In a fit of sad irony, the Tribeca gallery Gigantic Art Space (GAS) will be closing its doors this weekend with the conclusion of its final exhibit, [silence]. Curated by Galen Joseph-Hunter and Dylan J. Gauthier, the show investigates the “futility of the chase, the beauty of absence, and the rich potential of an empty signal.” In practice, and off the pages of the press release, this means pieces like Douglas Henderson’s mesmerizing Untitled – a sound sculpture in which pools of water in the cones of four upturned loudspeakers ripple and purr as inaudibly low frequencies course through them. At 4:33pm tomorrow evening (Saturday, Feb. 24th) the radio theatre troupe 31 Down will perform, marking the end of the exhibit and GAS’ final hour.
[silence] has hosted a number of these Saturday performances, and last weekend’s was certainly worth the trek to Franklin Street. Australian artist Michael Graeve – who played alongside Tianna Kennedy (a free03point9 staff member and [silence] contributor) and her cello – used a fascinating musical contraption built by an Austrian friend of his. I didn’t catch its name (if it had one), but Grave’s “instrument” was essentially a 70s-era portable record player/speaker combo hooked up to a large glass mirror. By “hooked up,” I mean the mirror had a pick-up attached to its face that functioned much like what you’d find on a Les Paul. Every time Kennedy would tap on the back of the mirror or run her cello bow along its edge the record player’s speaker would react accordingly, amplifying the sound to the nth degree. After fiddling with the mirror, Kennedy returned to her chair to run through a series of haunting harmonics and single note passages over Greave’s record-player assisted feedback. You could feel the wine rumbling in your little plastic cup.
Brian Devine, who has worked in film and television production and as a singer-songwriter with the band Spanish Speaking Psychics, founded Gigantic Art Space in 2003. GAS was conceived as a kind of media catch-all – a meeting place for artists working with sound, video, and other interactive technologies. Though I know little of Devine’s and artistic director Lea Rekow’s past work at GAS, if [silence] is at all representative, the gallery will surely be missed come Sunday.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
U.S. Torture Techniques a Laugh Riot
On February 2nd, the Society for Ethnomusicology posted an official statement on their website condemning the use of music as a form torture by the U.S. military. To wit:
On behalf of the Society for Ethnomusicology the SEM Board of Directors approves the Position Statement against the Use of Music as Torture, which originated in the SEM Ethics Committee and has the unanimous support of the Board of Directors.
The Society for Ethnomusicology condemns the use of torture in any form. An international scholarly society founded in 1955, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and its members are devoted to the research, study, and performance of music in all historical periods and cultural contexts. The SEM is committed to the ethical uses of music to further human understanding and to uphold the highest standards of human rights. The Society is equally committed to drawing critical attention to the abuse of such standards through the unethical uses of music to harm individuals and the societies in which they live. The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.
The Society for Ethnomusicology
- calls for full disclosure of U.S. government-sanctioned and funded programs that design the means of delivering music as torture;
- condemns the use of music as an instrument of torture; and
- demands that the United States government and its agencies cease using music as an instrument of physical and psychological torture.
Suggested link
For further information on the American history and praxis of using music as an instrument of torture, the Society for Ethnomusicology recommends the following article:
Suzanne Cusick, “Music as Torture, Music as Weapon,” Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review 10 (2006).
* * *
And who, you might ask, has had the privilege of blaring out of American military speakers over the years? Well, there’s been Eminem, Christina Aguilera, Metallica, Barney, and Sesame Street over the last five. But the U.S. military was dallying in pop music torture far before Rummy had his way with the Pentagon in 2001. Though the SEM’s statements claims this musical torment only started that year, according to a Washington Times article from December 29, 1989 (and David Pescovitz’ blog on BoingBoing) U.S. troops blasted Michael Jackson, Linda Rondstadt, The Marvelettes, the Bobby Fuller Four, and Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child” as a means of getting Panama’s president Manual Norriega to surrender a full 18 years ago.
Surprisingly (or not), the chief reaction to SEM’s statement, particularly among conservative bloggers, has been little more than chummy laughter. (See, for example, Right Wing Nation and Mark Steyn’s “Facing the Music” in the New York Sun and his blog The Corner on the National Review.) In the abstract, I suppose any discussion of Ms. Aguilera’s blanched electro-pop making young men frantic is amusing, but this is torture, folks. Hating your kid’s Eminem records when he’s playing them in the next room while you’re trying to blog for Right Hand Politics and make fun of big words like “ethnomusicology” is one thing. Having Dr. Dre’s sharp beats rammed into your skull at full volume while standing stark naked on four hours of sleep in the last three days is another thing all together. Kudos to SEM.
