Visà-vis: What is the cause, and the cost, of insight? What does it mean to see the world face to face? These were questions raised by the young Rilke in a well-known passage from his Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, a Parisian diary he kept in 1904 while serving as personal secretary to Rodin. They are also questions lying at the heart of Vis-à-vis, a multimedia work for voice, live electronics and real-time video, which takes Rilke’s words as a dramatic point of departure.

For more info see http://huseac.fas.harvard.edu/ and http://www.soundidea.org/rovan/projects.htm

Directions:
Holyoke Street runs between Mass Ave. and Mt. Auburn street, next door to the Holyoke center. It´s two minutes from the Harvard Square T-stop (Red Line).

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.

Phelan produced the text for each of the sound pieces by participating in a range of online forums, from physics to religion. Subjects such as Commitment to truth, Youth isn’t a defense or Change is our only Commonality were inspired by previous ideas associated with the first phase of the overall formation of opinion project. These online discussions were led by the artist and then edited into scripts. Thirteen scripts were translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese or Kirundi; the others remain in English. Phelan recorded the reading of the texts by 26 different native speakers in the basement of The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, located in Cork City, Ireland. They were then recorded a second time; they had to listen to their own recording and repeat exactly what they heard the moment they heard it, thereby creating 26 regurgitated monologues.

At what point will common sense prevail is a challenging audio project that raises questions about private outlooks and current modes of personal and media communication.

Kunstradio – Radiokunst is presenting a selection of At what point will common sense prevail as part of its Curated by series.

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.

The exhibition studies the effects of a sensual perception being replaced by another one and the conditions under which the voice allows itself to be imparted by other means – be it written notation, technical recordings or visual representation. While the voice has very specific qualities in its immediate expression, “translated into another medium, the voice becomes apparent as a medium.” (Thomas Trummer) The works allude to the relation of image and sound so that they reciprocally define the specific characteristics of imagery and sound, either underscoring or even subverting each other.

The exhibition comprises thirteen very different approaches to “voice and void”. Historical points of reference include Joseph Beuys” legendary performance “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”(1965) which is featured in Ute Klophaus” photographs; John Cage”s text sheets titled “Lecture on Nothing (Silence)” (1959) where acoustics of a silence imbued with “presence” is implemented both verbally and visually by means of text notations; and VALIE EXPORT”s “Tonfilm” (Sound film) from 1969, showing the draft for a performance in which the voice is manipulated by means of technological interventions in the glottis and the ear.

These early works are followed by a row of contemporary studies on the phenomenon of the voice – also touching upon its absence. One work, by American artist Rachel Berwick, is an installation with two live parrots. In his journey through South America in 1799 explorer Alexander von Humboldt discovered a parrot that was the only surviving living creature which could speak the language of the indigenous tribe of the Mayporé. Humboldt documented 40 words of this lost language that is now being reanimated in Berwick’s work.

In his site-specific installation Hans Schabus refers to the particular acoustic and visual situation of hidden spaces. He makes these spaces accessible to the visitor by transferring them into the exhibition space.

Asta Grőting”s work revolves around the process of ventroloquism where the performer is no longer just the speaker but also the recipient and interlocutor of his own “second voice”.

The exhibition is rounded off by a number of other works by artists such as Janet Cardiff/ Georges Bures Miller, Anna Gaskell, Christian Marclay, Melik Ohanian, Nedko Solakov and Julianne Swartz. They all approach the voice as the vehicle of language, communication and bodily expression.

The curator of the exhibition is Thomas Trummer who developed the project as part of an international fellowship awarded by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT (USA) where the exhibition was shown first.

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.

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. It is a software tool based on MaxMSP and speech recognition software interacting with my own voice during performances. It’s also a state of mind enabling expanded spoken and vocal improvisation, expanded communication and ecstasy.

It has been developed in collaboration with Harvestworks Digital Arts Center in New York and STEIM in Amsterdam. Mask/Mirror has to do with virtually everything but at the same time it does not have anything special to do with anything special. As well as being a blank mask I can put on my face - and my voice - it’s also a mirror that let me browse and talk to my memory while I am watching into it.

