25.4.11

ABC Radio national- Listening....

quote...'This evening we are exploring the theme of listening by asking what is listening?
We'll get hear some not so simple answers from Oslo Davis a professional eavesdropper, various ear mechanics and a couple of people with unique perspectives on the world of sound; a former music retailer Greg Hartney, who suffers from nerve deafness and radio broadcaster Glen Morrow who is legally blind.
Brain waves, sound waves, shock waves....radio waves - angels and angst, memory and message.
For music details, click on the transcript link...'
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23.4.11

From the Vault - pacifica radio archives- full of goodies

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Keep This Sex 'in' Sight- book of essays by Elvan Zabunyan, Marie Joseph Bertini and Francoise Gange.

Dis Voir

Keep This Sex Out Of My Sight

The Undisplayable of Female Sex as Revealed by Women

Essays by Elvan Zabunyan, Marie Joseph Bertini and Francoise Gange.

Ever since women artists gave themselves the right to declare their sexual fantasies, their work has yielded revelations for those who once declared their fantasies for them. In a raw language that ignores taboos, these women speak of sex like Courbet painted "The Origin of the World." Keep This Sex Out of My Sight is a hymn to women's sex, a celebration of feminine desire, so often erased, hidden and forgotten. For the artists whose texts and images appear here, obscenity and pornography are responses to the male fear of the female sexual organ, and confronting them cancels their power. more ... click here

Sound art books

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22.4.11

happy easter sound bunnies....

Singing through silk - Yvon Bonenfant

Sound, touch, the felt body and emotion: Toward a haptic art of voice

Yvon Bonenfant

quote... 'As an extended vocalist and performance artist, deriving my work, as I do, from experimental music, contemporary performance and body psychotherapy, sound and touch have come together to form a sort of aesthetic existential crux against which the rest of my practice revolves and rotates. In recent praxis, I have been exploring sound and touch from the perspective of the notion of membrane. Membranes are essential to both sound and touch: they are that which permits perception of contact. The recently published National Scientific Research Centre of France’s Dictionary of the Body (Dictionnaire du corps) (Andrieu and Botsch 2008) defines touch as “the action of the movement through which two bodies come into contact with one another” (Nancy 2007: 325). Membranes permit this contact.
In my creative work, I have been working with a literal form of membrane. The fine, semi-transparent grade of habotai-weave silk I have been using for runs of my intimate performance Soie soyeuse (2007-8)has a number of startling characteristics. Firstly, I can sing from behind layers of this fabric and my voice is not stifled – it is as if I am singing in open air. Sound travels almost perfectly across the barrier, and I have found no other fabric which has such sound transparency yet is still opaque. Next, the silk, though cold for perhaps half a second when touching my skin, heats through and warms startlingly quickly: it takes on body temperature on contact very swiftly. Thirdly, despite its permeability to air, this incredibly thin layer of silk insulates extraordinarily well. It is fascinating. Like a second human skin, it cocoons and breathes; like an eardrum, suspended as it is in warm nests of human tissue and in contact with tiny bones, it reacts to sound while transmitting the sound waves on to the matter beyond. Holding the silk while singing, I can actually feel it vibrating; the sensation is one of toughness and fragility yoked together in one tissue. Not unlike our own human skin.....' for more click here

20.4.11

voices whitman

Voices
by Walt Whitman

NOW I make a leaf of Voices--for I have found nothing mightier than
they are,
And I have found that no word spoken, but is beautiful, in its place.

O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall
follow,
As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere
around the globe.

All waits for the right voices;
Where is the practis'd and perfect organ? Where is the develop'd
Soul?
For I see every word utter'd thence, has deeper, sweeter, new sounds,
impossible on less terms.

I see brains and lips closed--tympans and temples unstruck,
Until that comes which has the quality to strike and to unclose, 10
Until that comes which has the quality to bring forth what lies
slumbering, forever ready, in all words.

17.4.11

Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer

14.4.11

森の木琴

The Circulator

Making "CIRCULATOR" / An installation by Jim Blashfield / 4Culture from Jim Blashfield on Vimeo.
Jim Blashfield kindly sent me a message about his video and sound installation Circulator now being finished, and scheduled for installation at the Brightwater Environmental Centre north of Seattle’s Lake Washington, in Spring.
It’s amazing to see the detail of the visual material. This realism is fortified by sound, which plays an important role in Circulator. We hear a nice combination of realistic sounds and dream-like musical sequences.
The installation shows the artists impression of the water cycle. Watch the video to hear Jim Blashfield explain the installation and if you want to know more about the artist and his work, visit his website at www.blashfieldstudio.com.