artstream: sounds from near and far

 

   
feedback Curated by Colin Fallows

Internet audio artstreams connecting Sofia and Liverpool. Colin Fallows presented a selection of soundworks by artists associated with Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. The pieces have been recorded in a variety of locations, with their own special spatial ambience. Artists include: John Campbell, Vanessa Cuthbert, Max Eastley, Colin Fallows, Martin e Greil, Phil Mouldycliff, Russell Mills & Ian Walton, Robin Rimbaud, Will Sergeant, Vergil Sharkya', Paul Simpson and John Young.
 

01. Mr. CAMPBELL (Liverpool, UK)

Mr. Campbell is an artist and musician, a resident of Liverpool and a member of the musical community known as It's Immaterial. It's Immaterial have produced an eclectic body of audio-visual work including the CD's Life's Hard and Song. He is a contributor to the Audio Research Editions collections and currently a Visiting Fellow at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University.

Forgotten Seconds

The cycle of seconds consists of 300 sonic snapshots (and 1,200 edits) recorded at different internal, external, public and private locations throughout the city of Liverpool, between 14.02.02 - 07.04.02. Each second freezing a moment in time in a similar fashion to the way a Polaroid captures a visual image. As the clock ticks by the ear jumps here and there along the timeline collecting information, much as the eye moves around the surface of the painting to complete the picture. Forgotten Seconds compiles an impressionistic portrait of the city, by bringing into focus the inconsequential moments and events of the everyday, in everyday spaces. Taking an ear for a walk.

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02. VANESSA CUTHBERT (Manchester, UK)

Vanessa Cuthbert is a Senior Lecturer at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University and Manchester Metropolitan University where she is subject leader in animation/moving image. Over the last ten years she has exhibited animation/sound works through film festivals in London, Paris, Stuttgart, Bombay, Hiroshima, Tel Aviv, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Belgium. Vanessa's freelance clients have included BBC TV, Granada TV, MTV, Thames TV, and the National Film Theatre. Recently she produced Paintings (2001) and Soundscapes (2002) at the Green Room Theatre, Manchester.

Airport Space - 1

"Sounds from an airport: The radar circles its repetitive cycle, swinging on a tower, mapping out routes and time as people rush through barriers... language barriers, time barriers, security barriers. The international clocks are ticking out different times. I gather the ambience. I take it home, I examine it, and I lay it out. I see it, it makes sense. I paint it... This sound piece examines the dynamics of an airport space and the sensations I experienced within it. I have re-appropriated its textures, shapes, colours, and lines, and reshaped my physical and emotional reaction to them, inside my computer."

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03. MAX EASTLEY (London, UK)

Max Eastley is an artist who works with sound, vision, and kinetics to produce integrated art forms, for interior and exterior environments. He began to investigate the relationship of chance to music and visual art in the late 1960s and has worked extensively in the area of improvised and experimental music. Using kinetic sound devices and the environmental forces of wind, streams and sea, he has created automata with sculptural, ecological, architectural, theatrical and musical possibilities. His work has been included in many international exhibitions and he has made a number of large outdoor installations worldwide. He was a Visiting Fellow at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University (2000-2001).

A Wood in Tennessee, late afternoon

"The recording was made in Montgomery Bell State Park near Dixon, Tennessee. The Park was a huge area and as I walked for several miles into the woods I understood how it was that people had become lost in there for days. I carried my UHER tape machine to a clearing and set up microphones. Keeping very still and quiet, looking behind me at intervals as I knew there were many snakes, some venomous, I waited, surrounded by the constant sound of cicadas. Somewhere in the distance crows began calling to each other. I switched on the machine. Soon after starting recording a bird hidden in the woods began to sing."

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04. COLIN FALLOWS (Liverpool, UK)

Colin Fallows is Professor of Sound and Visual Arts at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University. He has explored crossovers between sound and the visual arts as an artist, researcher, curator and lecturer. He has produced work for live ensemble performance, recordings, exhibition, installation, radio and the Internet. His artistic and curatorial projects have featured in numerous international festivals including Video Positive, ISEA98, Intermedia and Ars Electronica. In 1998 he founded Audio Research Editions, a limited edition imprint for artists' soundworks which has to date published over 200 works by artists from over 20 countries.

The Bridge

The Bridge is constructed from two layered recordings of the same Colin Fallows composition for solo electric guitar, inspired by the circular rhythms and overtones of bell ringing. The piece was performed live in two distinct spaces: at Teatro Signorelli (01.06.01) - a large opera house/theatre and cinema in Cortona, Tuscany; and at Triskel Auditorium (01.09.01) - an intimate performance space/art-house cinema in Cork, Ireland. This mix forms a sonic moiré of overlaid guitar sounds within a hybrid ambient space.

