Cobi van Tonder

MFA Thesis 2009

Memory Scene

Preface

In this thesis I will introduce my work, thoughts and process. works made during my time here at Stanford in the MFA Art as much as my completed ones, and have chosen to describe spent at Stanford.

These vary from experiments, works in progress to completed Practice program. I value my unfinished works and experiments some of them in this paper so as to represent faithfully my time Since you are exposed to written text about the work as

opposed to the direct experience of the work, I am going to

put myself into the shoes of someone experiencing the work

for the first time and describe this experience. After that, I will

share with you my intentions with each work and slowly start

to trace common themes and currents within my work as they synopsis of my work, process, approach to aesthetics, meaning and purpose.

surface and gain prominence. First, however, I will present a brief

Suppose the sole reason why we do anything is to produce the sounds that such actions would cause: we build machines, for instance, so that we can hear the sounds they make. We drive

cars and trains so that we can hear the sounds of acceleration and speed. We eat so that we can hear the crunching and swallowing. I just dropped a pencil, not by accident, but because the sound needed to exist. Leaves are shaped the way they are so that they can make the sounds they do when wind blows through them. was invented so that we could try to measure the distance of Numbers were invented so that we can count the sounds. Time sounds, the durations of attacks, sustains and decays of sound

events and the distances between different sounds. Suppose we breathe so that the sound of air can enter our body in two-part of form that interests me: an endless self-similarity, but never harmony with our heartbeat. Here is a perfect example of the kind would exact repetition be possible, never would the breathing

and heart beat fall together in exactly the same way as before.

 a wordless thin a hard shut dry co

ng in an empty place, old black place, where nothing stirs.

(Beckett 1965, 291)

Memory is Territory

direct the listening experience. In the most simple and direct

I am interested in ways to amplify, construct, criticize and

terms: my work and play is music, sound-, installation-, digital travel, solitude.

exploration, electronic experiments, parties, fun, conversations, The drive behind it: an extended self--a collected, cut-up

silence and a simultaneously maddening existential fear. A loud, noisy river flows inside our veins. Momentary reflections of my psyche in the eyes of friends, strangers, faces on TV, Facebook, faces have you seen? How many people do you know? How voices? echoing in long-distance text and telephone voices. How many many phone conversations have you had with unknown, faceless As we arrive where multiple histories are possible, I like to

think of remembrance as a means to question the system and of individual memory and meme creation.

validate the simulacronic truth in my own private public domain

When I am experiencing creative flow, I feel like I stop taking in

the outside world and I start sifting and sorting through my own (memory). Long, short, collections, memory streams, love, states. Arranging, recombining, folding, holding out against the light,

run down to another isle, intuitively fetching something similar,

contrasting you get the picture? Sure, I am busy with some video recorded imagery of something else that has no direct relation to a recorded sound, this material automatically connects to things in my memory, signifying them, pointing like vectors to things in my head. The material acts like a puppet master and I am (or in a dream. The door between conscious and subconscious is this memory. But while staring at it (the video), while listening to

lets say my subconscious mind is) the marionette. It is as if I am completely open. Like in dreams, unexpected things happen.

Follow the material hold on to the

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After youve worked with the same material for a while, you it becomes completely familiar, completely intuitive. Like a knowing exactly where it is.

reach a point at which you dont think about it, a point at which Japanese Tea master, you simply reach out and pick up the cup, The objects or material become extensions of you, as if they

repeatedly meet, depending on the size of the wheels: perhaps once every ten seconds, perhaps once every four hours. In turn creating a rhythm (of pointers) that is subliminal and hidden.

referred to as time stretching), it is not only the rhythm that is slowed down. The entire quality of the material changes. The technology itself is exposed. Different media react in different a record and slowing down a digital audio clip. In the digital

