The Eyes of the Masters series is a special class where legendary artists share their experiences, knowledge and insights into the world of music both as an art form and as a business.
“Mr. Taylor is his own entity: one of the most enriching and confusing boundary crossers between composition and improvisation. His art can be hard to reduce. He seems to think of his music as a kinetic act, a ritual of place and ancestry, something that lives in bodies but less so in notation and documents. And this is why his records go only so far in explaining him. His performances are the key to understanding not just his playing but also the poetry he reads in and around the music, and even his physical actions — the way he walks to and away from, and sometimes around, the piano.
But he comes from the jazz tradition. Raised in Corona, Queens, he started out as a Harlem jam-session musician in the early 1950s and talks with intense loyalty about a line of particularly New York-identified piano players: Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Mal Waldron, John Hicks. Always there has been Ellington in his sound, driving and emphatic.”
The Noises of Art (site)
The conference addresses what is arguably the most prolific, varied, and groundbreaking period in the coming together, exchange, and mutual influence of visual art and sound-based practices (such as music and the spoken word). It aims to explore (principally) the visual artist’s engagement with sound, noise, music, and text while at the same time recognizing that there is a traffic of musicians, sound artists, and text artists moving in the opposite direction, who aspire to cultivate visual analogues for their work. Thus, the conference is situated at the intersection of several movements that are converging upon a point of visual-audio synthesis and exchange. In general, although not exclusively, the forum will provide and the opportunity to:
draw together visual artists and text-based artists who also use sound as a mode of creative production as well as musicians and sound- or noise-based artists who also use images (static or kinetic) as a mode of creative production; discuss, describe, exemplify, and present individual and collaborative practice; examine the commonalities, distinctives, and relationship of image, sound, and aural text in terms of their essence, methodologies, technologies, theories, aesthetics, historical trajectories, and modes of discourse; explore audio-visual practice from the perspective of cognitive, perceptual, and psychological studies.
We welcome abstracts for 20-minute-long papers, in all media and on any periods and regions, that deal with either case studies or broader methodological, theoretical, and historical questions, as well as proposals for improvisatory projects or presentations of 20-minute duration that can be performed at the conference. Please send either abstracts of 250–300 words or proposals of 700 words (including sample image (JPEG format) and sound or video files (mp3 or mp4 format), where appropriate) and a short biography of 100–150 words, and all inquiries to Sophie Bennett (sob@aber.ac.uk) by 30 March 2013.
For more information, please visit http://noisesofart.weebly.com
Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: The Noises of Art (Aberystwyth, 4-6 Sep 2013). In: H-ArtHist, Feb
28, 2013. <http://arthist.net/archive/4780>.
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This cross-disciplinary initiative began this past fall with five teams each consisting of a Parsons fashion designer, a New School Jazz composer, and a Joffrey Ballet School choreographer. These teams were tasked to develop a live performance consisting of an original music score, choreography, and conceptual garments that reflect the theme “Life is a Journey.” The garments are reconstructed from previous Louis Vuitton ready-to-wear and textiles.
“Reconstruction 3.0 represents our third collaboration with Louis Vuitton, and once again we’ve pushed the boundaries-this time bringing together our students with composers and choreographers,” commented Simon Collins, dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons. “It has been amazing to work with such great collaborators as Louis Vuitton, New School Jazz and the Joffrey Ballet School. The inspiring results reflect the richness and originality of this effort.”
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New School for Public Engagement faculty Lynne Tillman is one of five readers in the celebration of the work of Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau at issue Project Room.
Thu, February 21, 2013 – 8:00pm
155 Freeman St., Brooklyn (Greenpoint)
“To celebrate the publication of Georges Perec’s La Boutique Obscure and the expanded edition of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, ISSUE Project Room, in conjunction with Melville House and New Directions, presents an evening of readings and responses to both texts followed by a conversation with translators Chris Clarke and Daniel Levin Becker.” – more info on the Issue Project room Website
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Todd Lambrix is an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts and the Director of the Illustration Program. He has worked across a wide variety of media from digital video to paint to wool to resin to name a few. His work explores patterns and harmonies in nature and people and examines the adaptive tendencies they take on when these worlds clash.
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My teaching and research participates in the emerging field of literary sound studies, focusing on discourses of listening and acoustics in 20th and 21st-century literature, continental philosophy, media, and music. I am interested in American and British modernism, the work of Faulkner and Conrad in particular, and what practices and philosophies of listening in the 20th century and beyond can tell us about the modernist novel as form. I am also interested in the digital humanities as an emerging discipline, and how new media art practices can unlock the sounds and voices of modernism. I am a radio producer, practicing musician, and Associate Director of “Digital Yoknapatawpha,” an online mapping of the works of Faulkner.
