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Re: [microsound] the landscape(s) of microsound



The posts in this thread have seemed to be more or less about how space and environment inform 'practitioners'' work, or how artists are affected to by their environment which influences their work. An fascinatiing topic for sure. However, I would like to offer that the other side of the coin is equally interesting. That side is to think about how the work of microsound artists can affect our perception of our environment and our everyday audial space. Personally, this does affect me as both a creator and listener to microsound music. I tend to work with digitially processed field recordings and external input rather than audio with purely digital origin. However, I am sure that what I am about to say will apply to both modes of working. I am astounded at how often I work on a piece that is digitally processed (and for others perhaps digitally generated) just to hear similar sounds later in my environment. Would I have noticed those sounds had I not created that piece? Does art imitate life or does our perception of life imitate art? I am equally fascinated that I hear the works of Richard Chartier, Bernhard GÃnter, and Kim Cascone (or something similar to them) as I walk down the street! I am sure that this process is dialectical. The artist takes in his or her environment perceptually, and he or she creates sounds possibly influenced by that environment (the topic of this thread so far). Then these sounds are produced and they affect how the artist themself and their listeners percieve their environment, at least their audial space but maybe beyond. I have begun doing some field recording work dealing with this issue by collecting sounds that already sound like work that might be the product of digital manipulation/generation. One interesting thing to arise from this project so far is that this kind of 'digital sound affecting the perception of audial space' phenomenon is not limited to typically urban sounds as one might expect as I did going into the project. I did a field recording session where I recorded some kind of machine like sound (a beautiful electronic hum that, though I found the source of the sound, I am still not sure what makes it as it is behind bricks) which is the sound that spawned my project. In the same session, I recorded some crickets, which also had a digitally generated sound to them. I know crickets are the old hat/tired old sound for field recording work, but I still found the fact that a non machine produced sound fit into my project something interesting. I seem to recall a recent post mentioning certain bird calls resembling digital sounds as well, which fits with this issue. Anyway, I have rambled enough for one post. Thoughts on the other side of the space/environment issue?

Gerg

PS - I am essentially new to this list. I joined it before and merely lurked and grew tired of examining playlist and event posts (sorry to those who find these posts really important, I just skipped right over them). But, now that the discussion has started, I'm in. Though I have one suggestion to solve this problem. The Lowercase sound yahoo group seems perfectly okay with promotional postings, and might serve as an adquate crossover with this list for such things (perhaps in tandem with some other lists). The advantage with a yahoo group being that one can choose not to have the posts sent to their email directly and just visit the website for the group when they feel like it, thus smoothing out any intrusiveness issues that promotional postings might tend to cause. Just an idea. I personally do get a lot out of new release postings and the like, but sometimes tend to not want to have to sift through them all to get to good discussion. Really, the end this time.

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