The London art space, E:vent, is among the first to chime-in with an exhibition addressing these issues. Their show, “Sound Proof” (open April 19-May 11), features six artists “using sound materials, drawings, and annotations [to create] audio and visual maps that preserve observations of transformation.” These site-specific works focus on the Lower Lea Valley, below London, which will be virtually reinvented for London 2012. In a way, they will function as aural time capsules–records or “proof” of a space and culture if not doomed for demolition, then certainly slated for overhaul. The valuable question raised by the show is that of preservation–what is deemed worthy of saving (memories, relics, cultural practices) and what is the responsible, effective way to do so. This form of ethnographic programming takes “game art” to another level. - Marisa Olson, Rhizome.

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.

The selection of works presented all have in common a shared interest in noise and its structuring through music. The continuum between these two sonic ends becomes a potentially rich tool through which cultural, social, and political relationships can be both gauged as well as challenged. Many works in the exhibition are the outcome of the investigations of the artists into how power, militarism, and war are encoded in to sound. Each work explores innovative ways to generate sound. The resulting sonic experiments provide new frames of meaning to otherwise familiar forms of musical expression.

In all the works presented, the artists theorize less about music, but rather through it. The design and setting of the exhibition were created in close collaboration with the artists so that taken as a whole the entire display creates a unique musical composition.

Allora and Calzadilla live in Puerto Rico and have worked together since 1995. In this time, they have developed a multifaceted oeuvre, consisting of installations, videos, performances, social interactions, work in public space, photos, and collages. Their work is characterized by a sense of playfulness, humour, and social involvement, focusing upon local situations, concrete materials and forms, all the while providing a platform to hear resonances within a larger global context.” - ‘The twisted soundtracks of war’,
Amsterdam Weekly

Curated by Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen.

At certain times during the exhibition, singers from the Operastudio Nederland will present live performances.

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.

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. But although as mentioned, sound can work in the sphere of emotions, I don’t think it needs to be primarily thought of in these terms. It is very easy to think of sound as purely emotional, as it is easy to think of music as expression, as a way of circumventing the problem of further understanding sound and how it works.

In terms of environment, sound can be considerably more than an emotional communication of phenomenon. For example, we listen in a functional way in order to locate ourselves and move through an environment, a kind of listening where we only act when we perceive a sonic change, we do not consciously listen continuously but when our attention is directed. We also create sound, both intentionally and as a by-product of movement, which situates us as a part of the sonic environment we are in (a factor that is suppressed in the concert setting). In this way I would like to say that our relation to environment is directly sculpted by sound, the sounds around us, the sounds that we produce and the continuum between them. And from this can arise a sense of connectedness that could become emotional.

This is where sonifications of environmental data become so interesting, and so enigmatic. They present data collected by and for scientific means, which in itself is a string of numbers in need of interpretation. But by scaling these into sounds that fit within our human audible range, we experience a kind of magical transformation (!), a strange alchemy that makes us listen intently as the environment starts to speak as it were. And perhaps because we don’t understand it’s language, the experience is all the more be-witching! Is this why are we so willingly taken in by these affects of sonified data, or even the recorded sounds of extinct species? What is actually happening here?

The transformation of data into sound, and presentations of place through sound, inevitably have an emotional impact that can carry multiple political interpretations and subsequent manipulations. I wonder then that our discussion of sound and awareness of its impact needs to be greatly expanded, and the questions raised by sound artists working in these areas fine-tuned. What is interesting is that composers, who I would suggest are (potentially at least) the most versatile in their understanding and construction of sound and its affects through time, must work scientifically, practically, technologically (not emotionally at all!).

And so, one last provocation, I would like to question whether it is futile to think of sound in isolation, but situate it within the visual and environmental…the aesthetic as well as the political?

Yolande
http://www.yolandeharris.net

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?