When changing the playback speed of sound and video (also

were your own limbs. In this way, your experience of time

slows down. Instead of boiling the water, pouring it into a tea bowl, mixing the tea with water and so on (all these linear dark. events on a timeline), you simply make tea. You can do it in the The point when/where time slows down to a stand

ways: think for example of the difference between slowing down domain vestiges of the technology start showing. The sounds of audible. The quality of the file that is used itself in terms of

different softwares digital signal processing algorithms become compression, sampling rate, bit rate and so on is revealed. Things become elastic, but the stretch marks appear and finally, at technology remains. some extreme point, the sound itself disappears so that only the

still (note the when and the where) is the point where of the timeless and the placeless. The never-never land of

time and space seem to be the same thing. It is the territory the imagination. Ghostly, dispersed, fragile slow or moving heavy liquid. Purposefully slow wide waves unstoppable and destructive like the bass and sub-bass frequencies of

with resistance as if being pushed or dragged through thick

an earthquake. I want time to stand still, slow down, droop, and free to wander around in the moment, turning it into a can wander around and explore without my dictatorship. Nothingness contains an immense complexity of things.

loop, twist, fold back on itself until one is lost and disoriented landscape in which my viewer (lets call the viewer an avatar)

cause, the triumph of instantaneity over time as depth, the

For Jean Baudrillard speed is the triumph of effect over

triumph of the surface and pure objectality over the profundity amnesic intoxication Speed is simply the rite that initiates us into emptiness: a nostalgic desire for forms to revert to of complexity in our world and its affects on the human

of desire Triumph of forgetting over memory, an uncultivated,

immobility (Baudrillard 1989, 6). I am interested in the speed psyche. The faster things move the heavier they become. The experience has more resistance. Becoming liquid. Becoming solid. Once again, that solid point is where it becomes time. Where matter and time is one. This reminds me of Salvador

Dalis Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion (1954). The solid object (the golden watch) that looks elastic, its bending the seeming result of some great impact or velocity. A frozen perceived as really slow. Soft

moment of something that happens at tremendous speed but is I am very interested in this phenomenon. In much of my

work I explore time and the perception of time through a

dense (and sometimes not so dense) weaving of elements

through the creation of independent wheels of time. Like clocks ticking at different intervals. Pulling the mind into more than one time zone simultaneously. It is the simple principle of syncopation stretched to various extremes. The rhythm and

sound of collisions where elements of independent time zones

It is admirable when an artist takes elements of real life and packs it into the artwork. Take for example Michael Landys performance piece-cum-installation, Breakdown (2001), in which he spent a fortnight in the window of the C&A shop in Londons Oxford Street destroying all his worldly possessions. Action that is transparent and poetically profound, material that is direct. temporal blurring of real and concocted truth, thus making Found sound and video material lend themselves to a

Real

meaning far more subjective, indirect and dependent on each

listeners unique set of references. Does this affect how sound enough to provoke the critical issues of our time? following view:

works are valued? Is abstract sonic form and rhythmical intrigues Johannesburg-based painter Dorothee Kreutzfeldt has the

I am intrigued with land (and what it stands for). There is no connection between desire and land. Desire is you. I do not want to eroticize land(scape). Desire is a silent actress, but the land is impersonal. [...] Land becomes your trace, your reflection. Land is specific: places you recall, regret, want, make it your cause and site of sentiment.

forget or flee. Then, you own it; dissect and locate it; name it;

(Williamson 2000, n.p.).

Or is sound more true and real than objects could ever be, even more so than African soil as Dorothee refers to it? In DeleuzeGuattarian terms territory is seen as a constant process of

formation and dissolution in which music is a constant form

of becoming of time, space and everything that inhabits them (and I would like to add to them net-art, installation and an exploding amount of new-sound and musical sub-cultures and unmaking of territories, whether these territories are environmental, political, or even existential. too) form crucial components in the contemporary making

(Murphy 2000, n.p.) According to Murphy, popular music events

For Deleuze and Guattari, every repetition of a refrain marks out a distance which also becomes a plan(e) for a territory (sounds like the isochronal rhythmic structures of minimal techno).

