I probably am a bit of radio. I do wish there were more dialog around my work - there's been some magazine interviews but not much else. The 4 day event was really amazing, even though it was a continuous whirlpool of players, no one played for 96 hours, that would have impossible (I think). I know of very long drone playing, Young for example, and just haven't been that interested in it. If anything I've gone the other direction for years - I remember back in the 70s playing 'the world's fastest guitar' as a piece and I still work with speed, so I can't continue much. Foofwa and I did/do a piece with Azure called 'ennui' in which she sings and pays no attention to the boys; meanwhile Foofwa dances as fast as he can for as long as he can, and I do the same playing an instrument (at this point it would probably be cura cumbus; I've used guitar a lot). The longest we've been able to go was ten minutes twenty seconds - after that, we just give out. So for these long events, I have to time myself, switch insts. etc. so I can keep going - not at that speed. With the long events communality is really the thing, what it's about - with the short events or playing sets etc. it's very different. With the recent tape cassette in the Voice Studies series from My Dance the Skull, I tried to get as much material in as possible; at this point I can't decode what I was doing (VLF and shortwave radio, electronics, crystal radio, hasapi, voice, various pieces of digital software etc.) - that's not live but has to do with the same sort of fierce info as ennui.
I think I wrote about the 24 hour event we hope to do (our next thing is to do another cd) and how that might really lead to organic communality - I think I could go for 17 hours straight myself. Speaking of duration, years ago I drove from Dallas (when you were there!) straight to Los Angeles non-stop in twenty-five hours with a super 8 camera taking one frame every six seconds - the result is a 20 minute film of the US unfolding at high speed. I think I actually did some of it from Atlanta to Dallas, but that was with stops, didn't count. A 25 hour drive alone is amazing - I was so tired at the end that I remember the lightpoles on the side of the highway bending into the traffic lanes as I hallucinated. So that's another long duration piece... Finally, when I taught I always spoke of two things - that the artworld is competitive and that doesn't necessarily make for bad work, and that I always produced work, not only for myself but with an audience in mind, that the work was a form of communication (which relates to Jackson's thought as well). So feedback is really important. I often back-channel people on email lists about their work and it seems appreciated; I think most of us want to feel we're not sending things out into the void... These are trite thought but they also go against the grain, they're probably sufficient neurotic - - Alan On Tue, 19 Feb 2013, Johannes Birringer wrote: > > > thanks Alan, for your response, this is helpful and allows more conversation > here perhaps - > especially since your extended review [Thursday, December 13] - if anyone is > interested in the longer review, we should perhaps post it again. > I had not reflected enough in the past on long durations performance > improvisation; > i only participated in very few marathons, once a 24 hour reading of the > Iliad, with actors, and > once a sleep over in a music/sonic arts festival where the musicians played > all night and we were invited to sleep > on mattresses in the performance space (i was in the audience). I filmed a > long durational drone music concert with Phill Niblock > but have not musically performed in a collective space of the kind you > mention for these 96 hours (but for you the playing > was intermittend, not ongoing -- I often wondered about Hsieh, and how he > was able to perform for a year? Marina Abramovic's > House with the Ocean View lasted for twelve days, I remember going one > afternoon, in November 2012, it was just a year or > so after 9/11 and the mood was dejected and yet oddly sanctified (?), that > installation in my mind did not create a communal > space of improvisation, togetherness, exchange and experience of consonances > and dissonance but was dissinance, in my view, > a faux-ritual, set up for us to admire the daring of the fasting performing > up there on her pedestals. > > Now the concert you described in December seems to have been complex and > exciting and difficult also, in terms of how we receive or can receive > , say, continuous music.... how musicians combine and sustain their playing, > how instruments meet and how vastly differing music styles > can enter confluence. > > Still, Susan was as puzzled as I was by your dejected comment on music being > dead once released, or dead already when not received and feedbacked > or discussed? surely here people on the list, and the many > who know you, listen to or watch what is posted if they have time, or save it > as i do for a good moment to ponder, and there is reception. > > How is radio received? how we we feed back to radio? and why did Benjamin > or Brecht write radical radio theories back then? > > And the dead, of course, are in the majority; so they are hardly useless but > with us. > > > respectfully > Johannes Birringer > > > > ________________________________________ > From: [email protected] > [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Alan Sondheim > [[email