User:Tisa/special issue 10
Session #1 [17-9-2019]
Thinking ahead: Possibilities of the project:
- different aspects: synthesizer itself, the cover - thus interface, connectivity to the other modules - interrelationality
- software, hardware and the usage -> in practice and in thought.
- connecting modules augments the possibilites - modularity = great affordance
MY NOISE MACHINERY
In the meanwhile I went to Groningen and brought back all my diy sound machines, half of them are broken a bit. Bought a 2,5€ microphone with a mini jack in Action, but apparently it doesn't work. I will probably disassemble it, see what's inside, if anything at all. Maybe just a sheel, a sad shell without any sound in it, not even the waves. Eirik bought this dx-26 mixer for 5€ in Mamamini. Should I get it from him?
Also: My other noise machines are not really compatible with the module, only the bug is (but it's very high pitched and I don't like it.) (i want to have some machine that would make granular sound-wall, white noise). The 4-legged machine only has two legs - potentiometers -> fix it.
The plan is to make my performances more real-time, more based on improvisation, echoing all the knowledge about it that I have configurated in the past year and longer - through my first-hand experiences with it (through theater, playing instruments, vocal improvisation, free-writing etc.)
To perform in the material reality of the temporal-spatial setting of this (annoying) performative time. write about it #todo
develop the idea #todo sculpture out of focus aka post-production of attention.
Session #2
Workshop with Olli Aarni [de player, Rotterdam, NL | 23&24&25-9-2019]
FIRST DAY [23-9-2019]
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/olliworkshop
My thoughts: The difficulties of describing sound. (Remember, the workshop w/Dré? -> meta) What are the parameters? VOCABULARY? How poetic can/could/should one be? Imagination when re-constructing a sound from language. Mind modulation.
Limitations, frameworks can be -> are beautiful. For example the 5 strings on the finish Kantele or the Etiopian Begena. How can the "vocabulary" expand, from simple words to complex sentences.
Exercise: Fictional designs, interfaces for the principle of string instruments. For example a harp in a tall staircase, strings being fixed on top and the bottom, played while ascending-descending. A giant that plays the bridge.
Buzzing against mosquitoes. Buzzing against young people.
Active listening - Pauline Oliveros
When listening - isolating sources of sound from one another. Specific - general sound. Being aware of the sound that we are producing? Hamburg trainstation - soundscape.
Negative-positive-neutral sound perception?
Snow playing on citre. or rain Drops of water in a cave. [ https://naturebliss.bandcamp.com/album/ochiruchirumichiru-kk034 beautifully randomised] Birds playing on guitars. Celeste Boursier-Mougenot
Randomness (lava lamp) generator.
Interfaces of language: spoken | symbolic | written
Where is the limit between language and music? Language and poetry?
What are the relevant questions here?
Pesniške figure -> research more.
Exercise: Describe a sound (from a 20-minute walk around the block), without referencing to its source.
Sound walks.
"Shortly continuous, a swipe, a one time non-repeatable gesture, soft, mid + high spectrum, (a surprise under the feet), a memory of a complex unisono, in silence loudly perceived." -> krhkojemajoč, a leaf cracking under feet.
"Round and metalic, not intentional, broken in two repetitions, the second one prolonged, louder than the space around, when you flinch, loose control, a disruption." tonorijska zdrznitev, a spoon falling somewhere.
Listened to the beautiful Eliane Radigue: Feedback works (1969–1970): feedback with microphones, speakers and reel-to-reel tape machines Adnos III (1979–1980): arp2500 Occam Ocean II (2015): orchestra, oral instructions ->
// a whale on the edge almost crashing down in between skyscrapers, a swarm of wasps approaching from afar .. The extended moment of waiting, refusing to know the outcome that sometimes reveals we do not at all have control. Nauseous morning of stillness. States on the verge of admiration. Simplicities shifting between complex layers //
SECOND DAY [24-9-2019]
Overview of "some" sound terms.