Perhaps most importantly, ...the deterritorialization of refrains Refrains territorialize; music deterritorializes. Music is thus a

their disconnection from their territory is what they call music. force that always breaks free and travels further. The music both simulates space and creates it literally, on the dance floor, in headphones, on the Internet(Murphy 2000).

and rejects most forms of land ownership (especially on national and capitalist scale), seeing it as the root of what is wrong with the world, operating in the territory of the moment and of experience seems far more meaningful and rewarding if fragile. I am beginning to realize the importance of the audience as witness to this truth, once again, whereas the moment is experience has affluence. fragile and ephemeral, the impact and memory of the collective How noisy has life become? At what pace does the world

As a nomad who now disregards my South African citizenship

move? It is as if we are in a dense velocity liquid, dependent on of this NOW is like the underwater nibbling of millions of fish on choral reefs, nibbling away on the human psyche, making

our Negropointian devices, connections, skins, looks. The sound

way for something. For the moment, I feel that I can still count on the human psyche as a focus point (if wobbly) to direct my intensification of mood. thoughts and work against. Moving toward the coherence and I am, like many others, a traveler, nomad, nobody, observer,

with microphone in my hand, video camera, recording machine, consuming, producing, tracing patterns, listening to the nodes, editing this captured moment into a new thing, by mistake sometimesthis new thing a blueprint of that moment as I could be. the changes, zooming in, stretching time, scarring the memory,

experienced by me, or perhaps of an unnamable thing that I wish Unnamable because we can only create the container that

holds this moment, the frame through which it is witnessed. The thing in itself is ephemeral and elusive. There is no proof that it exists. The most concrete thing is our reaction to it. And on a container.

new layer: the masks we wear to conceal these reactions? A new In this moment, I find an escape from myself. Fake Land.

Emotional Empire.

no exi()t 20:00 (2008)

20 minute HD video loop with composed soundtrack

installed on a small screen in a dark, cold space with a few tape recorders, hidden in the dark back half of the room of installation, with sounds of the installation process of the etc., in that same space. At least two speakers play the soundtrack from the front.

physically inside the piece. The viewer is drawn in, becoming an or reality games, such as Second Life. The piece stops when the loop point in the video is crossed.

avatar, the screen as large as a computer monitor set up for video observer finally realizes that he or she has been here before as the The title refers to Jean-Paul Sartres existentialist play No

piece, i.e. shuffling sounds and sounds of moving furniture,

in some cases revealing a very small part of a wall or corner, and making it impossible to see whats next, like having a really weak torch light in this tactile darkness. You want to

The view of the tunnel in front of you remains constrained,

Exit. Ive added in the dollar sign ($) to extend exit to exist,

referring to power structures, strange loops and entrapment in this reference, leaving empty brackets and a void.

the desire-production machine of the self and selves. I then delete The avatar refers to how I think about the observers

stand closer to the screen to see. A constant forward motion, a for long and longer pauses, hesitance. Each time a new corner

constant staring out into the dark, expectation, no rest, except approaches, movement is deadly slow, building up expectation. leads nowhere. Gradual acceleration occurs as the corridors get narrower and the tunnels grow more claustrophobic. You feel feel like you are inside the screen.

relationship to my work: When I work, I experience my work as if I am an avatar in a world or landscape. I discover and create through self-insertion. Then the work is completed by the observer (the audience). Lets call him/her The O.

But around each corner is just another set of corridors. This place

become me. I want The O to see what I see, to feel what I feel

At this moment I have a strange desire: I want The O to

disturbed. You feel like you are walking into a hallucination. You Shot in the underground ruins of Chavn de Huntar with

and through this happening; I destroy myself, we become more

self-similar, more interchangeable; I become us. By inserting the

memory of this created space, we share a little more in common.

a handheld camera, the view travels through what seems to be a never-ending maze. The ancient architecture is austere and impressive, the mystery of a transformative time in

Peruvian history linked to power, control and the formation

of social hierarchy through ritual and influence. It all predates the birth of Christ, of Confucius, and of Incan culture by more than two millennia. The quiet tomblike qualities of this place immediate and transcendent.