Friday, February 9, 2007
Off Broadway
Many of us go about the tedious and exhausting process of renting or buying an apartment in New York with an eye (and an ear) to keeping street noise out of our living rooms and bedrooms. (Check out Jay Ramono’s recent piece in the Times, Checking Out The Noise Level for pointers). On the other hand, if you don’t actually have to sleep in the place, the idea of hearing Broadway brimming and buzzing three floors below while you’re safely ensconced in some Soho art gallery munching on wine and cheese seems like a lovely way to spend a Thursday evening. Well, you’ll have the chance to do just that starting March 21 with the opening of Jacob Kirkegaard’s “Broadway” at the Swiss Institute Contemporary Art (SI) on, yes, Broadway between Spring and Broome.
Since I don’t know an accelerometer from a hole in the ground, here’s SI’s own description of Kirkegaard’s fascinating sound installation:
The piece "Broadway" is a five-channel sound installation that draws its source from the five subtly vibrating columns running through the gallery space. When you put your ear to these columns you can hear them resonating with the sound of Broadway below. The internal sound of each column will be recorded with accelerometers (sensitive contact microphones) and played back into the space through the columns by means of exciters (electro acoustic devices). Thus the five columns are being turned into loudspeakers - each one of them playing the sounds of Broadway in another resonant scale.
With this piece, Kirkegaard not only draws a multifaceted portrait of Broadway as idea, location and historical concept - he also offers a unique way of experiencing the reverberations of an urban environment, as it were, "from within.”
If only because Kirkegaard’s last release, Four Rooms (Touch Records), was a sonic portrait of four rooms within Chernobyl’s “Zone of Alienation,” one should expect more than just spineless ambient knob-twiddling. “Broadway” runs through May 7.
Since I don’t know an accelerometer from a hole in the ground, here’s SI’s own description of Kirkegaard’s fascinating sound installation:
The piece "Broadway" is a five-channel sound installation that draws its source from the five subtly vibrating columns running through the gallery space. When you put your ear to these columns you can hear them resonating with the sound of Broadway below. The internal sound of each column will be recorded with accelerometers (sensitive contact microphones) and played back into the space through the columns by means of exciters (electro acoustic devices). Thus the five columns are being turned into loudspeakers - each one of them playing the sounds of Broadway in another resonant scale.
With this piece, Kirkegaard not only draws a multifaceted portrait of Broadway as idea, location and historical concept - he also offers a unique way of experiencing the reverberations of an urban environment, as it were, "from within.”
If only because Kirkegaard’s last release, Four Rooms (Touch Records), was a sonic portrait of four rooms within Chernobyl’s “Zone of Alienation,” one should expect more than just spineless ambient knob-twiddling. “Broadway” runs through May 7.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Jackhammer Heart
Construction and its malignant soundtrack are simply part of city life. To pitch a fit every time some bozos with jackhammers, two-by-fours, and hard hats set up shop nearby is to renege on the holy urban contract. We deal with the squeal of the F train, the heedless wail of car alarms on Metropolitan Avenue, and, in this case, the shake, rattle ‘n’ roll of a new construction site so we can see the Wrens at the Knitting Factory, a movie at the Angelika, and a wine-tasting at Astor Wines & Spirits. You have to eat your vegetables first, folks.
This was a position I was willing to argue (and with folks who’ve called New York home far longer than myself) until yesterday morning. Jackhammers are useful metaphors for a reason – like so many of life’s irritants they are maddingly unpredictable and yet their roar is entirely unmistakable. Anyone worth their Soho rent could pick up on the sound of compressed air thrusting into concrete a mile away. But when the S.O.B. is right outside your door on a Wednesday morning, it’s more than just a metaphor – it’s a disaster. Granted it was 9:30am and I wasn’t actually woken up by the thing (my alarm had gone off just seconds earlier), but with the good folks at Triboro Plumbing slaving away next door, I had nowhere to hide and every reason to complain.