I'm getting somehow annoyed, or shall I say stimulated by the nature of our debates. It's this silence that is painful for a full mind. The discrepancy between thinking and saying. I thought that in this environment people would be inspired and empowered to speak their mind, to invent thoughts and concepts as we go. (Is fear, self-image here the preventing factor?) Preconceived knowledge or ideas here as not as important as is the real-time process, an open collective workflow. Nobody has to apologize for the lack of their knowledge, come on. I guess I was mistaking and I'm going to be (again) in this ungrateful position of always having to say something but holding myself back in order not to override this (unproductive) group dynamic. I'm being cruel here. But this situation in itself is cruel to me.
Highlights:
Needing a reference to describe a sound - a question of approach and the logic of perception: do we want to speak about sound in a poetic or scientific way? In what way for what purpose? It is almost a question of metaphors (#todo add my "A plea for metaphors" text)
Exercise 1: 1) Listen to the sound & name the file with one word (attach it to the original name). 2) Listen to the sounds, try to find connections between them, link them together in folders (at least 3 categories), name the folders so that they describe their content. 3) Create a text file in a folder where you explain why they are similar/grouped together.
Exercise 2: Listen to the soundfiles and place them in categories you've created during the previous exercise. If they don't fit different categories perfectly, find one that's closest. You can place the sounds in the category folders or attach the names of the categories to their filenames. -> funny, most of them just fit into the category named "all around the place" - is it noise, or what?!
How would it be possible to make an overview, a statistic of the overlapping categories of all of us (very different approaches, mostly not connected to the definitions of words related to sound that we have started defining in the morning)? -> WORDS on the pad #todo construct a stable dictionary.
And again this question appears - in what way to describe? Ficitional, story-like, imaginative or generally valid PARAMETERS, theoretical. Is it a question of basic knowledge, vocabulary? Intent of the writing? How would you write an article/a report from a concert, a poem, a text msg for a friend, naming a sound file? So, is it intended to clearly represent the parameters or to augment the hearable? Who can hear it, who doesn't (along with reading). It's a question of abstract or concrete worlds colliding? Where is this line between the birocratic and the poetic language? They are always OVERLAPPING. How to handle this while trying to combine them into a system, a cathegorisation?
Metaphorically I can think of this matter by the analogy of a lightning bolt. Imagine, it strucks a tree, a primal human observing it catching fire. He finds the explanation of it in the abstract, imaginatory, a diety, a god is created, blamed for the magnificent phenomenon of fire. Moving up on the slider of time, humanity is faced with science. And then at some point we have Tesla that begins to understand the lightning and use it in other ways. The god here is just a memory of the mysteriousness. - - - Where are we, right now, on this time slider? Do we satisfy ourselves with the existence of god and mystery, or do we make an effort to step out of the comfort zones of divine abstraction, imagination and synchronize with contemporaneity that possesses scientifically proven and discovered phenomenon?
Or a better direction of this thought is - how to combine the two - in order to understand reality. Here, I am speaking about a similar binary as the rational:sensory. Again this question of the relation between poetry and theory. How to think, to speak, to write about occurences? It is not a question of choosing in between the two "protocols". It is a question of HOW to approach the matter all together. Perhaps letting yourself (exit) transform the realm of the academic and confront concepts differently. #todo + add different possible exercises in writing/thought -> approaches and positions, merging them into a fluid construction. Knowing different tools (like sounds of one object), playing with its possibilities, through experimentation, trial&error. Selectively using this set of tools in order to produce a certain effect, to address individuals - who?.
knowledge+intuition. overthinking?
THIRD DAY [25-9-2019]
define cacophony: A harsh discordant mixture of sounds.
Making a playlist - each one of us, sharing what the core of sound is. Also the sound works/pieces that we've done.
Peter was expaining - Tetragamacilculaire by De Player, a publication without a strict format. "the anti record" Check out the previous publication TGC #3 here.
