Re: [microsound] Unintentional sound

[Aaron Ximm <ghede@xxxxxxxx>]

> > Fwiw I find "unintentional" is a distinction that only meaningfully
> > adheres to human-produced sound; that it's a category error
> > (irrelevant) to call weather-sound (say) intentional or un-.
>
> i was at a Phil Dadson concert (legendary NZ improviser/artist) last
> night, and at one point he was making music that merged with noises the
> air conditioning in the room was making, made you /aware/ of the sound
> of it even. at what point does the unintentional become the intentional?

For me that's an easy one -- the A/C was of course unintentional at a
casual level of description, but Dadson was intentionally integrating it
(based on your description) into the "authorized" soundscape... I'm pretty
sure I remember perceiving Richard Chartier doing that with the rattle of
the HVAC at CEAIT a couple years ago, but it could have been "active
perception" on my part. :)

I may have said before on the list ~ for me the moments I have most valued
as a performer are *exactly* those moments when I can encourage things
like this -- a breakdown between the categories of desired and undesired
sound -- between those phenomena we award our attention to and attend to,
and those we reject as... "noise."

Harmonizing with the 60 cycle hum in the house PA, always nice. Live
miking the audience or live processing local environmental sound is
something people have done numerous times at the Field Effets shows I've
hosted. The Infrasound collaboration between Scott Arford and Randy Yau
was memorable for the way they intentionally used very low frequency sound
(not true infrasound incidentally) to "reify" the architecture of our
building -- by making different loose window panes etc rattle and
rustle at their various resonant frequenciees.

For me some of my best moments have happened presenting work at the
Luggage Store here in SF, which is perched above a noisy section of
"sketchy" Market Street -- the whistles, above-ground rail, subway, crazy
people, pimps, sirens, etc. inevitably integrate into whatever I'm doing
and several times I've been able to blend the boundaries enough to provoke
people to talk with me about afterwards.

If someone momentarily forgets what they're "supposed" to be listening to
and hears everything in their environment naively... I consider my work
done. :)

 best,
  aaron

  ghede@xxxxxxxx
  http://www.quietamerican.org

  |  quod omne animal post   |
  |  cogitum est triste...   |


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