fxusoundjournal

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Final Project

Instead of dealing with my hierarchy of taste in soundscape, I decide to illustrate and demonstrate one exact anxiety from my life by deconstructing and reconstructing the soundtrack that sampling from one of my classes. The instructor of that class has a very unique sound pitch. His tone and topics are always inappropriate and offensive. My intension of this work is about enlarging and centralizing this feeling of frustration and his vocal phrase will be the main character. How the illusion of voices operate in my mind will be showed narratively. I mean to make this piece an intentional construction that serves as a consistent medium for myself to communicate with my peers or audiences. Also, I would like to inform the restoration of how this anxiety is bouncing back and force in my mind through this work.

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Exercise 10

After the Industrial Revolution, there are two dominate changes in the Post-Industrial Soundscape due to R. Murray Schafer’s introduction. Those two which impact not only the relationship between society and Noise but also the perspective of people’s cognitive dimensions. Firstly is the type of sounds. In the catalog, it is about the texture and identity of how one single sound is produced and created.

These changes inform how different the sounds were made in different places or through different methods. For example, the sound of a Sewing machine or a Typewriter depends on their mechanical principle. Which part of the axis creates friction or a clash will make sounds entirely different. In another way, the features of the material matter, too. Metal or plastic, wood or glass. Different combination of mechanism in this way will add more possibility of soundscape’s creation.  Also, how they work sequentially affect the sounds too. After the post-industrial revolution, the position of metal like iron or steel become more in common. This position is mainly declared as a social status. People are paying more attention to those elements simply because metal exist in more places in people’s daily life.

This is where the social context part comes from, When a thing blends into people’s work and life, it becomes to a trend that most of the society can create a same common sense or prejudice. Things like a Sewing machine or a Typewriter refer more to people in a metaphoric form or creates its emotional connection. Why people consciously call back from their life or their work means a lot in this context. For example, a worker from a sewing factory could be more emotionally connected to the sewing machine either in a good way or bad way.

The second part of R. Murray Schafer’s introduction is about the volume. The loudness of the noise became the metaphor of power or energy. Power can stand for many things either in acoustics, politics, or psychology. Power is active information in use of different territories. Quote from R. Murray Schafer-

The sounds that are impacted by the post-industrial soundscape has a unique tone pitch. It is referring to the amount of type of music and art composition. Because the objects that can make industrial sound are figurative, the context became more and more specific in such a tone which connected to the object when people obtained such sound.

There is a moment for everyone that we need to deal with our anxiety, aggression, selfishness, weakness, cowardice, and vulnerability. Underground culture is always regarded as the opposite of law, and it is an easy way to sink when young people need to release their oppression in their way. In this era, the internet helps this kind of culture spread fast. It is true that when we are trying to face our problems honestly, we feel frustrated. Moreover, Noise is a powerful tool in such a sub-culture context. It revolts young people’s daily dissatisfaction as a group. The Strong, intense loudness make people can release their inner anxious emotion and help them to recover. In this way, they can still keep a balance between the part of oppression and appropriate social behavior.

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Exercise 9

As Max Neuhaus’s saying, there are ways to define what is Noise. In the range of unwanted sounds, our body has this natural barrier to protect us from the harmful effects that noise could bring to us. Not every horning will bring us to death step by step. New York City is full filling with different kind of unwanted sounds. They are everywhere in the urban area. The horn of NYFD or cops’ cars. The noise from the crowd, traffic, riversides, wind between the building, people’s arguing in the street, people talking in a restaurant, window type AC, etc. All these kinds of possibilities composed into the soundscape of this city.

I think Laurie Anderson’s work is a good combination between different art forms. I will not consider them only Sound Art, but also solid performance art. 

In this self-playing Violin, she successfully builds up a contradiction. Something visually works but logically not since no one is playing the Violin. In this case, the sound becomes a tricky, sneaky role and reconstructing into the essential conflict of this work. The sound not only brings up people’s notion and question about why this violin is making a sound but also creates an opportunity to make people interact with this object.

