Re: installation people

[jhno <ear@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

long ago i made a piece for austin's x/xx festival in which the sound
system consisted mainly of ten portable cassette players scattered around
the theater space (under seats, etc.). the sync here was very imprecise,
but there _was_ a 20-minute long form to which each of the cassettes
adhered. the serendipity was all at the micro level. some cassettes were
"sleepers"... they stayed really quiet for a long time and PPOINNNGG some
sound would pop off.

the expense here consisted of asking friends if i could borrow their ghetto
blaster/dictation machine. i still think about sound installation often,
especially very idiosyncratic pieces, particular to a certain site... ideal
to me seem the outdoors, or a labyrinthine victorian mansion (winchester
house!) or, this warehouse i live in.


if anybody has any suggestions about accumulating _speakers_, i would be
highly appreciative. for a while i was hunting down $50 thrift store pairs,
but then i slacked off and we blew them all throwing loud parties.

now i have this little sound card that can do 24 channels out of my
powerbook, plus matrix mixing (i just confirmed that i can write a max
external to completely control the 1400+ levels values of the matrix
mixer...) irresistible to start experimenting...


mouse on mars, when they were touring "card table" style, used two cd
players. the cd's contained mono tracks, naturally... one track had time
code, which ran the table, and was tight-synced to the audio on the other
track on the cd. the other cd contained material that was not
beat-critical. it was a really nice and succinct setup, definitely my
favorite mouse on mars shows.

sync! don't get me started or i might start ranting about how hard it was
to remix steve reich's "drumming"...

jhno