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Josephine Holtzman is pursuing her MA in Media Studies at the New School, with a concentration in Sound Studies. Her interest in radio, ethnomusicology and sound experimentation began years ago at Vassar College and the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies. She has since worked as a radio producer and journalist – creating pieces for Studio 360, NPR’s Morning Edition and Weekend Edition, WNYC and WNPR. She produced the PRNDI award-winning daily news show, Where We Live, and created sound design for the Piehole experimental theater collective and The Aliens, a radio drama on WBAI. She plans to explore Acoustic Ecology and the art of Soundwalking during her time at the New School, and beyond.
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Yeong Ran Kim is a MA student in Media Studies at the New School. Pursuing her degree with a concentration in Sound Studies and Acoustic Environments, she delves into critical methodology intersected with experimental media practice. Her research interests center on the normalized violence under the neoliberal governance that affects the construction of the urban everyday life. Especially, she investigates acoustic forces and rhythmicity that constitute soundscapes of the urban spaces through an engagement with the sonic media in search of new aesthetic experiences and new ways of mobilizing communities. Most recent work of hers is a collaborative multimedia performance Ecstatic Corona, which is part of her multimodal thesis project Walking the Sonic: Acoustic Experience and Experiments in Corona.
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Edward Keller is the Director of the Center for Transformative Media at The New School, and Associate
Professor at Parsons The New School for Design. He is a designer, professor, writer, musician and multimedia
artist. Prior to joining Parsons, he taught at Columbia Univ. GSAPP [1998-2010] and SCIArc [2004-09]. With
Carla Leitao he co-founded AUM Studio, an architecture and new media firm that has produced residential
projects, competitions, and new media installations in Europe and the US. His work and writing has appeared in Punctum, Praxis, ANY, AD, Arquine, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Architecture, Parpaings, Precis, Wired,
Metropolis, Assemblage, Ottagono, and Progressive Architecture. Chronomorphology: Active Time in Architecture, a survey of his graduate design studios at the Columbia GSAP, was published in 2004 by CBA. He
has spoken on architecture, film, technology and ecology internationally. Ed has been an avid rockclimber for over
30 years.
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Drummer, organist, noise-maker, and wacky instrument tinkerer, Jane Pirone, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art, Media & Technology at Parsons The New School For Design. In 2005, Jane was the first faculty member to introduce and teach a “Sound Design” course into the Communication Design curriculum at Parsons and has taught many collaboration studios related to radio, sound and music, including the “Visual Music Studio”, which is comprised of an equal mix of Jazz and Parsons students. In addition to her long history as a performing musician and composer, she has experience as an indie-label producer and was the founder of the website, “drummergirl.com” (which was taken down in 2008). Jane studied film music with Martin Marks, sound art with Chris Mann and hardware hacking with Nicolas Collins. Her research interests include the relationship of sound and urban space, sound art, acoustic ecology, and experimental music.
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Shannon Mattern’s interest in sound began with her primary, secondary, and college careers as a musician; then, after graduate school, sound became a refrain in her research and teaching on mediated spaces. An Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies, she has written about architectural acoustics, sound history and politics, multimedia libraries and archives, multisensory art, and, with her colleague Barry Salmon, the history of “sound studies” at The New School. While nearly all of her courses — on media, architecture, and urban environments; media and materiality; and archives and libraries — have a sonic dimension, she occasionally teaches courses that are primarily about sound, including “Sound and Space” and “The City and Sound.” You can find her, along with all her publications and course syllabi, at wordsinspace.net
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John Roach is a Full Time Faculty member at Parsons in the School of Design Strategies. He is a studio artist with a penchant for working on sound-related issues across media. Many of his projects are collaborative in nature and he has worked on projects with composers, musicians, poets, computer programmers, sculptors, etc. His teaching at Parsons has run the gamut from two dimensional design to courses about collaborative art and design practices. In recent years his teaching has reflected his art practice in courses such as Sound Matters. You can see some of John’s work at Johnroach.net
If R. Murray Schafer has taught us anything, it’s that we should find sounds that we treasure in our environment and protect them if possible. His pioneering work in the World Soundscape Project drew our attention to the sounds of the natural world that were being replaced or drowned out by encroaching human infrastructure. This delicate balance, what he called the Acoustic Ecology was a rarely considered victim of our expanding human footprint.