combined with a structural architectural beauty and confusion is The soundtrack consists of Peruvian flute and Strombus shell

notes that are digitally stretched and made to descend in pitch, creating a downward feeling, but also a feeling of lamentation as well as all kinds of pulsing, hissing sounds that are almost

and sorrow. From this material emerge some, long droning notes cicada-like, insects in rhythm, the pulses creating layered breathlike textures. The same material is also pitch-shifted down to create another layer of deep droning pulses. The music has a

feeling of disembodiedness and mourning, the image of loss and searching. In it are the two impulses together: a sense of being able to find ones own body. nowhere, of being in two places but not in the body, of not being The music and image connect and disconnect at

unpredictable intervals. The sound just completely stops, while the video continues to return later with a shocking effect. The tape recorder in the back of the room is at most times too soft to be noticed, but gives the impression that there are more people present in the installation room than there in fact are. This recording also contains some of the music as recorded in the

room, so at moments the viewer suddenly finds him- or herself

Time and Place

I like to think of time as having a strong connection to self, to to the role and condition of the observer.

being human, to having a life span, a beginning and an end, and Time is vertical. It stretches from earth through body to

heaven. It flows and radiates. It is also the conscious living system that we call the I. Desire is the striving of this system to destroy its own

boundaries. It is a quiet and vast shape that stretches out much desire.

wider and larger than the shape of our physical bodies. Thus the Space/place is spherical which implies horizons from the

observers point of view. Referring to the line of a horizon where opposites meet. Space is the map where we find our selves. Where we store memories as nodes/markers against which we can compare and keep track of our selves. The better we get at expanding and organizing info-spheres, the vaster space we have to record and map out more of our selves, the further we

can travel away from our selves and deeper into the horizon of unit.

pulling forces. The more we can share and morph into a collective Through abstraction and logic, hyper-dimensional space can

be imagined, the ability to travel in mind-bending ways around

the Mobius strip and other impossible curves, to disconnect and re-connect, to live and die and be resurrected again. I am inspired by the poetic implications of this. Thinking about time and space one cannot be but influenced by concepts such as fractals (Latin fractus meaning broken or fractured), feedback loops, self-similarity and recursiveness. My artistic project, though, is very carefully both my emotional responses and intuitive

not to solve the mysteries of physics, but to dissect and analyze understanding of the organization of the material with which I space.

work, which is, among others, this relationship between time and

Vuurvangerkindmens I 12:00 (2009) Vuurvangerkindmens II 8:00 (2009)

HD video projection and 8 channel sound.

The Afrikaans title translates to fire-catcher child person. A

short voyeuristic view of children on a mountain in Peru starting a fire. The camera follows an infant girl completely absorbed in her play. She is always with her back to the camera. She seems to disappear into the smoke and then she reappears. The video is slowed down drastically and given the low light, ultra long-

distance, telephoto-zoom conditions of the filming; the cameras struggle to focus gives the video a wondrous effect. The smoke landscape at times. Light flickers, the image disintegrates and Each time the image is lost a little longer. The texture of the almost looks like water, the scene appearing to be an underwater reappears. This disintegration becomes gradually more severe. visual noise gets jaggedly thicker and thinner over time. The of slow in a similarly jagged way.

speed of playback jumps between different shades and extremes The soundtrack is meant to enclose and drown the viewer.

The viewer is meant to feel the smoke, fire, wind and flickering and around the viewer as smoke in the wind would. (Speakers

visual noise patterns. It is also spatialized so as to move through are installed behind and around the viewer). I carefully filter and enhance certain frequencies to give it colors that fit the image. The whole piece is a strange and uneventful moment of poetry. swallowed by the smoke is stretched out to two percent of the

In version II, the crucial sequence where the girl seems to be

playback speed so that these few seconds become eight minutes float. Version II is silent.

long. The image changes so slowly that the entire scene seems to The idea is that version I should be projected while version II

would be somewhere else in the gallery on a flat-screen monitor. I love that this piece is made of someone who I dont know.