- Play this pattern #todo pending project (collect the material, choose the collaborators, write about it)
Check out: Nam Jun Paik #todo
Exercise - find various sounds from the objects brought: short, quiet, long, texturalised, The ping pong ball is the meta example for all the phenomenon of sound.
- ASMR, foley.
- Antwerp radio centraal
- Which rapper said that music is the way we decorate time/make time beautiful? It was not a rapper, it was Jean-Michel Basquiat: "Art is how we decorate space; music is how we decorate time."
Exercise - use the categories from yesterday as an inspiration, make a score for the objects, sketch the sound, write down a notation, perform it. #todo add+ the sound recording.
Take time composition.
ABOUT LANGUAGE: letters vs. phonemes (different sound) -> "minimal pair" also: toneme (different tone, melody of a word), chroneme (different duration).
Differences between spoken and written language. Oral literature (improvisation, ever-changing, variation, performed as a song, a melody - access to memory, rephrasing the same content). Finish Kalevala, oral folk poetry
Memory function - memorizing through music, sound, meter. Try it.
Language as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ1U3XbEzR4.
(EXTENDED) EXCURSION to DUTCH MODULAR FEST
[@De Besturing, Den Haag, NL | 27&28-9-2019]
After attending the Dutch modular fest (as a member of the press) I'll construct a mashup reportage of the event (possibly merged with Sonica festival Ljubljana). The reportage will be aired in the first week of octoberon Radio Student as a RADAR radio show.
Description of RADAR: Open radio (artistic-theoretic) research platform RADAR is meant for broader promotion and presentation as well as a radio or (inter)media upgrade and cocreation of artistic events, projects and initiatives in the field of so called intermedia and performative arts. It is a cooperative platform, open for a manifold of collaborations - with individuals, associations, galleries, institutions, other radio stations etc., with the help of the production and communication infrastructure of Radio Student it supports alternative and innovative usage of the radio medium in artistic or broadly socially and medially critical intentions. Consequently, the show does not have a fixed author nor a stable airing time.
My METHODOLOGY of being there as a reporter, but at the same time a musician, an enthusiast, eager to learn was to INTERVIEW the people involved - the makers, the performers, the observers.
I have beforehand constructed a couple of basic questions (together with Urška Savič, a friend that has been running the radio show for a while):
- Are you a musician?
- Why do you create?
- For whom do you create?
- Every bourgeois family used to have a piano at home. Does each middle class citoyen have a modular now? AKA. For which social class is "noise" meant for?
These questions got deconstructed throughout the interviews, as I was more freely roaming around and actually getting to know the people, the scene and what the appropriate questions to ask were - based on the answers, fields of importance and emphasis.
The topics that culminated from the re-constructed questions: family/community, modulation, thinking modular, sharing, improvisation, failure, future (commercialization). The questions that stayed intact were Why? & For whom do you create?
People that I interviewed:
Martin ?, Konstantin Gervis, Christian Vogel, Kassen Oud, Jan Willem, Harold Verra, Mandy Bakker, Hilde Wollenstein, Gökay Atabek, Jan Caron, Joker Nies, Rob Hordijk, Mariette Groot, Paul Tas.
