RE: [microsound] field music / not field recordings

[Christopher Sorg <csorg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I believe jackson pollock shouldn´t be included in this analogy. Pollock´s
> works are more related especifically to the act of painting, not to the
> final work. he affirmed that his works came out directly from his
> unconscious (he did not organized the field like Barnett Newman, although
> sometimes they are put by mistake in the same movement - field painting).
>
> Nelson

Not sure that I agree with you.  I would certainly qualify Morton Feldman's
work as "field" music and it also has an interesting resemblance to fractal
composition.  Feldman writes quite a bit about painters, specifically
mentioning the Action Painters, and Pollock as both a friend and an
influence.  He also makes references to Rothko's paintings more than a few
times.  One of the interests that Feldman mentions in "Give My Regards To
Eighth Street" is that of investigating "Time Undisturbed".  He cites
Beethoven as "rescueing" the listener, time controlled.  This is the exact
opposite of his intentions, and can directly relate to the field painters as
well.  If the action painting, well expressed by Pollocks "infinite" canvas,
can continue ad infinitum, almost boring the viewer with its vastness, then
Feldman intends the same, giving us a windowed view to a continuum of a
specific sound field.  This is not to say that either are truly boring; in
fact they are something other than emotional, contextual, finite
experiences.  I believe these works are in part about patience and the
vastness of concept.

Also of interest is this article on Pollock's paintings and just how
"fractal" they are.  I found this to be fascinating, that the concept was
being explored before computers were able to visualize the mathematics of
fractals. (http://www.discover.com/nov_01/featpollock.html)  If one takes
this article seriously, the field in Pollock's work not only extends outward
from the picture plane (up-down-left-right) but also continues inwards,
magnifying and repeating itself.

Now, whether or not this relates to the sound compositions being explored to
day in microsound, well, I really don't know.  I haven't heard much in terms
of Feldman's use of time in recent sound works; I tend to think of current
trends in sound being more phenomenological (microsound, sound about sound
itself-Alvin Lucier, exploration of singular elements of sound like Reich
and Glass, e tc) .  I don't really think of, say, Kim Cascone's work as a
sound field; it comes off as more particulate, more like Life- (the computer
program) sort of sound; creatures living and dying and sputtering
off--passing by us.  This seems to much more comprehensible as a sound/music
experience, because I can "wrap" my ears around the sound entities that are
being produced.  Someone like Hrvatski explores an evolution of sound (I'm
thinking of that bird-call piece where it begins like a bird-call and
evolves into this incredible distortion of synthesized sound; just
fantastic).  But this is far from non-evolving, self-similar, expansive
sound like Feldman and painting like Pollock.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     Christopher Sorg
   Multimedia Artist/Instructor
 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
   http://www.enteract.com/~csorg
     csorg@xxxxxxxxx
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