recorded, especially if done with specialisation in mind. I find that it reminds me of having my eyes closed and just embracing the atmosphere. I find field recordings to have benefits of wellbeing if playing back sounds of non-urbanised landscapes.
He also speaks on his music and experimental sounds. He starts by stating that music and performance have always been part of him. Since a young age, he’s sung and played instruments and his projects as an adult has reflected his broad love of sound. He is currently working on numerous projects under different aliases with different genres. He likes to experiment. He doesn’t want to copy what other people do and to him, breakcore was total freedom. He could do anything to an extent add jazz or punk. Make it political or a parody. Or just have fun.
I respect his views on creating, after all when one is making art. I feel it’s a separation between the logical thought driven process and the free creative left part of the brain. I can understand his views completely and I am really interested in his music. I’m going to find some to listen to.
Cedrik describes this album as a different approach than his current workings. Since 1989 he has used acoustic sounds in his work although mostly electronic, this album is the first solo album where it has been mainly acoustic sounds and a few electronic.
Passage, the first track made me feel like I was in a dark cave system. The rolling sound which panned around the headphones gave me a sense of space and rhythm alongside the sub frequencies coming in. I liked the continuous sounds playing the rolling feedback tones. I could sense his curiosity about sound through this song as it was all acoustic.
Détails, the second track. I found the horror type noises to bring my awareness back to myself. In noise tracks, I find to drift away and embrace the environment that’s being created. Mainly a lot of noise music tends to abuse the idea of noise and go all into the loudness and extremes. Cedrick’s piece in this really does touch on that but has considerable self-awareness shown in his production. The sounds although still noise, ease your ears and thoughts into this environment that slowly feels like it consumes you.
Post Lecture Reflection
He begins his lecture by stating it’s important for him that in his bio it states hes from Congo. It’s something that he is proud of and wants people to know. Cedrik Grew up in Belgium and in his area/scene, he was the only brown kid in electronic music. He would ask himself why no one else was interested in this music that looked like him and he couldn’t understand. He then starts listening to alternative electronic music in 1986, he was 14. In 1989 he started his first band still in while still in Belgium. 1991 he started a tape label with no money, no internet. It was different, There was a Mail art network to trade and buy and sell cassettes or vinyl. And this is how he would discover alternative music.
He then started getting more music that was electro-acoustic from his mail network. mostly from northwest Europe and north America, hardly anywhere else. Nothing from Africa, Latina America, Asia. Even from eastern Europe. It was very difficult, especially without the internet. For these places to not have a scene it can’t be true he says. There must be people in these places
He then started making flyers in envelopes of tapes he shipped. On the flyer, he would state that he wanted people in whatever country, Africa Asia etc to submit for compilation. It would take months later to get an answer this was due to no internet. Reaching people outside of popular locations was difficult. and he then went on to release a few popular compilations.
Cassette human archives vol 1. Global alternative electronic, improvised music, noise compilation was the first one. And looking back, it was not really global in regards to what happens now. But back then it was difficult. In the first compilation, there were twenty-five artists, mostly from Europe in this compilation. Not enough from other places and although he was happy he couldn’t find more Asian & Africa.
In the early 2000s, affordable, accessible internet arrived which allowed him the opportunity to dive way more into his research and although it still took him a while because there was not enough information available on an academic or independent level.
Cedrik studied electroacoustic music in Belgium in the late 1990s, one module was the history of electroacoustic music with artists such as Pierre Schaeffer and it continued on. But to him, It felt odd. There must have been people before that for example John cage. Or from other countries. He had heard about Egyptian composers and none were mentioned. So because this history module existed, it gave him questions which he pursued.
So thanks to the internet, he managed to discover much more than what was written in most books. He went on and on with ongoing research and the internet made getting Access to music from non-western countries much easier. Soul seek was dedicated to electronic music and alternative music in general, it was a file sharing software. Some people sharing files were not westerners, but from places like Thailand, China. And these people had a huge collection of music, music from their surroundings and also western music.
He had a chat with someone from china, who had a huge collection of experimental and industrial music from western society. So this made him realise that in china they know what the western world is doing in regards to music, but we in the western world don’t know about what they are up to.