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05. MARTIN e GREIL (Dornbirn, Austria)

Martin e Greil is a composer, sound artist/musician. He has performed throughout Europe and worked with artists including Colin Fallows and Keith Rowe. In 1999, he was artistic director of the Austrian millennium project The Millennium, and in 2000, his solo CD Spheres was released. He also appears on Audio Research Editions collections. He is equally active in multi-media arts, designing various Internet web sites, videos and digital animations. He was a sound Research Assistant and lecturer at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University (1999-2001) and a design lecturer at LIPA. He co-founded the ASPARA Company in 2001, and his own record label M'para.

Selphonic Symphony

Selphonic Symphony is a piece from the CD Spheres, the conclusion of a variety of sound experiments, produced during studio research with rubber bands and mobile phones and electric guitar during 1998-1999. The piece is based on mobile-phone dialling tones with overtones during the dial up period, combined with more traditional contemporary sound-sources. The mobile phone allowed communication with the world outside of the small recording space, and interacted with the rest of the recording equipment. The noise generated from a ringing phone next to other sound making machinery was the first of many steps towards The Selphonic Symphony.

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06. PHIL MOULDYCLIFF (Bolton, UK)

Phil Mouldycliff is an artist and lecturer. Since completing his PhD at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University in 2001, he has become increasingly interested in producing installations which place reliance on indeterminate systems for the articulation of their material. He has recently embarked on a series of pieces entitled Debris Fields. Prior to this his work has encompassed a number of areas related to the work of John Cage, Tom Phillips and AMM. He has performed at Tate Liverpool, ICA London and Mappin Art Gallery Sheffield.

London Loop

London Loop is a short excerpt taken from material created for A Circle Line Concerto. It consists of ambient sounds taken from a series of field recordings made in the precincts of the twenty-seven stations which make up the Circle Line of the London Underground. These extracts form part of a project created specifically to be used as an accompaniment for the guitarist Keith Rowe, to whom the work is dedicated. This five minute sound collage presents a snapshot of the aural backdrop awaiting Keith's as yet unrealised solo input.

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07. RUSSELL MILLS and IAN WALTON with TOM SMYTHE and MIKE FEARON (Ambleside, UK)

Russell Mills has worked as a graphic designer and set and lighting designer, as well as making and exhibiting art, performing, recording and lecturing (at a variety of places including Liverpool School of Art and Design and Royal College of Art). His recorded work takes the form of dense, textural collages from sound samples either self-generated or supplied, without prescription or reference, by collaborators both musical and visual, who have included Brian Eno, U2's The Edge, David Sylvian, Robin Guthrie, Bill Laswell, Kevin Shields, Peter Gabriel and Hector Zazou. Since 1990 Russell Mills has been working with painter Ian Walton, making sound sculpture and installations in Britain and abroad.

Mantle

Mantle is an excerpt from the sonic element of the installation by Russell Mills and Ian Walton featured in Sonic Boom, Hayward Gallery London (2000). The artists write: "... The sound has been conceived so as to create a magnified sense of place, time and emotion, whilst emulating the experience of listening in a landscape, whether it be rural or urban, where one is enveloped in a wide sonic backdrop of indeterminate sounds. Sonic material used includes the human (blood flow frequencies, breathing), the mechanical (rock drilling, stone cutting and various industrial machines), the natural (field recordings of rivers, winds, birds, animals) and the found and manipulated (glass and metal spinning, stone struck, wood beaten etc). Each element has been extensively treated so as collectively to evoke an invented, previously unimagined place."

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08. ROBIN RIMBAUD (London, UK)

British sound artist, Robin Rimbaud creates absorbing, multi-layered soundscapes that twist technology in unconventional ways. His controversial early work used scanned mobile phone conversations which he wove into his soundscapes, thus focusing on the split between the public and the private. As well as producing compositions and recordings, Scanner has created soundtracks for films, performances, and radio plays, and creates multimedia installations. He has performed and created works in many of the world's most prestigious spaces including MOMA San Francisco, Hayward London, Pompidou Paris, Tate Modern London and the Modern Museum Stockholm.

Cazneau

Cazneau is a piece from the CD Stopstarting, the result of Robin Rimbaud's Visiting Fellowship in Sound at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University (1998). Robin Rimbaud writes: "I have always been interested in the concept of memory and place, location playing a large and significant part in my live improvisations. For this project I chose significant points of sound located in the city, partly from random questions to people, partly from self-interest. From these I mapped out a walk that took me from one point to another, mini-disc in hand, recording the acoustic data in that place."

