Re: [microsound] laptop performance / locative media

[Aaron Ximm <ghede@xxxxxxxx>]

> The idea of 'performing' with field recordings (i.e. if it's possible to
> transmit your location recording while listening to the way they're being
> processed simultaneously) is an interesting one...i wonder how feasible this
> is ?

Minus the gear, that's pretty much what a guided soundwalk is if course --
just flipping the challenge makes it all so much less expensive. Bring the
people to the sound -- if you can.

A logical conclusion from the premise of phonography ("unintentional sound
is worth listening to") is that the goal is not so much to share specific
recordings, but to cultivate and inculcate a particular kind of
intentional listening (ie attention) both as a practioner and in the
"audience."

The more I work with field recordings the more I come to believe that my
work and performance is all a slight of hand necessary to accomplish a not
quite revealed goal, which is encouraging the listener to have a different
relationship to what they hear -- regardless of context: in fact,
*specifically* outside the context of performance, "work", etc.

My current toy theory is that to a dramatic extent what distinguishes
"interesting" phonography from un- is the conditioned application of
attention. Which is not to say that we *should* cultivate a deep
intentional interest in difficult (boring etc) listening -- but of course
many of us on this last already have ;) -- but that we could; and that the
cues we evolve to distinguish without reflection between what is and is
not worth listening to are quite ductile.

(Nothing new philosophically here, I just like pulling at it
experimentally in my own chosen domain (field recording and composition
therefrom).

Fwiw I do think that this is a point where the interests (dare I say
goals?) of "microsound" (esp. in its ultraminimalist vein) and my own kind
of phonography are deeply allied and cross-fertile...

But back to the idea of field recording "performance" --

Cf Janet Cardiff too; there is interesting territory yet to be explored
with the use of field recording (and video analog thereof) to diffuse the
boundaries of the real... among other things.

Eg I've been talking with some folks here in SF who do some pretty intense
immersive site-specific theater work (to date, always for an audience of
one -- entire pieces created for an audience of a single specific person;
the work based on research on and interviews with etc that person -- now
there is some radical reconsideration I must say to put into practice!),
about ideas of using binaural recordings played back in the space in which
they were recorded in all sorts of interesting ways -- the quality is
already there that you can cause some quite disorienting illusions...

 best,
 aaron

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

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


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