Christine Sun Kim has a different recognization of reality because his hearing perception is less sensitive than ordinary people. Due to the Phenomenology, we are what we perceive, and our perspective of this world is relatively subjective. What happened as a phenomenon reflected the facts and truth of what we can explore of this world and ourselves. Christine Sun Kim’s reality is leaning to another way in case of lack a part of perceptions and becomes the highlight of his Sound Performance.

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Exercise 8

In Sound Art, the most problematic part of this conversation is about the copyright of sampling or recreating from other’s work. This conversation also expands to other form art, for example, Photography. If I take a picture of other’s work, whose work is the picture going to be? It is entirely different when the subject in frame switches. If I take a picture of an installation, a painting, or another photographic work, what kind of copyright it will count? The most acceptable answer is, it all depends on the context. What are you making this picture for? If the picture is for the work in the picture, it is fair to say that the photo’s meaning is to show the work in the photo. However, what if it is about the recreation of other work or the reproducing of a viewer’s perspective, that would become an entirely different conversation.

In music or Sound Art, it is not a theft problem if someone copies the Phonography or same components of chords in other music tracks. It depends what the context in such circumstances. Alternatively, all blues music would be the copy in one of the others.

In some case, Turntablism is more about the essential part of receiving sound, Hip-hop instead, is a consumable and fast culture form that composed by sound and sampling. Sounds is not the only important part in Hip-hop. That why context matters in such case.

Terre Thaemlitz believes, “‘sound is time, or it is nothing at all,’ attempting to contrast notions of space and time, when in fact sound is a phenomenological example part excellence of the intersection of space and time. There can be no sound waves without vibrations traversing three-dimensional space.” 

In the show of Chris LiButti, Charmaine Lee, and Norman Westberg. Charmaine Lee's performance is the most narrative in three of them. I do not quite like Norman’s performance; it sounds too loud in volume and not in harmony, most of his sound makes me feel scratches and uncomfortable. Chris Libutti is quite good in the use of chord to tell a story, in the middle of his performance as I remember, he kept using this C 9 or G 9 repeatedly and create this Non-listening effect. If it is fair to say Chris’s performance is peaceful, Lee’s performance was intense and dramatic. She used her mouse and different microphone to create this structure and different layers of fiction. Most of the time it builds an apocryphal story for me. That is why I consider it narrative.

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Exercise 7

Part I

Dafna Naphtali’s Walkie Talkie Dream Garden creates an essential experience for me. The sound she created was additive, and with her introduction of the motivation, how she did different parts of the work, I can see a much different perspective than what I see. She appreciated the specific landscape or the small items in the park and make them lively by adding an additive soundtrack. It is a good experience that she expanded the sound art into all kind of perceptions. When you hear a specific sound in a unique place, all feelings starting to combine to your body together. The interesting thing is, sometimes what you see was interrupted by what you can hear, the imaginary sound. That made me consider more surreal. In this way, it likely told me there were much more stories behind what I see. It is a way to break apart the limitation in the form of the sound art.

Part II

Liana Silva feels nostalgia by hearing the “noise” of the city that she used to familiar with. It is a personal thing to identify what is noise and what is sound, and it will always be. People who are making Soundscape follow the same causality within their personal experiences, too. It is personal to the audience, too. Some specific sounds will recall memories, good or bad, and some will be regarded as noise depends on what life experience that audiences have.

My place of Soundscape is an unnamed street in Beijing. It is behind a shopping mall that three blocks away from my home and where the trash-picking up truck went in and out. No one would like to walk through that place because it is very dim and still in construction. In my childhood after I finish my school, I would like to go there alone before I go home for dinner, it was a time that only belongs to myself, and I can enjoy my imagination of different tracks of life, the illusion to future.

The list of sound composition at the unnamed no-man street

1. Crow/Raven (Typical in Beijing and Tokyo, I feel the same homesick when I was in Tokyo by hearing the Raven)

2. The trash pick up truck (30-40 mins per)

3. Horn/ traffic sound from streets that far away.

4. Leaf was dropping from trees.

5. Wind

Part III

Pauline Oliveros requests the connotation behind sounds. The deeper meaning of the actual sound form, impacting by the spiritual parts. Brian Eno’s ambient music is not about the perception of hearing; it is about the feeling in a relaxed circumstance. I think most of the music nowadays do not ask people to listen to them. Instead, they are asking for the empathy of the music’s narrativity. 