Minimalist Punk

We like things because they are our roots. My tools isolate, hide, reveal, constrain. Vuurvangerkindmens reveals a great deal about my process when it comes to composition and editing. I think a major decision is to decide what to reveal and what to hide, giving the outcome a sense of continuation beyond the experience, giving it unseen roots.

make a piece then reveal only one third of it, or even less, even a third of a third and loop that for a very long time obscure the loop point take things to extremes zoom in until you find the stretch marks of the technology look at the looking mechanism the surface of the surface hunt the hunter listen to the ear warp it. repeat on different zoomed-in or zoomed-out timescales spatialize and listen to them all at the same time from different origins

Why do we find destructive things beautiful, even attractive? of something. And if you happen to be the victim, just an

Entropy? Finding, testing, breaking and knowing the boundaries empty feeling of a pulp. David Lynch meets Haruki Murakami. the rainbow without the storm.

alarm and tension and to powerful sound phenomena in nature Gerusch is derived from rauschen (the sough of the wind),

such as storm, thunder and the roaring seaand that the German related to Rausch (ecstasy, intoxication), thus pointing towards some of the aesthetic, bodily effects of noise in music (Sangild 1992, 5). Sangild continues to classify Noise into three categories:

Gruesome. Unheimlich. Something about not being able to have This kind of austere, desolate mood is the sound scene that

inspires me, going under names such as post-techno, dark

ambient, drone ambient, electronica and noise. Drone musicians borrow elements from industrial music, Minimalism and, in some cases, with guitar-heavy drone music, sounds from punk Thomas Kner, Lull, Biosphere, Halo Manash, Troum, William Bassinski, Eliane Radigue, Steve Roach, Robert Rich, Francisco on the phenomenon of sound color.

Physically defined acoustic noise (sounds that are impure and irregular, neither tones nor rhythm), communicative noise (a malfunctioning/distortion/disturbance: that which distorts (unpleasant sounds).

and post-punk. Think Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Alan Lamb, Alva Noto,

the signal from transmitter to recipient) and subjective noise In physically defined acoustic noise, I am interested in how

Lpez. Drone music avoids rhythm and melody, focusing instead In both Berlin and here, Ive been delighted to explore finally

the irregularities of sound reveal surface: glitches, the warm, spiky crackle of vinyl (and dust) under a record needle.

live performances of the music I like. Because of sanctions against South Africa, it was not possible to import music for a long time, so that much music I had read about was impossible to get hold of. The first time I left South Africa was for a visit to Kyoto. The first gig I saw there was my superhero Richard D. James, aka and DJs related to his Rephlex Brain Dance music label were

sound, the functions representing the walls, floor, and ceiling that are reflecting it. Think of a room as a filter or distorter.

In architectural acoustics, the echo convolutes the original

Aphex Twin, playing at Club Metro. In fact, a bunch of musicians there. His control of his gear and maddening, intricate, insane beats and flying sounds and sick dry humor were beyond me. He started the set, though, by attacking the ear for about forty

minutes with a Merzbow-like wall of noise and drones that two

thirds into it suddenly unfolded into a rainbow of overtone color. The color was simply phenomenal. Then the beats started. I have not been able to find a recording of this live improvisation. Later, at the same club, I met members from the very inspiring Dumb Type theater group, which led to my discovery of glitch, more

kinds of noise music, Merzbow, Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai. Another seminal track was Welcome to Squarepusher on the I liked at the time. Then I discovered Autechre, who warped by this I created my own form of Brain dance music, under Warp Music Label. These tracks were very melodic, though, which things further with a darker and more abstract sound. Inspired the pseudonym Otoplasma, Oto meaning noise or sound in by the ear and is thought to represent mechanical vibrations

Japanese. Otoacoustic refers to the very faint sounds produced in the cochlea. I wanted my music to have the same qualities

while still being extremely delicate and liquid-like. Finally, I got sick of the melodies and started to work only with algorithmic manipulating environmental recordings. patterns, such as Markov chains and noise generators, while also In The Aesthetics of Noise, Torben Sangild points out that

Etymologically, the term noise in different Western languages (stj, bruit, Gerusch, larm etc.) refers to states of aggression,

audio tunnels (in progress)

interesting to combine real spaces acoustically. I call this recombinant acousmatic space. Using networked audio devices that provide both low latency and good-quality audio

I have come to the conclusion that it would be truly

connections to remote sites, I can thus either daisy chain places to connect with one another. This new, connected space is live, circular daisy chain of rooms, or a star.

from all over the world or whichever locations make most sense available in real-time, and consists of various patterns, such as a Conceptually, this is a feedback-loop: we access the

constructed space via our auditory perception. Through listening we perceive a landscape that in turn triggers the imagination partly imaginary space. to construct a picture of what this space looks like. It becomes a Live sound travels from location to location, reverberating

in each space. A kind of anonymity reverberates through the

piece. It is a borderless territory designed for listening. Making sounds and listening to their echos coming back, mixed with unexpected ambient sounds. Acoustically the reverberations and other characteristics of each space add up, thus creating a new recombinant space that is the distorted and warped sum of its parts.

in multiple places: thus, in a few milliseconds, my voice travels around the planet.