Why I found the beauty of interviewing? + add the transcription of my voice notes #todo
To be in a role of a reporter, of someone who visits in order to spread it, to spread the experience, to spread the event with others, I almost enter into being an official figure, role, the media. My ticket is free, my beer is fre. People accept me instantaneously. It is a privileged position of entry, a capacity to form connections and especially to ask the questions. Of course, we are as individuals always able to ask others the questions that we wanna know, but the form of the interview kind of creates a possibility of interrogating the meaning, reaching into someones' consciousness and challenging them into deeply explaining their principles while being focused on the theme. Because there is this recorder in front of them and they cannot not see it. It always influences the way the people speak and how articulated they are. For me, it is beautiful also to give myself a chance to actually listen to what somebody has to say, which challenges my thoughts that a lot of times function as a distraction into a meaning that somebody else is creating by speaking. It is a challenge, because I want to interrupt, I want to say my opinion, I want to relate to other people in a way.... So, by giving them space, by putting them in the spotlight, they actually have the ability to be fully concentrated and open by what they are doing. They know that they are not speaking only to me, they are speaking to all of the people that my report will touch. To have a free form as RADAR is magnificent, because you can follow your own interests and through this you can create a non linear narrative of meanings, and reasons, and pursuits. By posing the right questions you can go deeply, by listening deeply you can uncover a little bit of one interesting individual and i like people. So from this perspective to be a journalist, to be a reporter is a possibility of "getting to know". // And when people say "Oh, good question" that means that you've hit the spot of meaning, you have reached the core of their own internal interrogation about the thing that they are doing. With this you challenge them to discover the answer within themselves or to speculate on what this answer could be. Journalism, reporting... I don't know how to call it -> just interviewing peiople is an interface between individual minds and meaning that is transmitting outwards, to the public. It is a tool on how to (with good questions and a lot of listening) unravel the interalities that are screaming to be heard through the art that people are making, but their primary medium is not thought or text or words or meanings, but those are always present in any kind of creation that people do. Therefore, I think that meaning as such, transmitted trough thoughts that become words, language, text or recordings are the necessary acompanyment of any creation. They can be trough the external gaze of someone that is not the creator of the artwork -> that can be criticized, expanded onto meanings that wouldn't be preconceived or thought of by the makers (2:31).
I had difficulties with the genre label to put on "experimental electronic music". Then I was saying "this kind of sound" and people questioned that. What's still up with these labels, disciplines, genres? ...
I had difficulties finding women involved in the scene - I spoke to three. I made the terrible mistake (as I observe now, posteriorily) of asking them the question about women in the scene first, and then follow up with the questions that were meant for everyone (the answers were then strongly connotated by the fist). But I got to know about RE#SISTER and also this database of female artists.
Chosen protocol/strategy for the post-production of interviews (list):
Listen:
1) name, match up with the notebook
2) take notes/annotate
Further:
1) expand ideas and concepts (by text)
2) write people more questions (mail) on mentioned topics
Then:
1) fix temporary protocols/principles/composition techniques
2) return (feed) it into own practice of sound, implement the thought.
Consequentially share everything:
1) recordings of interview (via rš or also else?)
2) writings (Transcripts and developments)
3) own sound pieces/sessions
Lastly:
Produce a discussion (on mail (sent back individually or making a little dmf interviewees list), in the "comment section", live with schoolmates of xpub, or de player or worm or friends or else)
I really need an output, own channel of publication {objavljanje} - a webpage of also all my previous, archived projects, projects in the process of becoming, thoughts and texts, included comments section. For text, sound, video, photo, interviews.... -> make hotglue?! With an intricate, intuitive structure.
Session #3 [1-10-2019]
hexa-bin-num
Arduino IDE (integrated development environment) + hardware (history here)
--> http://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Arduino101
void -> functions that don't have any output. // -> disable a line /* */ -> disable a multiple lines serial connection - usb
delay (1000) // pauses a loop for 1000 ms
Loops: for, while, ...
A variable -> stores numbers or text.
("") -> string
int = integer, a number without decimals, a whole number. float = number with decimals- char = it's a character,
while + condition
++ -> +
== -> =
&& -> and
|| -> or
the module
[25-9-2019] When trying to upload my "ican" sound sample taken from this track the Arduino board and the Arduino nano ran on the linux do not communicate properly. After one burned board (by the accidentally distructive code from Dennis - she counts, gets too fast, disrupts the flow of information), then miraculously (another machine, another arduino) the sample gets uploaded. It sounds pretty jolly. Annoying after further tryouts at home.
[1-10-2019] Managed to upload a new sample. The samplify script didn't work on my cygwin, that's why I opened it up in a text editor and manually ran each line of code. It worked!