The Olympics are not simply a matter of fun and games. They are a multi-national media spectacle that–as we’ve seen in recent protests–can arouse and galvanize political action. The event’s organizers pitch it as a zone outside of politics, but of course issues of national identity, human rights, autonomy, economic might, and foreign policy all coalesce around the Olympics. While much of the current attention to these matters is directed at Beijing, groups in Montreal and London are already forming to address the impact that the arrival of the famous torch (ceremoniously relayed in a model invented by the Nazis to promote a strong image of the Third Reich around the 1936 Berlin games) will have upon local communities. Continue reading

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla: Never Mind That Noise You Heard :: February 8 - May 4, 2008 :: Stedelijk Museum CS, Oosterdokskade 5, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The exhibition Never Mind That Noise You Heard provides an opportunity to see (and hear!) recent videos and installations by the collaborative artist team of Jennifer Allora (b.1974, USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b.1971, Cuba). In the exhibition, the Stedelijk Museum CS is presenting two large installations: Wake Up and Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech), alongside four video works. The production and usage of sound is central to all of these works, which were created between 2004 and 2007. Continue reading

Art Now: Seb Patane - So this song kills fascists :: until January 13, 2008 :: Tate Britain, Millbank, London.

So this song kills fascists, explores ideas of performance as a means of protest. The sound work, from which the installation takes its title, questions the revolutionary potential of music while new drawings, reminiscent of Surrealist or psychographic automatic writing, suggest a non-visible dimension implicit in the music. The central installation, Last Dance of the Nodding Folk, resembles an expressionist stage set, a theme echoed in the theatrical images leaning, placard-like against it. Footage of a fire juggler introduces an element of ritualised and controlled movement, which links to the energy of the drawings and the viewer’s choreographed passage around the installation. Patane identifies an aesthetics of subculture where protest has been exchanged for stylised performance, a husk detached from belief.

Some open-ended thoughts on sound in relation to environment (from Yolande Harris on YASMIN): After attending and presenting at the Mutamorphosis conference in Prague in the eco-sonification panel, and being tantalized by the beginnings of a discussion on sound, I would like to respond to the topics being raised in what’s become the ‘lovely sound’ section of the lovely weather thread (any intentional connection to the ‘lovely music’ label?).

As often, the coherence of discussions around sound can be somewhat unfocused, but I believe we’re slowly building up a ‘way of talking’ about sound through an increasing body of work that’s emerging from beneath the visual. Continue reading

Peter Cusack :: Sounds from Dangerous Places :: Enter3-3rd International Festival for Arts, Sciences and Technologies :: STONE BELL HOUSE (cellar) :: Staroměstské náměstí 13, Praha 1 :: November 8 - 11, 2007; 10:00 - 21:00.

Sounds from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone asks the following questions: What elements of the soundscape of a dangerous place are effected, changed, created or destroyed as a result of its ‘dangerousness’? What insights can sound offer into the environmental, social and political contexts of a ‘dangerous place’? The project presents the field recordings as they are, in the belief that such recordings offer insights into the locations and issues that are different from, and complimentary to, those of visual images and texts. Supplementary questions are: What information about place can field recordings give that is special to sound? And, conversely, what information is given by the other media that sound cannot? Continue reading

Making Noise :: November 28, 2007 – January 2, 2008 :: Reception: November 29, 6-8 pm :: Melville Gallery, South Street Seaport Museum, 123 Water Street, New York City.

Making Noise features work by visual artists who utilize the many different modes by which sound is produced and received. Exploring the possibilities that lie within the relationship between producer and receiver, these artists demonstrate how the manipulation of sound can become a tool for the organization of power and, in turn, the subversion of it. Artists: Kabir Carter, Kate Gilmore, Tom Kotik, neuroTransmitter (Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere), Nadine Robinson, Douglas Ross, Stephen Vitiello. Curators: Andrew Cappetta and Jeff Pash.

Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech) by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla :: until December 15, 2007 :: San Francisco Art Institute, 800 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, CA.

The third and final movement in a trilogy of site-specific sound-focused installations, Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech) carries forward lines of investigation Allora & Calzadilla opened first in Clamor (at the Moore Space in Miami in 2006) and then in Wake Up (at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in the spring of 2007). The trilogy of exhibitions comprises a series of works that counterpose militarism and war with adroit manipulations of sound, music, and—in this new project for the first time—spoken word. Continue reading

Stephen Vitiello Audio Environments: Played back on a 5.1 surround sound system, Steven Vitiello Night Chatter is multi-channel work composed of an analog synth track that rumbles under natural sounds recorded in the James River State Park and Cypress Bridge Forest, both in Virginia. The piece plays with the abstraction of night voices of animals as the artist states: “When I’m out in the field at night recording, there is a feeling of chatter, insect and animal voices that are communicating outside of my translation skills.” Continue reading

[From the site…] aka “AI to the People” :: Current Transmission: 8 June 2007 to 9 September 2007… Whitney Museum, New York….

By Amy Alexander, Wojciech Kosma, Vincent Rabaud with Nikhil Rasiwasia and Jesse Gilbert. Production Assistants: Marilia Maschion, Annina Rüst, Cristyn Magnus. The project that asks the question: If computer vision technology can be used to detect when you look like a terrorist, criminal, or other “undesirable” - why not when you look like a rock star? Continue reading

Music and Globalisation Symposium :: November 15-17, 2007 - Paris :: November 20-21, 2007 - Montpellier :: Entrance is free, but reservations are mandatory :: Cdmc: 01 47 15 49 83; Cité de la musique: 01 44 84 44 84; Université Paul Valéry: 04 67 14 25 00 :: Further information: Makis.Solomos[at]univ-montp3.fr. Organised by the review Filigrane (See Filigrane n°5: Music and Globalization), the Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine (Cdmc), the Cité de la musique, and the Universities of Montpellier 3, Paris 8, and Lille 3.

History has seen far-reaching expansions by cultures in the past, expansions we would be tempted to call ‘globalisation’ today: the Roman Empire, the installation of the Arabs along the Mediterranean littoral during the Middle Ages, the conquest of the Americas by Spain… Is the process currently underway on our planet of the same nature as those, or does it have its own particular characteristics? Continue reading