Artist:         Aaron Ximm | Quiet American
Title:           Lassitude  | ©
Date:          2010
Duration:    10′12

photo by: Aaron Ximm

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THE SOUND

If in the city of Kashi all things are sanctified; to drown in the city of light one is to walk home upon the water. Take care what you drink, we heard, for the chai is made of river water, and the river is veiled in light but full of death. Take care for the lassi is full of bhang, and the bhang is full of light and darkness in unknown measure. Drop off the ghats and into the river if you dare. The afternoon is gone and the ears are full of night.

On our honeymoon my wife and I spent several weeks in Varanasi, India.  As a city sacred to Shiva one may, even as a western tourist, partake, with discretion, of bhang in many preparations, including the moderately infamous bhang lassi. Opium from the government bhang shop amplified a gold and pastel afternoon; but denser in the memory is the city I entered through the trapdoor of bhang: the plunge into deep water where the sacred city of ritual and the filthy city of junkies became indistinguishable.

Lassitude was constructed with field recordings made during those few weeks, including a long nightwalk home along the ghats, during which we witnessed the idle torment of a scavenging dog; the snuffling of a sacred cow in a private courtyard; the chant of “Ram’s name is truth” as a passing body is taken down to the river to be cremated; and devotional music echoing in the atrium of New Vishwanatha chapel at Banares Hindu University.

Best heard with headphones.

THE ARTIST

Aaron Ximm is a San Francisco-based field recordist and sound artist.  He is best known for his composition, installation, and performance work as Quiet American. From 2001 to 2005, Aaron curated and hosted the Field Effects concert series, which, like his own work, sought to showcase the quiet, fragile, and lovely side of sound art, particularly that working with found sound and field recordings. Recently he has become increasingly interested in taking as his subject the problems and limitations of documentation itself.

links: http://quietamerican.org |  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Quiet-American/134809495529

Artist:         Gill Arno
Title:           A return  | ©
Date:          December 2009
Duration:    11′38

photos by: Gill Arno

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THE SOUND

Dear A.,
since I listened to your reflections about that remote place buried in the sand (and yet, a place that somehow you had been calling home), I have been thinking about getting you a snap of this one space/time corridor of mine. This too is a place where I like to feel at home – even if it is nothing like a home and not even much of an actual place at all – just a string of points lined up in mid air, a trajectory. But as you know well, sometimes the travel is the destination, and indeed I like to recognize a sense of belonging up here.

Wherever you happen to be these days – happy 2010,

Gill

Sounds and images captured between Brooklyn and Reggio Emilia, 22-24 December 2009.

THE ARTIST

Gill Arno was born in Italy and lives in Brooklyn, NY. His work explores areas where sound and image overlap, and is often constructed with found objects and found sound.  In the project mpld he utilizes two old modified slide projectors to create performances where static images become pulsating and fade continuously into one another. The projector’s mechanical sounds are tapped and manipulated to reveal their musical potential.  Other activities include performances with the New York Phonographers and in various other collaborative and improvised settings. He publishes books, recordings and other multiples via his own imprint, Unframed Recordings, and runs Fotofono, a small studio in Brooklyn where sometimes public events are held.

links: www.m-i-c-r-o.net

artist:     Christopher DeLaurenti
title:       Stanley Sleeps (part 2) | ©
date:     17 November 2009
length:  11’00

photo by: Christopher DeLaurenti

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THE SOUND

My wife and I adopted Stanley, a 10 year old Norwegian Elkhound, 6 months ago from an animal rescue.  Assessed by the veterinarian as “morbidly obese,” Stanley weighed more than double the normal weight for a dog his breed. Now, he lives a dog’s life, eating (not as much as his former owners fed him), walking (which he relishes), and sleeping (expertly). As Stanley continues to lose weight, his breathing and sleeping continues to change. “Stanley Sleeps (part 2)” captures his susurration, snoring, and other exhalations gusting against a microphone.

THE ARTIST

A phonographer, sound artist, teacher, and performer, Christopher DeLaurenti makes field recordings at unusual confluences of sound, silence, performance, and everyday life. His albums include Seattle Phonographers Union (and/OAR), Wallingford Food Bank (Public Record), Favorite Intermissions: Music Before and Between Beethoven-Holst-Stravinsky (GD Stereo), and N30: Live at the WTO Protest November 30, 1999 (unAmerican Archive). Aside from creating electroacoustic music, text-sound scores, compositions for acoustic instruments, and installations, Christopher is co-founder of the Seattle Phonographers Union, a protean collective that improvises with unprocessed field recordings.

links: www.delaurenti.net

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