I am not sure, however, what he might think of this particular example of an endangered, or more accurately extinct, element of the Brooklyn soundscape. I for one will miss this sound dearly. I am wrtiing about the mysteriously vibrating signpost, the Talking Pole of Willoughby Street in Fort Greene Brooklyn.*
*It’s worth mentioning that this name was entirely invented by myself.
Making a Record (Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald) centers around a series of four interviews the artists conducted in 2009 with gemologist and jewelry designer Karen L. Davidson, talking about the stones used to record her voice. The artists made lithic tools from the four gemstones and etched a series of unique lathe-cut dub plates of each interview. Each of the four gemstone styli were given to Karen to use as elements in four pieces she designed. These handmade pieces are composed of the stylus, crystal slices or stones in their natural states, cut gems and 22k gold. Each of the four pieces can be worn as a pendant.
Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Pierre Huyghe, Marina Warner and Jamieson Webster were invited by the artists to listen to the records and wear the pendants, exhibiting them for varied lengths of time. The information contained on the records was transmitted through casual conversations and occurrences that took place during their daily lives. A record of these instances has been contributed by each individual.
“In terms of speed and the breadth of material now accessible to anyone in the world, this is really revolutionary,” says audio curator Greg Budney, describing a major milestone just achieved by the Macaulay Library archive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. All archived analog recordings in the collection, going back to 1929, have now been digitized and can be heard at www.MacaulayLibrary.org – from Cornell University’s Tumblr
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“For HEARD•NY, artist Nick Cave will transform Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall with a herd of thirty colorful life-size horses that will peacefully “graze” and periodically break into choreographed movement accompanied by live music by two harpists. The project, which is open to the public free of charge, is presented by Creative Time and MTA Arts for Transit as part of a series of events celebrating the centennial of Grand Central.”
In the course Sound Matters,John Roach (faculty in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons the New School for Design) asked his students to consider the transformative act of recording and the way that it alters the reception of sound. The two projects 2pm Diaries and Reduced Listening encouraged students to be attentive not only to the varied qualities of sound, but also the way that sound can play a role in the understanding of time, and (if that doesn’t sound lofty enough) to the often unregarded aspects of daily sonic experience.
Project One – The 2PM Diaries In this project, students used handheld recorders and became generators of media. Because sound, like video is a temporal medium, students were asked to record at the same time every day (2:00 PM) and for the same duration (2 minutes). How does the act of documenting impact the perception of time? What do the recorded results represent for the recordist? For the listener? (Big thanks to Craig Dongoski whose projects inspired this project)
The act of recording, pointing a microphone at the world, can sometimes be an empowering act. It can connect you in a new way to the sounds around you. Ironically that comes through a mediating device (in this case a Zoom audio recorder), but like adjusting the lights to see something with more clarity, a recording device can sometimes snap things into focus and make you aware of sounds that you might have otherwise ignored. – from the 2PM Diaries project description
Project Two – Reduced Listening
Following up on the 2PM Diaries, students are asked to consider Michel Chion’s three modes of listening by recording short sounds in their immediate environment that could be considered in isolation as “sound objects”
“Acousmatic sound draws our attention to sound traits normally hidden from us by the simultaneous sight of the causes—hidden because this sight reinforces the perception of certain elements of the sound and obscures others. The acousmatic truly allows sound to reveal itself in all its dimensions.” – – Michel Chion
Instructions
Record 20 sounds, no longer that 10 seconds each.
Imagine someone else listening to the sound out of context.
What are sounds that generate interest when isolated from their source? Experiment, listen closely for examples inside your own home, explore the refrigerator, the cupboards, etc.
The Edits After a number of weeks of recording, students were given guidelines to create sound edits with their 2pm recordings. Each recording must use a word drawn from a class-generated pool of nouns, verbs and adjectives, as a prompt. Some limitations were: one minute in length. Use only 2PM files and reduced listening files as a source. No effects. Only edits, volume adjustments, and multitracking. One track must combine 2pm recordings with the Reduced Listening recordings.
Create one edit based on a Noun (building, sidewalk, drum, gum, television) Create one edit based on a Verb (scatter, crash, hum, drop, chase) Create one edit based on an Adjective that is not sound based (scary, repulsive, hopeless, acidic)
Empty by Sarah Marshall [:59]
Creak by Aleen Montchal [1:11]
Horn by Veine Bartos [1:03]
Archival by Gabriella D’Amato [2:11]
The Mashup
In addition to the 2PM edits, the 286 reduced listening files were played randomly through 2 instances of the Max patch Gravitas Phrase Generator
Reduction Collage [13:07]
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