All mirrors are masks and vice versa. Both are tools enabling identity.

“It is difficult not to treat Mask/Mirror, with its randomized garble of words, as a willfully cryptic Oracle of Delphi reincarnated as an Apple laptop. While Bosetti had described the project as “about the aboutness of being about” what Noise got out all of this is that it’s devilishly hard not to seek meaning even where it’s clear none is forthcoming. Not until the program, in a moment of absurd hilarity, spit forth the word “hamburgers” did it all click: Mask/Mirror is a tool for shearing all meaning from language. It’s a liberation, of sorts, like the sound version of Rorschach tests: The mind is encouraged to wander freely and delight in words purely for their sound. In the information overload of contemporary times, Mask/Mirror’s playful rupturing of sense–its nonsense, in other words–is a welcome respite.” Raven Baker - Noise/Citypaper

ALESSANDRO BOSETTI, voice, electronics, Berlin / Milano / Baltimore: Alessandro Bosetti, composer and sound artist, was born in Milan, Italy in 1973. He works on the musicality of spoken words and unusual aspects of spoken communication and produced text-sound compositions featured in live performances, radio broadcastings and published recordings. In his work he moves on the line between sound anthropology and composition often including translation and misunderstanding in the creative process. Field research and interviews often build the basis for his abstract compositions along with electro-acoustic and acoustic collages, relational strategies,trained and untrained instrumental practices, vocal explorations and digital manipulations. Since he’s curious about differences he travels. Just in 2006 he’s been living and working in West Africa, China, Taiwan, Holland, Scandinavia, United States , Germany and Italy. For the future he plans to be living and working between Berlin (D), Milano (I) and Baltimore (USA).

CHRISTIAN KESTEN, voice, Berlin, Germany: Christian Kesten was born in 1966 and works as composer, performance artist, vocalist and stage director. He lives in Berlin, Germany. His interest lies in the “space in-between”: between music and theatre, music and language, between music and the visual arts. His pieces work with the space which opens up between the sound of language and the parallel, non-illustrative action (-cycling 1990; des Kleinen Übergewicht 1995; 45 seconds 2006). They make use of everyday spaces and their sounds, including works made for train stations, in which minimal sounds of winds and brass are spread over the station and mixed with sounds of trains and passers-by (nordbahnhof 1996, bahnhof westend 1996, bahnhof zoo 1997). welcome home is written for the squeaking doors of the Nordbahnhof station in Berlin and two violins which mirror the door sounds: the passers-by experience the music while on the move. In (o.T.) für klarinette in einem raum mit langem nachhall 1(1999) and 2(2000) [(without title) for clarinet in a space with a long reverberation time] the clarinet plays to its own reverberation as a second voice, microtonally, and thus refers to the presence of space. parochial (1998) – for the group “Maulwerker” (4 female voices, trumpet/voice, clarinet/voice, alto saxophone + additional instruments) – was written especially for the space of the Parochialkirche in Berlin: sculptural shaped sounds are moved in space, while trumpet, clarinet and sax move mostly outside the space and so extending acoustic perception beyond the walls of the church.

Recently he developed the “video audio field recording”, by recording field sounds with a video camera, composing dense and light sound textures of field recordings and live instruments. The projected images are always fixed camera angles, filming spaces in-between, the incidental, the mundane: the Los Angeles catalogue; dodger stadium; cypress park; urban cafe restroom (all 2007). Kesten studied at the University of Arts (UdK) Berlin (Music: guitar, piano, voice; counterpoint/twelvetone-technique with H.Fladt; musicological thesis on “Silence in the works of John Cage and Morton Feldman”; Experimental music and music-theatre with Dieter Schnebel | Performance Art | Projects with the stage design class of Achim Freyer) and TU Berlin (German literature and linguistics). 1989-91 he studied privately with Michael Vetter (overtone singing, vocal improvisation, calligraphy/notation etc.). Movement studies with various teachers (Amos Hetz a.o.).