Most interesting to me are the ways this implies that I am

The new immersive Installation reflects a desire for sensual pleasure. It provides a total artwork which envelopes the viewer in a hermetic and narcissistic space. The location of the installation in the realm of the imaginary, stimulated by the need for escape.

Nicolas de Oliveira - Installation Art In The New Millennium: The Empire Of The Senses (De Oliveira 2003).

888 (2008)

888 is a simple black box, an 8x8x8 cube of darkness: both a

cubical frame and a container for the experience of listening.

I mean that you cannot see your hand in front of you face, even space, you still cannot see a thing!

Wooden frame and black cloth block out all light. With this

after adjusting to the darkness. Even after thirty minutes in this

Ambient sound of direct environment. Real floor of environment. A double bed inside the cubicle to lie down on. The temperature is a little uncomfortable inside, almost cold. Duration, entrance and exit are all timed and guided by me. The dynamic is completed by whoever is inside and his or her responses.

The purpose of this series is to frustrate the observer visually, though sonically the space is active: either uncomfortably quiet and intimate, depending on who is present, or pleasantly and active with ambient sound.

intimate, depending on where the box is installed, though loud Seemingly nothing happens, only the absence of visual

information. In critiques of the piece, comments were made about sensory-deprivation tanks being more profound an experience. I am sure it might be true since its complete in

more ways. But I would like to make two observations: a) even sounds and breathing; and b) this space is specifically a room with a view. It is very open-ended and yet constrained. I had this cube installed inside my studio for a couple of

in a sensory-deprivation tank you will still hear your own body

months and when the windows were open, depending on the changing weather conditions, air would sometimes move the fabric to replicate the feeling and sound of breathing. Most sounds. Also profound to me was the experience of having

visitors to 888 commented on how they suddenly noticed outside conversations in there for long periods of time and the kinds of intimate space that opened up in conversation, even with strangers (for example, official studio visits from visiting

artists). The intimacy of sound and what is revealed about

someone through his/her voice alone, became more tangible and noteworthy than outside the box where the rather dominating visual system is present. The cube had an austere authority. it was so small contradicted the immeasurable size that the A tangible three-dimensional 8x8x8 of darkness. The fact that darkness implied. There was a certain kind of tension, as if ones body were held by a bubble of darkness. Some kind of abyss of the soul becoming visible or, rather, tangible in a sticky kind of claustrophobic dimensions of the space. A focused presence. images of the retina.

specific outdoor spaces. For example, on an empty, deserted installation or next to a busy highway.

I would still like to create variations of this piece for site-

beach, as much or little wind breeze as happening on the day of New ways of listening imply not only what is being listened

to, but also how one listens to it, be it through headphones,

through a telephone receiver, in a noisy public space or in a

concert hall. Other physical and psychological conditions further influence the listening experience. For example, temperature, darkness and physical activity versus passivity. Also, as

darkness: a humidity of soul. Acoustically one senses the almost Visually one sees the electricity of ones eyes that look like after I perceive higher complexity and detail of the world around

previously explored by the French school of musique concrte,

there exist different ways of listening. The most obvious way is to recognize the origin of the sound, and from this to recognize what is happening and where it is happening. Acoustic details reveal space and backgrounde.g., an airplane is flying through the

me, both spatially and in the number of events. For example, around blindfolded. I get the sensation that I am closer to

the busy Stanford campus, with bikes swooshing by as I walk reality, that Im less pre-occupied with what society might

sky nearby, theres a highways drone; the plane must be close to a highway. Or echoes bounce back my voice, so I must be facing a really huge reflecting surface, like a mountain or pavilion. When we cannot see where we are, but are left to determine

have programmed me to notice. My awareness especially of the of the world becomes more energy-flow oriented and temporal. A lot of information is of course obscured too, but a lot of detail contrasts in the appearances and disappearances of things.