Peter Cusack, based in London, works as a sound artist, musician and environmental recordist with a special interest in environmental sound and acoustic ecology. Projects move from community arts to research into the contribution of sound to our senses of place to recordings that document areas of special sonic interest, e.g. Lake Baikal, Siberia, and Xinjang, China’s most western province. He was involved in ‘Sound & the City’ the British Council sound art project in Beijing 2005. His current project ‘Sounds from Dangerous Places’ examines the soundscapes of sites of major environmental damage, e.g. Chernobyl, the Azerbaijan oil fields, controversial dams on the Tigris and Euphratees river systems in south east Turkey. He initiated the ‘Your Favourite London Sound’ project that aims to discover what Londoners find positive in their city’s soundscape, an idea that has been repeated in other world cities including Beijing and Chicago. He produced ‘Vermilion Sounds’ a monthly environmental sound program on ResonanceFM radio, London, and lectures on ‘Sound Arts & Design’ at the London College of Communication. Recently, he was appointed research fellow on the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council’s multidisciplinary ‘Positive Soundscapes Project’.

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.

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.

Strategically seeking out the sounds of combat as their sonic media, Allora & Calzadilla redeploy petrified—if still petrifying—riffs like reveille in ways that fundamentally challenge the ostensible glories the drumbeats of war traditionally encode. Part of their collaborative task has been to track such martial sound effects to their precognitive hideouts “under the skin,” where the body is agitated and stirred before the mind has had a chance to reflect—the hangouts, in short, of an unthinking patriotism. Allora & Calzadilla’s endeavor to reissue sounds whose meanings have grown far too familiar is an effort to restructure, at the source, those corporeal conformities—always marked in and on the body already—through which violent and potentially devastating action first becomes possible. In the new work for the Walter and McBean Galleries, this same system of undoing is set in motion against the equally inured fixations of the word—from the grain of the speaking voice to the artificial diction of operatic language and political oration.

Never limiting themselves to a single medium, Allora & Calzadilla complement their far-resonating, site-sensitive interrogations of sound and word with a suite of recent works in video: Returning a Sound (2004), Under Discussion (2005), Amphibious (2005), Sweat Glands, Sweat Lands (2006), Unrealizable Goals (2007), and There Is More Than One Way to Skin a Sheep (2007), the last of which recently premiered at the 10th International Istanbul Biennial. As a literal testimony to their thematic precedence in Allora & Calzadilla’s oeuvre, these videos will be on view starting Friday, 5 October in the Walter and McBean Galleries, that is, two weeks before the opening of the exhibition proper. The preemptive presence and visibility of Allora & Calzadilla’s video work on the SFAI campus—in particular, Returning a Sound and Under Discussion—will reinforce the deeper context of the ensuing installation, namely, Allora & Calzadilla’s active participation, from 2001 to 2004, in the acts of civil disobedience in Vieques (the island off Puerto Rico used by the US Navy as a weapons-testing range from 1941 to 2003) that eventually led to its partial evacuation by the US government.

Consistent with the comprehensive rearticulation of SFAI’s Exhibitions and Public Programs, which look beyond the traditional histories and narratives of exhibition and curatorial practice, Allora & Calzadilla were invited to exploit, as fully as possible, the intricacies of the SFAI campus—to conceive of it, in other words, as what Hou Hanru, SFAI’s director of Exhibitions and Public Programs, has called “a dynamic site of production instead of a static venue for mere representation.”

Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech) occurs under the Global Figures component of Exhibitions and Public Programs, which is divided into five discrete but intersecting directions for investigating current constructions of contemporary global culture. Global Figures presents solo exhibitions of major artists from different cultures who have importantly influenced the current global art scene. The third and final movement in an ideologically critical, three-city trilogy, Sediments, Sentiments (Figures of Speech) could literally not have assumed the concrete, site-specific form it will in fact assume anywhere else than at the Walter and McBean Galleries. The entire project will be captured and reflected upon in a joint publication slated to appear in 2008.