No, I didn’t call 311. I didn’t really do much more than look out my fourth-floor window, gawk at the colossal pile of Macadam on my street, and grumble ineffectually. But now I relate, if somewhat superficially, to all those tenants, community organizations, and government agencies that lobbied for years to get the city’s archaic noise code revised. “Neighborhood Noise and Its Consequences,” a report released last month based on online surveys conducted in 2004 by The Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), revealed that “construction or repair work” was the fifth most bothersome noise for New Yorkers. (Online respondents had 25 annoyances to choice from. “Neighbors activity or voices” came in first.) While the revised noise code, which goes into affect July 1, restricts nighttime construction work, it unfortunately doesn’t do much more to specifically construction clatter.
Our prayers, God save us, may instead rest in the hands (and ears) of the NYPD. Currently the department can only afford to provide officers with one hand-held decibel meter per precinct. The new noise code promises, with the help of the Department of Environmental Protection, to provide each officer with his own meter. At $2,000 a pop, that may be a tall order. But should they pull it off, come July, every officer in the city will have the ability to fine over-zealous construction companies if their jackhammers start belching out at ten decibels or more above ambient sound.
Until then (or until I shell out $2,000 of my own), I have no way of knowing whether my friends in Triboro Plumbing are actually breaking the city’s sound barrier. Maybe they’re entirely within code; maybe their jackhammers are, technically speaking, only modestly disruptive; maybe this is just something I’ll have to learn to deal with. Even in the wilds of Williamsburg, the city’s aural unpleasantness makes itself felt. It would be foolish for me to think otherwise - which brings me back to my first argument, one I’m not entirely willing to give up. How often am I willing to listen to drunkards stumbling home at 4:30am just so I can stay out ’till 5? Maybe more than I’m willing to admit. And really, jackhammers or not, I shouldn’t be sleeping past 10am anyway.
This was a position I was willing to argue (and with folks who’ve called New York home far longer than myself) until yesterday morning. Jackhammers are useful metaphors for a reason – like so many of life’s irritants they are maddingly unpredictable and yet their roar is entirely unmistakable. Anyone worth their Soho rent could pick up on the sound of compressed air thrusting into concrete a mile away. But when the S.O.B. is right outside your door on a Wednesday morning, it’s more than just a metaphor – it’s a disaster. Granted it was 9:30am and I wasn’t actually woken up by the thing (my alarm had gone off just seconds earlier), but with the good folks at Triboro Plumbing slaving away next door, I had nowhere to hide and every reason to complain.
No, I didn’t call 311. I didn’t really do much more than look out my fourth-floor window, gawk at the colossal pile of Macadam on my street, and grumble ineffectually. But now I relate, if somewhat superficially, to all those tenants, community organizations, and government agencies that lobbied for years to get the city’s archaic noise code revised. “Neighborhood Noise and Its Consequences,” a report released last month based on online surveys conducted in 2004 by The Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), revealed that “construction or repair work” was the fifth most bothersome noise for New Yorkers. (Online respondents had 25 annoyances to choice from. “Neighbors activity or voices” came in first.) While the revised noise code, which goes into affect July 1, restricts nighttime construction work, it unfortunately doesn’t do much more to specifically construction clatter.
Our prayers, God save us, may instead rest in the hands (and ears) of the NYPD. Currently the department can only afford to provide officers with one hand-held decibel meter per precinct. The new noise code promises, with the help of the Department of Environmental Protection, to provide each officer with his own meter. At $2,000 a pop, that may be a tall order. But should they pull it off, come July, every officer in the city will have the ability to fine over-zealous construction companies if their jackhammers start belching out at ten decibels or more above ambient sound.
Until then (or until I shell out $2,000 of my own), I have no way of knowing whether my friends in Triboro Plumbing are actually breaking the city’s sound barrier. Maybe they’re entirely within code; maybe their jackhammers are, technically speaking, only modestly disruptive; maybe this is just something I’ll have to learn to deal with. Even in the wilds of Williamsburg, the city’s aural unpleasantness makes itself felt. It would be foolish for me to think otherwise - which brings me back to my first argument, one I’m not entirely willing to give up. How often am I willing to listen to drunkards stumbling home at 4:30am just so I can stay out ’till 5? Maybe more than I’m willing to admit. And really, jackhammers or not, I shouldn’t be sleeping past 10am anyway.
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