Artist:        murmer
Title:         4 spaces  | ©
Date:        2009
Duration:  15′00

photo by: Patrick McGinley

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THE SOUND

During a recent tour of the northeastern United States I made a collection of recordings inside the spaces in which I would perform.  The individual recordings were to be used as the starting point of the performance in the same location, a slow sonic zooming-in to the self-same space shared with an audience, and an experiment in natural resonant feedback caused by playing the sound of a space back into itself.  A handful of the spaces were particularly interesting, and I collect those here to highlight the notion of no space being neutral, and of each having it’s own living, breathing character.  The spaces we hear here are St Stephen’s Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the front lobby of the Baker Center for the Arts at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the gallery space at the Pyramid Atlantic in Washington DC.  At either end of this collection is a different kind of space, and one much closer to home: this is the sound of my mother’s backyard, on the edge of marshland in Abington, Massachusetts, with my personal favorite late-night sound of distant passing trains.

THE ARTIST

Patrick McGinley (aka murmer) is an American born sound, performance, and radio artist who has lived and worked in Europe since 1996.  In 2002 he co-founded framework, an organisation that produces a weekly radio show consecrated to field recording and phonography. His work concentrates on the framing of sounds from our environment which normally pass through our ears unnoticed and unremarked, but which out of context become unrecognisable, alien and extraordinary: crackling charcoal, a squeaking escalator, a buzzing insect, or one’s own breath. More recently McGinley has been giving presentations, workshops, and performances based on the exploration of site-specific sound and sound as definition of space.  In live performance his initial interest in field recording has developed into an attempt to integrate and resonate found sounds, found objects, specific spaces, and moments in time, in order to create a direct and visceral link with an audience and location.

Links: www.murmerings.com

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Artist:        Steve Roden
Title:          trio (wonderful)  | ©
Date:         2009
Duration:   5′35

photo by: Steve Roden

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THE SOUND

The piece began with two field recordings made in new york city in march of 2009.  The first was recorded through an open window of my hotel room, and consists of a distant woman singing.  The only word in her song I can recognize is “wonderful”.  The second is a recording I made while walking across union square, listening to a guy playing a rock style drum kit, solo, on a small concrete island surrounded by people talking and cars whizzing by. Both were recorded with my phone.  Most of the field recordings I  make are of natural sounds or mechanical sounds – things that drone or repeat and are somewhat non-narrative, and more like fields of sound: rain, a freezer motor, someone raking leaves.  It is rare that I record humans making music, and perhaps that is why these two recordings suggested they be placed together.  I merged the woman singer with the drummer towards a “song”, and inserted myself as the third member of their “band”.  I manipulated their recordings, played a bit of melody on a small paia oz battery powered synthesizer, and I sang a tiny bit of background vocals.  The rhythmic drumbeat and the amount of movement in this piece are not really indicative of most of my work, which tends to be quiet and less active, but I was interested in allowing the source materials to suggest a path that I might not have discovered without them.

THE ARTIST

Steve Roden is a visual and sound artist from Los Angeles. Since the mid 1980s, he has been exhibiting his visual and sound works at museums, festivals, and arts spaces internationally, including: Mercosur Biennial Porto Alegre Brazil, Centre Georges Pompidou Paris, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, UCLA Hammer Museum Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art EMST Athens, Singuhr-Horgalerie in Parochial, Berlin, Serpentine Gallery London, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, DCA Dundee Scotland, Susanne Vielmetter LA and Berlin Projects, and others.  He has created site-specific sound works for numerous significant architectural spaces such as the James Turrell Skyspace at the Henry Art Gallery Seattle, the Frank Lloyd Wright Hollhock House Los Angeles, Alvaro Siza’s Serpentine Gallery Temporary Pavilion London, the RM Schindler House Los Angeles, and Thomas Walter’s 1835 building for Girard College Philadelphia.  He has also released over 20 cds of audio works.

Links: www.inbetweennoise.com

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