Since 1987, he has been performing new vocal music and experimental music-theatre throughout Europe and in New York, Rio de Janeiro, Israel, Moscow and Tokyo. He currently works with the ensemble “Maulwerker” and as soloist. In a long collaboration with Dieter Schnebel he premiered most of his music theatre works since 1987. He has recently worked with Alessandro Bosetti, Jacques Demierre, Chico Mello, Makiko Nishikaze, Iris ter Schiphorst, who wrote solo works or operas for him. Kesten conceives and curates the series “maulwerker performing music” (since 2005) in Berlin with programs like ?poems for feet“, ?pro cedere. Music as Process“, “Situationen.. Interpenetrations of art and life” or “Halt’s Maul. Screaming pieces from four decades”, with World Premieres by Antonia Baehr, Alessandro Bosetti, Bill Dietz, Jürg Frey, Robin Hayward, David Helbich, Michael Hirsch, Sven-Åke Johansson, Travis Just, Christian Kesten, Andrea Neumann, Pauline Oliveros, Dieter Schnebel, Emmett Williams, István Zelenka, a.o. Since 2006, he is co-curator of the experimental music concert series Labor Sonor at KULE Berlin.

Diapason gallery for sound and intermedia was founded by composer Michael J. Schumacher in 2001 and its program builds on the efforts of Schumacher’s previous sound space, Studio Five Beekman, founded in 1996. Diapason is the sole venue in New York City and one of few internationally dedicated to the presentation of multichannel sound installation where composers and sound artists can realize their work for an interested public. By providing an optimum listening environment, two high quality multi-channel sound systems, a regular audience, and a place for experimentation, Diapason seeks to engage composers and the public in dialogue about the place of contemporary music and sound practice in a broader cultural context. Diapason is supported by NYSCA, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Phaedrus Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Kirk Radke, and by generous individuals. Diapason is a 501(c)3 organization.

Tuesday 11: Miya Masaoka (New York) will perform interactive koto and video pieces, also using Super 8 loop and projector; this work will be inspired by a quasi-documentary of the quest for the ‘Minetta Creek,’ the impassioned search for the last living natural stream of water in Lower Manhattan; she has recently created pieces where ordinary plant activity derails a model train, and insect movement and plane flight schedules create the structure and the formal design of audio compositions. www.miyamasaoka.com www.myspace.com/miyamasaoka.

Wednesday 12: Pierre Marietan (Paris and Switzerland) - BLACK OR WHITE’: existing sounds - collected sounds - small instruments - voices; usually, the listener follows the musical path previously taken by the composer; the latter may also give a shape to an existing acoustic material in such a way that this process preserves the listener’s freedom of interpretation; the four sequences proposed for the evening can be perceived through either listening mode; in ‘WITHOUT ANYTHING’, the existing acoustic structure that is revealed creates the music of the place; ‘CAPTIVE VOICES’ qualifies the space as a place of music; in ‘RUMEUR / EMERGENCES’, the sounds from elsewhere transferred into the place, take us off to other worlds; ‘RYTHMUS 21-23′ is a movie by Hans Richter associated with ‘EMPREINTES’, a musical piece for strings, piccolo, side-drum and saxophones. www.pierremarietan.com www.music-environment.com.

Friday 14: Christian Kesten (Berlin) performs works for breathing sounds (in-/exhaling) in monochrome textures, for tongue (acoustically and visually), for jokes in five languages with leaving out the punch lines while building up an installation on a table made out of mundane things, and works for video and voice.

Sunday 16: Manuel Rocha Iturbide (Mexico City) - Some of his compositions have been involved with daily sounds and their transformation through electroacoustic means, as well as with their spacialization; he will present various pieces composed in the last 4 years, most of them created in a multichannel format; with Margot Leverett, clarinet.

Monday 17: Esther Venrooy (Gent, Belgium) - The Spiral Staircase is a suite of short electronic vignettes that constitute two vertical movements; the piece was partly composed with the EMS Synthi 100 analogue modular synthesizer at the IPEM (Institute for Psycho-acoustics and Electronic Music) in Ghent. www.esthervenrooy.com www.myspace.com/esthervenrooy.