temporality of occurrences is heightened. The image in my mind

this information purely from auditory input, our minds start to mind starts to make a movie. The more abstract these sounds

search for possible matches to this auditory stimulation and the become--i.e., the more unfamiliar--the more we are forced merely to follow the curves and shapes of the sounds in a more abstract manner, to travel this sonic landscape. Our brains nevertheless

is revealed, especially the rhythm of everything and the complex The nuances, differences, repetitions, similarities, beginnings a drama that plays on and never stops. If someone is sitting

and endings so completely unexpected Re-appearances. Like quietly, that person doesnt exist until they move, or until they say something. Only through movement do they appear and disappear. Buildings dont exist until sounds reflect off them or are swallowed by them to reveal their acoustic blueprint.

still actively try to make meaning of these sounds, to order them, soundscape.

and thus individual journeys or mind movies are triggered by the I regard the self as a complex system that constantly

internalizes exterior landscape, and not simply as an entity that recursive, mirroring force, existing in flux between forming

A woman is reduced to a pair of wooden high-heel shoes: the

perceives and acts; but I also view the self also as dynamic, and again disappearing/disintegrating. The self as landscape. distances and perspectives.

concrete she walks on, sharply colliding with each klibk-klibk of

her steps, a series of frequency bubbles bouncing around and off Voices. Talking. The fountain in the background disappears as I move on. Absolute darkness is a wonderful sensual backdrop against

the surrounding walls and ceiling. Doors swing open, then close.

Imagination as the self. Imagination as jumping over irrational It is almost as if visual art takes the insides (imagination)

and makes visible things in the outside world, whereas sound interior of being.

which to position, to bring into focus and amplify the delicate in this environment present. Darkness brings closeness and Absolute darkness lends itself to anonymity.

art pierces into the inside, bringing what is outside with it to the

and tremendous dynamics and mood that working with sound intimacy of experience - an intensification of being present. In 888 everybodys breathing and every single bodily

movement had a sonic silhouette. Later I placed some

microphones in the room: one by the window, a speaker

underneath the bed and one high up outside the cube. Eventually they started to amplify the live ambience. I later also preon top of the real, thus creating a kind of false ambience. recorded the sounds of the moving fabric in air and layered them

The Internet and Information Retrieval

I have a large interest in information technology and have Information Retrieval (MIR) technology. MIR is a highly

attended an insightful Summer School at Stanford in Music interdisciplinary field bridging the domains of digital audioand machine learning. In the same way that listeners can

signal processing, pattern recognition, software system design, recognize the characteristics of sound and music through algorithms are capable of recognizing and extracting this

tempo, key, chord progressions, genre, or song structure MIR information, enabling systems to perform extensive sorting,

searching, music recommendation, metadata generation, and

transcription, even aiding or generating real-time performance. though, since I find the Internet a phenomenally interesting

This led me to two uncompleted pieces. I want to mention them, place for finding material and inspiration, while data-mining work as time permits. The Internet as we know it might not

techniques will certainly become a more prominent part of my continue to exist, which is why works like this will probably imperfect musical outcomes as proof) was about creating a

become highly significant. The one piece (of which I have some new piece of music from the process of automatic substitution. First defining and learning the program how to find the exact characteristics that define this music. Then substitute similar sounds into the orignal music, in order to recreate it. The most successful tracks were Amber by Autechre and

Autobahn by Kraftwerk played back with city sounds of alarms and coins.

ringing and other noisy percussive sounds including a hairdryer Along similar lines was a YouTube project made in Max/

MSP/Jitter called Schiz, which was simply an interface to look At that point I had felt convinced that there was not enough

at a multitude of YouTube videos at the same time in real time. time to watch the news and stay on top of world events etc. and that one consequently had to watch simultaneously as many things as possible. The goal was to type in a search for the latest get a multiple glance of the world through a YouTube lens with forty small imbedded YouTube videos playing simultaneously. However, this piece lived for a couple of nights and then

