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-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Witters <seanwitters@hotmail.com>
To: Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com <Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com>
Date: Thursday, June 03, 1999 9:54 AM
Subject: Room sounds
>Here's an interesting Cagian ambient sound experience of my own:
>Last spring I participated in an Installation/Performance Art Exhibit with
>visual artists Jeffrey Hatfield and Allison Schlegal; the central theme
>was
>observation of the creative environment. My primary sound source was a
>sampled music box manipulated with a Kurzweil K-2000 and sequenced with
>Vision. I decided to augment these sounds with ambient microphones in the
>installation space, an idea derived from Cage's assertion that there is no
>pure listening environment and that all ambient sounds becomes a part of
any
>listening. These ambient sounds were the audio reflection of video images
>being captured and projected in various parts of the space. I placed four
>microphones in very visible positions throughout the rooms and ran them
into
>my various processors and lo-fi pedals. In my rehersal the room sound
>filled in the cracks around the prepared tapes which I was playing
>asynchronously against each other.
>When the show opened and the room filled with people, everything changed.
>Rather than performing the prepared guitar and Rhodes piano parts against
>the tape as I had intended to, I was glued to the mixer peering into each
>room's audio environment looping laughter, or someone's observation, or
>their shuffling feet. One person said something when entering the space
and
>I looped and manipulated it the whole time they were there. Soon, the
>audience caught onto the fact that they were being watched and listened to
>and they began to perform. This is were it got really interesting, one
>group of people picked up these heavy old oversized bank ledgers which
>were
>a part of the installation and started to read entries "january 2nd, 1946
>Deposit: six hundred and fifty three dollars and three cents...". They
>did
>this spontaneously as the prepared tapes were playing back a piece using a
>pitch derived from a sample of a spinning coin. It was incredible!
>People
>started creating spontaneous poetry which I looped, transformed and wove
>into the prepared tape portions. At the climax of the show the artists,
who
>were upstairs typing (yeah, I looped that too) in a small booth visible
>through portals and on a video screen, announced that the show was closing
>and began counting down the minutes and then seconds. I created
micro-loops
>within the countdown mixed with random ambient noises like paper falling
>(there were papers being dumped from the ceiling). I didn't record a
single
>second of the night. I truly wish I had because it was some of the most
>magical spontaneous interaction I've ever experienced. I temper my sense
of
>loss with the assurance that those sounds were a result of environment,
>moment, and interaction and should be left in that time and space.
This thread on room sounds reminds me of a process piece, perhaps by
Lou
Harrison. The title, as I best recall, was/is "I Am Sitting In A Room..."
and it consists of a short text which is read out loud. The text is the set
of instructions for performance. Here's a paraphrase:
"I am sitting in a room with a microphone about six feet away. This
microphone's signal is being recorded onto tape. This recording will be
played back from approximately where I am sitting, and recorded again. This
process will be repeated for as long as is practical, and the entire
process
will be recorded."
The resulting recording would then consist of this short spoken piece
repeated over and over, slowly degenerating into room resonance and circuit
resonance until it sounded like a bit of musique concrete. There may have
even been an instruction to play the entire thing backwards somehow,
allowing the text to emerge from the cloud of resonances. Can anyone
identify this piece better?