So on this platform, there were people sharing punk music from Iran and Thailand. You could buy and swap music and he started buying from there but this was not always well distributed. People didn’t know this music existed and the best way for him to start publishing these compilations he had been working on ways to go there as much as he can.
In 2003 he goes to Istanbul, he thought there must be people doing alternative music electro etc in turkey, so he somehow found noise / experimental noise concerts in turkey. So that’s the first step for himself. He stayed about a week in Istanbul and performed there. It was difficult as he got kicked out by a venue owner who said it’s not music what he’s performing and it was scaring customers away.
In Turkey, He performed for 20-25 people. It was all breakcore/noise music, a lot of those attendees were musicians and they would stay after the show and talk and share their music through CDR & cassettes. They would say that no one comes here, you are one of the first ones, but to Cedrik it was very odd, its connected to Europe and it’s not that far away to be this isolated.
So in 2004, he goes Thailand. On Soulseek, he got in touch with someone from Thailand. So he wrote, hey is anyone interested in booking me for a show in Thailand, I’m going to Bangkok. So he managed to get booked in an art gallery with other people. Most people who attended the concert never heard this music, and out of curiosity came and listened.
Bang the name of the organiser said if he wanted to go to Vietnam he could put him in touch with people. So Cedric flew for 6 months in south-east / east Asia, to perform and meet as many people/artists as possible and to see if he could find sound arts and experimental music and so on. He brought 70 records, tapes and CDs back home.
Once he returned he published the compilation two years later, that included artists from Asia and the middle east and Africa where he went a bit later. He wanted it to be an archive as he had never found any collection of so-called electronic and experimental music from Asia and Africa. No one had published something like this before, and there were previous compilations in the 70-the 80s of electroacoustic music. But they always had big named composers and to him with his compilation, he felt it was a very important archive. It was important to him because people said it was a waste of time to go visit these places. Saying he would find nothing but he did.
So for him, this was an important document, this compilation was called, Beyond ignorance and borders. It was ignorance to pretend no one outside the west was making this music. So all this pushed him to document and travel as much as he could, unfortunately not filming as he couldn’t afford it. But he would take notes, and interview where possible.
So now Cedrik runs a radio show and his label releases compilations and albums of artists from Asia and Africa. So he’s been accumulating an insane amount of documents and above all thanks to the internet.
His huge document and archives have led him into deeper questions and to find out why it’s so own known and isn’t a part of history. Why isn’t it taught in universities art centres etc? To him it’s the same old story, the west has colonised and written off a huge part of the history of people that aren’t western. And we need to update this history of sound arts & electro-acoustic etc.
In the twenty-first century, we can’t pretend that we can’t access this information. So he’s made his own database, not the easiest. But he started many years ago and when he put it online it only contained only a few hundred references. So he got a lot of responses from people telling him, hey this person is missing. So it pushed him to go further.
I found Cedriks lecture engaging and very much authentic to himself. Sometimes there can be a feeling I assume for these practitioners to be aware of what they are communicating. Perhaps to reframe themselves to an academic setting and dilute their topic for the sake of academia. I really enjoyed Cedriks lecture and found it at times making me question what I do in my own practice and my listening habits.
I spent the last few days giving myself a break from listening and watching the piece I’d made. I had a crit and showed my work to Sam. He gave me advice that really stuck with me. He spoke mainly about the sound mixing being too loud with the footsteps and cloth sounds, as well as in the beginning the atmosphere sounds changed a lot when zooming into the paper rustling. Apart from that, there wasn’t a lot to change.
I did a previous session on Friday and did the editing and did volume automation on each track to take everything down a notch as after taking a few days out I felt the same as Sam in relation to my mix.
On Saturday the 4th of December I spent the day at university referencing my mix to the Genelecs. I found the hiss hard to remove. I did a basic eq on a few channels and compression. As well as a limiter for the master. I did find that my initial foley recordings were perhaps a bit too quiet and I had to turn the preamps incredibly loud to record them. In hindsight, I should have recorded the foley and sound effects louder so the hiss from the preamps wasn’t so prevalent. Although my thoughts at the time were about mimicking the actors on screen. I didn’t anticipate the hiss being this much of an issue. Apart from that, I’m really content with my work. I worked incredibly hard and did a lot of editing and recorded all the sounds myself which was a great practice, I’ve learnt a lot.