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09. WILL SERGEANT (Lancashire, UK)

Will Sergeant is best known for his work as songwriter and guitarist with Echo & the Bunnymen with whom he has recorded and performed worldwide for over twenty years. He also has long-term ties with the experimental side of life, in the form of performances and recordings as Glide. His Glide recordings, Space Age Freak Out and Performance are released on Ochre Records, and a four CD anthology of his work Echo & the Bunnymen, Crystal Days 1979-1999 was released in 2001 by Rhino/Warner Archives. Will Sergeant is currently a Visiting Fellow at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University.

Frozen Teardrop in Space

In the bunker studio known as The Pod, Frozen Teardrop in Space was created from a series of experimental pieces using the generative SSEYO Koan pro software program. Frozen Teardrop in Space is a generative tone poem that allows the listener to travel to a planet of water and ice as it flows, cracks and ripples its way through the void, a giant teardrop in space. Frozen Teardrop in Space was previously live streamed from Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts as part of the international on line - on site - on air project, Sound Drifting at Ars Electronica 99.

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10. VERGIL SHARKYA' (Liverpool, UK)

Vergil Sharkya', sonic architect, composer, performer, studied composition at University of Music, Vienna (MA with distinction, 1996). He creates digitally composed atmospheric soundscapes through innovative application of technology. Other works encompass orchestra music, multimedia installations, film scores and drum&bass. He is a sessional lecturer and researcher at Liverpool School of Art and Design, member of Arts Collective, and a keen collaborator (with Philip Jeck, Lukas Ligeti, Theo Ligthart, et al). A selection of Vergil's work has been published on Audio Research Editions, and his own outlet UKsupersonic. He lives in Liverpool with a princess from Brittany and a virtureal zoo of alter egos and split personalities.

Legna 34

Legna 34 is processed from a recording of a Vergil Sharkya' composition for piano and soprano voice. The recording was multi-layered in specifically tuned segments (a total of 416 layers), resulting in phase transmutations, which create a 'three-dimensional' sonic structure of micro glissandi, continuously ascending and descending according to their common synchronisation points and direction applied. The final composition was shaped through processes more commonly associated with the organisation of space: by determining where in the stereo field, and at what volume levels which of the individual layers and/or groups of layers are colliding, the composition is sculpted out of the frequency spectrum.

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11. PAUL SIMPSON (Liverpool, UK)

Paul Simpson is an artist and musician based in Liverpool. As Skyray he has released critically acclaimed albums including: Tranquilliser (1997); Womb (1998); Mind Lagoons (1999); and Slow Dissolve (2000). On his Skyray CD's he has worked solo and in collaboration with Will Sergeant (Echo & the Bunnymen), Bill Drummond (KLF) et al. Skyray performances include: ISEA98, Ochre 5 (1999), and Cornucopea: Two South Bank Evenings with Julian Cope, Royal Festival Hall, London (2000). Paul co-founded The Teardrop Explodes with Julian Cope; fronted The Wild Swans and Care with Ian Broudie - releasing music internationally. In 2000 Paul completed a Visiting Fellowship at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University.

 

Womb Womb

is an excerpt from the CD Womb (1998), an extended piece that develops subtle variations in tone and melody over its seventy minutes duration. The artist writes: "I knew that I wanted to use a cyclical breathing pattern as a starting point... I wanted Womb to suggest a place of slow but relentless plant-like growth. The sonic equivalent of toadstools pushing up through loam... Breaking the 70 minute piece into more manageable 10 minute chunks I arranged each section before reassembling them at random." On the cover of the Womb album Paul Simpson is credited with Bass guitar, Moog, Piano, Bubbles and Drones.

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12. JOHN YOUNG (Liverpool, UK)

John Young is a Lecturer in Graphic Arts at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University where his research explores crossover points between art and science and especially the role of ambiguity in communication. Recent work has been concerned with the recording, manufacturing and listening possibilities offered by custom multi-cut vinyl discs. He has exhibited throughout the UK including the Static Gallery, Liverpool; the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; and Glasgow School of Art. Freelance clients have included Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Inflame and the Margarine Foundation.

Pure Intuition

Pure Intuition is an excerpt from Babel, part of John Young's Annalen der Physik soundwork. "The piece is an attempt to explore the cross-over point between scientific aesthetics and artistic aesthetics. An appreciation of the aesthetic value of music can be seen as the lingua franca that unites these two worlds. The piece has been assembled from elements including: a musical transcription of the radioactive decay from Uranium 238 to stable Lead; recorded archival interviews with Marcel Duchamp; and quotes from Lorentz at the Solvay conference of 1927 in which the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was discussed with the leading Physicists of the day."

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Sounds from Near and Far is supported by Scottish Arts Council, Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University, Red House Centre for Culture and Debate, Backnet, Soros Centre for the Arts Sofia, British Council, National Academy of Arts Sofia, Radio France International Sofia.