In addition to the installation in the Walter and McBean Galleries, Allora & Calzadilla gave a talk on 17 October as part of SFAI’s Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series.

Allora & Calzadilla first exhibited internationally in 1998 at the 24th Sao Paulo Biennial. In group exhibitions they have shown at the Tate Modern in 2003, the 2005 Venice Biennial, and the 2006 Whitney Biennial. In solo exhibitions they have shown or will show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (2004); the ICA in Boston (2004); the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2006); the Serpentine Gallery in London (2007); the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2007); the Whitechapel Laboratory in London (2007); the 10th International Istanbul Biennial (2007); and the Lyon Biennial (2007).

Allora & Calzadilla’s work can be found in major public collections at the Tate Modern; the Fonds Municipal d’Art Contemporain (FMAC) in Paris; the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the Musaoe d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC in Paris; the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK) in Ghent (Belgium); the Dallas Museum of Art (Texas, USA); and the Cleveland Museum of Art (Ohio, USA).

“I try to make people think about their surroundings with my work, to slow them down”. And last month he staged - in the heart of London at Broadgate Arena - an environment of sound built on field recordings of bird and moth wings from locations including the Amazon, upstate New York and Virginia.

Stereo composite mix of Smallest of Wings (excerpt) as presented at Broadgate Arena, London, May 2007 (4.5 mb) and stereo mix of Night Chatter, installation at the Weatherspoon Museum, 2007 (9.1 mb) at stephenvitiello.com.

Vitiello is also interested in connecting sound experience to the concepts of surveillance and chatter, a term which, since 9-11, often refers to communications picked up by U.S. government surveillance to track potential terrorist threats. [posted by Ilari Valbonesi on EcoPolis]

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?SVEN (Surveillance Video Entertainment Network) is a system comprised of a camera, monitor, and two computers that can be set up in public places - especially in situations where a CCTV monitor might be expected. The software consists of a custom computer vision application that tracks pedestrians and detects their characteristics, and a real-time video processing application that receives this information and uses it to generate music-video like visuals from the live camera feed. The resulting video and audio are displayed on a monitor in the public space, interrupting the standard security camera type display each time a potential rock star is detected. The idea is to humorously examine and demystify concerns about surveillance and computer systems not in terms of being watched, but in terms of how the watching is being done - and how else it might be done if other people were at the wheel.

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? The changes that have affected art in recent years would seem to be a barometer of globalisation’s progress and forms, the outcome of which no one can foresee. The increasing commercialisation of the artistic domain would seem to justify the proph-ecy of the death of art, that is, unless the utopian enrichment of cultural diversity is preferable. Trends vacillate endlessly between the poles of foreboding and hope. Now that globalisation has largely swept through the territory of music, a reality check seems possible, as well as an analysis of the modalities and consequences of the phenomenon that today is influencing all areas of human activity. Hence, we propose a scrutiny of our own times through an examination of the interaction between music and globalisation. Musicians, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, philosophers, soci-ologists, economists and anthropologists are all invited to join the debate.

Economic Models
Paris, Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine (Cdmc) Thursday, 15 November, from 9:00 to 12:30

Hybridations and métissages
Paris, Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine (Cdmc) Thursday, 15 November, from 14:30 to 18:00

Colonialism and Post-Colonialism
Paris, Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine (Cdmc) Friday, 16 November, from 9:00 to 12:30

Aesthetic Values
Paris, Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine (Cdmc) Friday, 16 November, from 14:30 to 18:00

Safeguarding Traditional Cultures
Paris, Cité de la musique Saturday, 17 November, from 9:00 to 12:30

Global and universal
Paris, Cité de la musique Saturday, 17 November, de 14:30 to 18:00

Local music / contemporary music 1
Montpellier, Université Paul Valéry Tuesday 20 November

Local music / contemporary music 2
Montpellier, Université Paul Valéry Wednesday 21 November