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Exercise 6

In Douglas Kahn’s essay, he briefly pointed out the history and initial development of noise art. He justified Bruitism itself within the connection between Dadaism and noise art in order to push them further to Futurism.

Sound Art is difficult to identify as a specific form of art. It is much easier to confront what it was not instead what it is. The presentation and formality of sound arts come with their limitations. Due to our human perceptions, Sound art is much linear in the relationship with timeline than other art media, and it will always become a question about what kind of sound could be art. Sound Art cannot always be three dimensions. Is sound art the thing we appreciate? If so, why noise art has this privilege to mean art to everybody?

Sound Artist is a group of people who raise their beliefs in such formality of sound and identity of Artist. There are certain stages of levels of performance that need to be required as Sound Artist instead of performance artist. There is no conflict between Sound Artist and performance art, but it is more about the hearing perception of the audiences.

My midterm project is referring to the experience in my real life anxiety. It is narrative and indeed references in the samples of my recording. Processing to the solution of blocking the anxiety contemporarily is the primary purpose of this project, and that was what I initially want to pursue in this case.

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The Track Combines different noises from River path, Streets, Classroom, Art Installation,  restaurant, etc. I was trying to achieve the internal peace among those noise that makes me feel stressed up and frustrated.

Therefore, I imagined the Sekong Drum(a regular Zen practice sound) into my mind while I heard those frustrated sounds in order to make myself go over my intensity.  

Sekong Drum is the instrument that I will play after I got tired while back home or while I was alone. The meaning of Sekong is more like a Zen practice of Transcendency instead of a way that I can escape from reality. 

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Exercise 5

The modular synthesis is based on the electric circuit. By changing of electronic signals through resistance controller and different paths of an electrical circuit, the sounds output differently.

Some instrumental effectors use the similar principle of how the cybernetic systems work. After an electronic signal input into the cybernetic system, it might be a delay, fuzzed, overdriven and added chords...etc.  

Oliveros, Riley, Reich, and Subotnick’s work sound much contemporary. Especially the Wild Bull gives me a feeling of imaginary technologies.  Some of them recall me the 2001 Space Odyssey movie background music.

The Principle of psychoacoustics is a study of the psychological and philosophical reaction of human perceptions to different sounds.  If Alvin Lucier is a scientist, he is a playful one. With all these kind of experiments he made, he appealed that Science and Art could never be desperate.

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Exercise 4

This score that I found on Pinterest really made me thought about ink printing and Morse code. Not like another color one, ink printing can give people a feeling of the industrial result like Newspaper. It also reminds me of On Kawara’s work Date Painting (a series work that combines Date, Box, Front, and Newspaper). Through this work, the synesthesia of perceptions makes me thinking of the heavy dark metal sounds. Not the heavy metal or core music, just simply the sound metal can make.

https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-curriculum/topic/paintings-today-seriesdate-paintings

I started to practice ink painting and calligraphy since when I was 6. I was always been attracted by the high contrasted visual effects of the inverse color and distinct shapes of ink on paper. Therefore, I designed my own graphic score by working with calligraphy and ink.

The instrument of this score has to be Sekong Drum (an instrument that in use of Zen meditation)

As the concept of time and space in Zen’s philosophy, I did not write down the frequency and length of this score as direction. The singularity and uniqueness of every single performance should be respected.

This is a video demo of how I play this score.

Fluxus Performance Workbook

Larry Miller - Long Jump

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Exercise 3

CLARK BLING tada

CLARK BLING tada

 CLARK BLING 

HOMM 

Bo,,mm boom Boom bomm boom Boom Bo,,mm boom Boom bomm boom BoomBo,,mm boom Boom bomm boom BoomBo,,mm boom Boom bomm boom BoomBo,,mm boom Boom bomm boom BoomBo,,mm boom Boom bomm boom BoomBo,,mm boom Boom bomm boom BoomBo,,mm boom Boom bomm boom Boom...

skr skr skr

   The sound of engine exhaust is unique to my memories. “Air-fuel mixture in the combustion chamber is ignited, either by a spark plug (in case of SI Engines) or by compression (in case of CI engines). This ignition produces tremendous amount of heat energy and pressure inside the cylinder. This induces reciprocating motion in the piston.”1 When I was young, my dream is all about becoming an auto racer. I was a city boy who loves everything about cars and races. When the engine works continuously, it passes solid information of power. Depends on the design of the different engine, the sound becomes distinctive. When a car is accelerating, the engine's knocking is not only the sound itself, and it is shifting into speed, twerk, and the vibration of an artificial machine.