protected]] > Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 6:14 AM > To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity > Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] consonance > > Hi Johannes and thank you, > > There was only verbal feedback mainly from the participants - we had > 50-70. It was an odd event, because musicians came in at different times > and played in different groups; I think I mentioned I was there in the > afternoon and so played with very few people - most of the musicians came > in at night. But I logged 28 hours. What I really want to do now (working > on it) is a 24-hour event, which is a lot shorter, but the concept is that > the musicians who participate would remain for the duration. Jackson Moore > who with Chris Diasparra and Edward Schneider (and me) ran the four day > event at Eyebeam, talks about sonic citizenship, and I relate that to > Alfred Schutz' writing on musicians playing together - there are complex > feedbacks and phenomenologies at work in all of this, of course, but > there's also the grace of withdrawal or silence at times. So if we have a > group running and working for a day (with sleep when necessary), I think a > really interesting organic form will emerge - and in fact I can imagine > this in dance, stand-up comedy, all sorts of forms that might lend them- > selves to improvisation. So we're thinking through this, which is really > about thinking through the body in a situation or situations, perhaps > prosthetic, perhaps as raw as iat its moment of birth, etc. etc. > > And maybe a dialog will emerge out of this, not a long form and not a long > formlessness, but a long in/formation. I was just reading something by Eve > Fox Keller on slime molds (one of my favorite organisms) in Sherry > Turkle's Evocative Objects, and she touches on these issues, these modes > (or modelessnesses) of organization. > > And tuning is continuous and difficult for me, always another form of > feedback, always moving from in- to out-of tune, which is reminiscent of > catastrophe theory's notion of the fragility of the good... > > Again, thank you! > > Alan - > > +++ > [Suzon Fuks schreibt] > > Yes, Alan, so many things dead, without counting those on hard disks! > Dead things lose their pulse in the ether? > So many cells dying all the time?. Are there useless?? Are dead useless? > No ceremony for these dead. > ?thinking about it, but mostly feeling this strangeness? > > I meant to wish you happy birthday, long ago!? > Bzzzzz Suzon > > +++++ > > On Sun, 17 Feb 2013, Johannes Birringer wrote: > >> >> >> thanks Alan for sending your music to us >> - i am listening to, and enjoying the consonances >> and it is good that you have passed them on, >> so they won't die and are not already dead or unheard at all. >> I am in fact listening to them and will take them >> to the dance studio later, greetings to all of you here from >> Zagreb and the Dance Center in the old part of town. >> >> need to talk to you about retuning ("retuned sarangi >> / retuned tamburi") and how this works for you. >> >> >> your long review of the improvisation concert you were involved in, >> the 96 hour continuous performance at Music Factory (back in December), >> was so inspiring to me, i was trying to imagine it all, >> also as the "unbroken collective statement " that you called it thinking >> of the particular shape of this "durational event." >> >> did you receive feedback after your writing on this event? >> >> with regards >> Johannes Birringer >> >> >> ________________________________________ >> From: [email protected] >> [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Alan Sondheim >> [[email protected]] >> Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 8:35 AM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: [NetBehaviour] consonance >> >> consonance >> >> http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/conson1.mp3 >> http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/conson2.mp3 >> http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/conson3.mp3 >> http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/conson4.mp3 >> >> alan sondheim with viola and retuned sarangi >> azure carter with retuned tamburi >> >> i realize the uselessness of these pieces; for >> a long time, there's been little or no comment >> and they tend to die. these are made to die, >> these are already dead, slipped into consonance >> of one sort or another, gathered together like >> dead boys and girls in the woods, listening to >> grandmothers' and grandfathers' tales before >> the blow of the axe, these are just unheard >> pieces of music, like me dead before they were >> born, disliked and abandoned miscarriages. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> NetBehaviour mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >> _______________________________________________ >> NetBehaviour mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >> >> > > == > email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ > web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552 > music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ > current text http://www.alansondheim.org/rt.txt > == > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > == email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552 music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ current text http://www.alansondheim.org/rt.txt == _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
