[Image: Garrett Phelan] Garrett Phelan works and lives in Dublin, Ireland. In recent years Phelan has focussed his practice on extensive explorations into the formation of opinion and the absolute present, particularly manifested through independent FM radio transmission projects, drawing, video, photography and web based projects in both gallery and non gallery environments.

At what point will common sense prevail, 26 sound works to be presented for a 5 year period, was commissioned by the Lewis Glucksman Gallery and curated by René Zechlin. It marks the second phase of a series of projects exploring the formation of opinion; it deals with how cognition occurs in conversation, discussion or debate. Continue reading

Voice & Void -Rachel Berwick, Joseph Beuys / Ute Klophaus, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, John Cage, VALIE EXPORT, Anna Gaskell, Asta Grőting, Christian Marclay, Melik Ohanian, Hans Schabus, Nedko Solakov, Julianne Swartz, Cerith Wyn Evans :: April 19 - June 8, 2008 :: Opening: April 18, 2008; 7:00 pm :: Galerie im Taxispalais, Maria-Theresien-Str. 45, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.

The group show Voice & Void is dedicated to the representation of the human voice – and its absence – in the visual arts. The voice and its fading away, speech and the loss of speech, both the presence and the immateriality of the voice, the relation between the voice and corporeality as well as sound and image are only a few of the many aspects addressed in this exhibition. Continue reading

[Image: Phonautograph] “An “ethereal” 10 second clip of a woman singing a French folk song has been played for the first time in 150 years. The recording of “Au Clair de la Lune”, recorded in 1860, is thought to be the oldest known recorded human voice. A phonograph of Thomas Edison singing a children’s song in 1877 was previously thought to be the oldest record.

The new “phonautograph”, created by etching soot-covered paper, has now been played by US scientists using a “virtual stylus” to read the lines. “When I first heard the recording as you hear it … it was magical, so ethereal,” audio historian David Giovannoni, who found the recording, told AP.” Continue reading Oldest recorded voices sing again, BBC News. You can also listen to the recording.

Diapason gallery for sound and intermedia presents Alessandro Bosetti and Christian Kesten’s Mask/Mirror, a performance :: March 29, 2008; 8:00 pm :: Diapason, 882 Third Avenue (between 32nd and 33rd Street), 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY.

A few months ago I wrote a note to myself: “Try to create a mask that that doesn’t have anything to do with anything” and kept wondering what that could mean until I started to imagine Mask/Mirror. Mask/Mirror a sampler to process recordings of spoken language in real time… The sampler follows both sound and meaning criteria in sorting, organizing and processing samples and in formulating utterances. Continue reading

Experimental Intermedia’s MARCH 2008 PERFORMANCE SERIES - The Thirty-fourth Anniversary of EI performances at 224 Centre Street, the Thirty-ninth Anniversary of the Founding of Experimental Intermedia, the Thirty-ninth Anniversary of the 224 Centre Street loft, and, not least, The Eighteenth Annual Festival with no fancy name, Part Two (or B), Phill Niblock, Curator :: 224 Centre Street at Grand, Third Floor, N Y 10013 :: All of the EI March concerts are being streamed on free103point9 Online Radio at 9:00 pm. Continue reading

Diamanda Galás’ Valentine’s Day Massacre :: February 14, 2008; 6:30 and 9:30 pm :: Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, NYC.

Avant-garde vocalist and virtuoso pianist Diamanda Galás returns to The Knitting Factory to perform her annual and critically acclaimed Valentine’s Day Massacre, before the worldwide release of her much anticipated compilation, Guilty Guilty Guilty (MUTE UK, March 31, 2008).

With this spellbinding night of tragic and homicidal love songs, the dark queen of extended techniques turns standards from jazz, blues and rembetika into her own musical genre. The evening features favorite covers and longtime hits, including “Time (Interlude)” sung by Timi Yuro, Tracy Nelson’s “Down So Low”, “Long Black Veil” made popular by Johnny Cash, Ralph Stanley’s reaper song, “O Death”, John Lee Hooker’s “Burning Hell”, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell on You”, Earl Grant’s “Imitation of Life”, Edith Piaf’s “Padam Padam,” and surprise songs. Continue reading

Sculpting Voice (shape destroy orchestrate process build) :: January 25, 2008; 8:00 pm :: Monkey Town, 58 N. 3rd street (betw. Wythe and Kent), Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

A voice is as unique as a fingerprint and speaks in both presence and absence. In an evening of performances ranging from the sublime to the insane, performers will use human voice to shape audio, video, theater, dance and origami. Performers will include R. Luke DuBois, Lesley Flanigan, Andrew Schneider, Joo Youn Paek, Adam Parrish, Nick Hasty, Nancy Garcia, Eric Beug, Christopher McDonald, and Dafna Naphtali.

Bioluminescence is a collaborative audio/visual project with Lesley Flanigan and Luke DuBois.

The voice has a unique role in our musical culture, bridging the linguistic and the semiotic in a way that transcends instrumentality through a highly personal embodiment of musicianship. The recorded female voice, in particular, has been the subject of academic investigation following its role in aesthetics (Adorno), cinema and psychology (Silverman) and feminist theory (De Laurentis). In electroacoustic music, the voice has a privileged place in our canon, providing a boundless source of material for sonic exploration from the tape works of Berio, Dodge, and Lansky through the composer-performer repertoire of Joan LaBarbera and Pamela Z. Continue reading

Studio Soto’s Director, Jed Speare, will present a concert celebrating the release of his double-CD album, Sound Works, 1982-1987 :: December 7, 2007; 8 pm :: Mobius, 725 Harrison Avenue, Boston.

Joining Jed will be many of Boston’s outstanding electroacoustic composers, musicians, and performers, many of whom performed at Studio Soto over the past several months, through the extraordinary Sound@Soto series curated by James Coleman and the unforgettable concerts presented by the curators and organizers of Non Event. They are: Continue reading

Pamela Z :: The Stone :: Corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street, New York City :: December 5, 2007; 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM :: Admission is $10 per set.

8 PM: Pamela Z (solo voice, electronics) - Pamela Z will perform a set of works-new, old, composed, and improvised-processing her voice through a Max MSP patch on her Powerbook and triggering sampled sounds with gesture controlled MIDI instruments.

10 PM: Pamela Z (voice, live electronic processing), Okkyung Lee (cello). and Sarah Schoenbeck (bassoon) perform improvised duets, and trios. Continue reading