    As a boy, it is pure enthusiasm for technology and other cool stuff, but this kind of interest expands to industrial and other artificial areas by growing up. The industrial sound gets me more and more interested in all types of internal combustion engines.

In Tibetan Buddhism,  the sound of singing bowl is a way that helps the monk to medicate. In the belief, this kind of music could help to manage people's internal energy and keep thoughts in balance. John cage gave me the same feeling that he wants to add on a peaceful fragment in his work and create conflict with other sounds, sometimes even make a few phrases absurd in the sense of the joke.

1.“Internal Combustion Engines: Introduction and Classification ~ ME Mechanical.” ME Mechanical, 16 Apr. 2018, me-mechanicalengineering.com/internal-combustion-engines-classification/.

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Exercise 2

Considering of Sound, as a form of art, has its distinctiveness with time. Sound Art performances are mostly disposable in the sense of perception. Although there are art pieces that can be played again and again, the time of each receiving process is still unrepeatable. Not like visual arts, sound art is not consecutive. In Sound Art, the audience can become the carrier of the sound. The interactive relationship in Sound Art is much revealable than Visual Art due to our language system and sensual recognition. Because of the perception, the audience’s feelings and perspective of Sound Art are more steady and straight-forward than other forms of art.

It is clear that the feelings of the audience are indelible. The sound has its peculiarity because different sounds can play roles in people’s experiences and memories. Some specific sound, like ring bell or alarm, will call back memories like the fire abandon drill. Those tunes or notes will call back different memories and build up subconscious reactions connecting with people’s personal experiences.

Not only that, different compositions of sound can bring in distinctive effects and emotional reactions. The emotional experience that sounds could make is impactive, and that is an essential thing in the change of behaviors. Alternatively, we can say, some sound will make people emotional. The sound can stimulate people’s emotions. Some songs sound sad, mad, happy or rebellious. The exciting thing is, if we let different people listen to the same song, they might have the same feeling of the song’s emotion. Those emotions also categorize songs.

There are so many good advertisements that funnily use sound. It is helpful that sound is changing people's will to purchase goods from a company.

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Exercise 1

Artist:mouse on the keys「spectres de mouse」

“Post-rock” is the music catalog I appreciate the most. One of the typical characteristics of post-rock music is its musicality. Most of the post-rock music is instrumental. Therefore, the combination of its tonality, melody, pitch, composition, and chords become complex and much vivid than regular pop music because of the lack of vocal elements. Artists in post-rock would like to use unessential notes in their compositions. The rhythm is not merely like 4/4 or 2/4, some post-rock music like to combine rare beats like 4/7 or 2/7 in different parts of a song. They would like to play with multiple different bridges or hooks. That is why some post-rock music sounds naughty than other music.

Not like R&B, the bass line in post-rock music goes messy. Some post-rock music does not even have a bass. The randomness and unpredictable become the most popular features of post-rock music.

Mouse on the keys is a Japanese band made by one drummer and two pianists. They not only use chord leaping rapidly and randomly in their music but also has high-performance quality on the stage. Their music shows a long-term frequency and harmony in different emotions and connects closely to the audience. The presentation of their music is exaggerated and bold. In the video that linked above, all of them wear black full-body tight clothes on the stage. The images of themselves casting on the keyboards and drums while they are playing. Their music to me is not only about music, but also the form of the presentation. It is more like performance art in media of sound.

John Hurt is also a fascinating sound artist. His experimental art is about operating the nonessential sound in our daily life and combine with other elements to make different frequencies of sound waves. Some post-rock music uses the same idea by operating a recorded sample sound of our daily life on stage and make good use of the sound that we did not pay much attention.

Fangwei Xu