5 minutes of uploaded material, or any date for that matter, and

something on the YouTube platform changed, and my patch no longer worked. I plan to complete this in the near future, but depends on changes so often. typically this type of pieces is fragile as the technology that it

Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin to suffer.

root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means

(Danielewski 2000, 525)

Thank you for traveling with me to this point in time. I have

said a lot and there is much more to say--more experiments,

more unfinished works, more places and more histories to make and discover ... but luckily there are many voices with much to say, so now I will stop. I am listening We are in many places combined/connected, time-fragmented place with you.

at the same time. I am on this paper right now as you read, in a

Manifesto of Actions

push, shift, distribute, substitute, replace, shunt, intercept,

time as intensity (duration that it takes to perform actions has

time as related to the traveling of my avatar.

time or durations for (e)motions to take place.

direction: all the actions have implied directions in which they

relation of speakers to visual focus points.

trajectory (all actions can happen on trajectory for example spiral,

expectation (an action over a short distance in time has less

density the rate of change

layering. different layers of the above actions and events create a

remove, displace, exchange, collect, disperse, pull, interchange, pass, remain, carry.

direct effect on intensity or force of action as implied by E = mc2 indirectly affecting intensity of mood/emotional response.

can take place, implying spatial considerations. placement of loud-speakers.

circles, curves).

expectation than a long distance in time).

splitting of attention: now we start to be in two different times at the same time, or three, or four, or hundreds. scale is implied.

structural architecture in the

work: for example things can motion.

relative motion: moving

happen in parallel or opposite

with object or observing

events in different layers can jarring and confusing.

object moving whilst moving from a static position.

be harmonious and intuitive, or

through repetition objects become a background.

loose their object ness and contrast between foreground and background. depth perception. dynamic range of being inside the observers body to the horizon.

separately from object or even

closeness i.e. can stretch from

through repetition, rhythm is trajectory. if the repetitions

created for example a spiraling diminish in loudness, it implies that we have traveled away from it or we are in a really strange space that has the object bounce around and

give preference to background motion and emotion seem to be related, evident in words

not objects to create emptiness.

through layering consonance and dissonance becomes possible and apparent:

transformation,

compression, inversion,

we use to describe our feelings: moved, glowing, and ecstatic. exploded. i fall for you torn apart she

consonant states are stable, like home, comfortable. dissonant states are in high

shuffling, to flatten, reduce depth, discontinuities that move towards continuity. metamorphosis, process,

tension, in need of resolution,

off the wall. if it is more like

problematic, exiting, energized, emergent. transitions between kind of transformation. consonance and dissonance is a

becoming, erosion, pulling

apart until its gone, being one thing to being something else. how sound is revealed: from

reverberations, the size of the room is implied, the size and are in. surfaces of the space that we

headphone to sixteen-channel surround movement. random placement of speakers in no specific pattern, thinking in so on.

front, behind, far behind and

the sound of speakers placed

inside other containers. the fact that they are then concealed.

References

Beckett, S. 1965. The Unnamable. Three Novels. Trans. S Baudrillard, J. and C. Turner. 1989. America. Trans. C. Turner. Danielewski, M.Z. 2000. House of Leaves. 2nd Edition. New De Oliveira, N., N. Oxley, and M. Petry. 2003. Installation Art in the New Millennium: The Empire of the Senses. New York: Thames & Hudson. York: Pantheon Books. New York: Verso. Beckett. New York: Grove Press.

Moorjani, A. 1992. The Aesthetics of Loss and Lessness. Murphy, A. 2000. Sound at the End of the World as We New York: St. Martins Press.

Know It - Nick Cave, Wim Wenders Wings of Desire and a

Deleuze-Guattarian Ecology of Popular Music. In Deleuze and Guattari: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. Ed. G. Genosko. London: Routledge. Copenhagen: DATANOM.

Sangild, T. 2002. The Aesthetics of Noise. Ed. Pelle Krgholt. Williamson, S. 2000. Dorothee Kreutzfeld. Interview with Sue Williamson. 27 February 2009 <http://www.artthrob.co.za/00jan/artbio.html>.