Tuesday 18: Screen Compositions - The fourth edition of Screen Compositions, the yearly evening dedicated to intersections of moving image with sonic art; a program of screen works representing dynamic two-way collaborations between video/ film artists and sound/ music artists specifically intended for single-channel projection with no live or performance component; featuring collaborations by: Liora Belford / Ido Govrin; Kjell Bjorgeengen / Marc Ribot; Yan Breuleux / Alain Thibault; Alexandra Dementieva / Aernoudt Jacobs; Richard Garet / Wolfgang R. von Stuermer; Katherine Liberovskaya / Phill Niblock; Francesca Llopis / Barbara Held; Marlena Novak / Jay Alan Yim; Billy Roisz / Toshimaru Nakamura; Billy Roisz / dieb13.

Wednesday 19: Folke Rabe (Sweden) - Composer of vocal and instrumental music with some emphasis on brass; but this will be a retrospective with tape pieces - ARGH!, Cyclone, What?? - and Ship of Fools, a video with the New Culture Quartet; works composed in the 1960s thru 80s.

Thursday 20: Jean Piche (Montreal) - Three triple-channel videomusic works are presented, forming a suite that has helped define a particular genre of pluridisciplinary work: the composer as visual artist; fabricating color and sound, stream and movement, shape and timbre, the artist articulates a highly kinetic discourse at the juncture of abstraction and documentary.

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.

For her fourth Valentine’s Day Massacre, Galás carves songs of doomed love into haunting works that promise to rip your heart out. Sophisticated vocal weaponry combines with a driving, sometimes jaw-dropping, percussive piano style to conjure up a dazzling array of emotions, ranging from fleeting happiness to the terror brought upon by the death of love. Reaching into the heart of the blues, Galás takes it to new places of loneliness, occasionally breaking into the virtuosic singing of the Amanes – a type of improvised lamentation from Asia Minor.

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.

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.

Our collaboration centers around an extensive investigation of the possibilities of the improvised voice in tandem with electroacoustic processing, focusing on the possibilities of detemporalization and memory evoked through the use of looping, time-stretching, and spectral processing. The interplay between the two performers (one singing, one processing) takes the metaphor of the voice as impulse and the computer as filter and creates a dense palette of evocative sounds and images derived entirely from the voice of the singer. Video.

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: Marjorie Morgan - voice; Jessica Newman – voice; Bhob Rainey – alto saxophone; Greg Kelley – trumpet; Eric Dahlman – trumpet; Tom Plsek (MAG)* - trombone; Larry Johnson (MAG) – violin; Vic Rawlings – cello, open-circuit electronics; Jane Wang – contrabass, water voice; Jay Sullivan – turntable and harmonium; James Coleman – theremin; Dirk Adams (MAG) - electronics; Ernst Karel - electronics; Angela Sawyer - electronics; Steve Pyne – electronics; Andrew Neumann – electronics. (* MAG = member, Mobius Artists Group) Read about it in the Boston Phoenix.

“Sound Works 1982-1987 is the first ever collection of Jed Speare’s long-form musique concrete compositions. Speare’s investigation and uniquely expressive practice of splicing and combining analogue sound/field recording spans over 30 years, from creating the Cable Car Soundscapes LP (Smithsonian/Folkways), recording with Research Library to performing across the globe. These five pieces are vibrating, towering movements of complex sound strains that expand and grow with each new listen. Twelve page booklet features introduction by poet and artist George Quasha, Speare’s detailed notes on each piece, rare photographs and performance sketches. Remastered by Bhob Rainey (nmperign).” - Family Vineyard Records

Jed Speare is an artist working in a variety of media and settings. Initially trained in music composition, he has presented performance, sound, video, installation, conceptual, and community-based works locally, nationally, and internationally in festivals and locales such as San Francisco, Amsterdam, Canada, Taiwan, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus, Bulgaria, France, and Italy. He has received numerous awards, commissions, and residencies for his work from diverse entities such as the Secretary of the Smithsonian (for his work on Smithsonian Folkways Records), Wyspa Institute of Art (Gdansk, Poland), and the Experimental Television Center, to name a few. In Boston, Jed has been known primarily as a member of the Mobius Artists Group since 1995 and as the Co-Director and Director of Mobius from 1996 through 2004. He is currently Director of Studio Soto, a space for ideas, based in Boston. More about Jed Speare on Family Vineyard Records.