Category: Introduction To Sound Arts

Longplayer is a 1000-year-long musical composition curated by founding member of The Pogues, Jem Finer. It has been playing continuously since the start of the year 2000, and is designed to play without any interruption or repetition until the final moments of the year 2999.

I found the experience of Longplayer to be quite entrancing as I was constantly being pulled into a dream like state every time I closed my eyes and focused on the piece. An interesting aspect of this installation is that the score will always live on as through 6 ‘simple’ algorithms, the whole piece has already been calculated. Unless the score is somehow destroyed. I’m definitely interested to keep note of Longplayers existence throughout my life as over time I expect my hearing to change.

Something that came as a surprise to me was the cost of upkeep inside of the Trinity Buoy Wharf lighthouse. It costs about £100 a day resulting in a cost of £36,544 a year. This is surprising as this instalment is only for visual and educational purposes. The score is in fact stored in various forms, such as oral, digital and paper.

Full quote:

“The understanding that art brings with it the possibility to address the world, beyond an abstract or elusive category, can be seen to gain significance throughout the latter part of the twentieth century in the form of “site-specific practice” of the late 1960s and 1970s and subsequent forms of contextual practice.”

Paraphrased version:

LaBelle notes (2006, p.xi) that in the late 20th century, the idea that art has the power to engage with the world became more explicit. This is shown in the emergence of “site-specific practise” during the late 1960s and 1970s and following forms of contextual practices. LaBelle, 2006. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.

A famous example of post-modern sound art is 4’33 by John Cage, created in 1952. In this piece, the performer sits at a piano without playing it for the entire duration of the piece. Instead of traditional music, the audience is subjected to the ambience of the space where its being performed.

4’33 challenges traditional notions of music and the role of a composer and performer. It encourages the audience to pay attention to the sonic space, making everyday noises a part of the experience. This piece reflects ideas of post-modernism by breaking away from established norms and exploring new ways of expression.

This piece interests me due to the subject of chance and the inclusion of the performance space and its audience. It leaves lots of room for experimentation while staying true to the original concept, as the choice of room and audience will make up the majority of the context of the piece.

In this piece, Lucier recorded himself narrating a text, he then replays it back into the room and re-records it. Repeating this process transformed the original recording of the text into a unique sonic texture. This was due to the resonant frequencies of the room.

In relation to modernity, this piece embraced the use of experimentation and broke away from typical conventions of the late 1960s art and music scene. This is seen in his exploration of acoustic space.

This piece interests me because of how accessible the process of re-producing it is. I’m interested in experimenting with different sonic spaces and using the technique of playing back recordings into themselves to create an abstract soundscape.

Improvisation:

Improvisation is always new and leaves chance to decide the journey of the song. I enjoy the organic and unexpected sounds and that the outcome is somewhat out of my control. My creative process primarily consists of sitting down and experimenting informally with ideas through a stream of consciousness.

On-Screen:

I have always loved the art of composing music for films and media; I’m most interested in the correlation between sound and what’s happening on screen. I feel that my workflow benefits from the use of a brief. As the majority of my work is constructed from improvisation, I feel that I often need direction to inspire me.

Performance:

My musical background began in the early years of high school when I started a band with a few classmates. Performing is an aspect of sound arts that I am most confident in. Being given the opportunity to perform around the country gives me the chance to constantly develop this skill. Watching live performances by bands that inspire me such as the Talking Heads (Stop Making Sense) and Radiohead fuel my desire to practise all areas of performance, most notably stage presence and the ability to inspire an audience.

During my early life, I was always being subjected to loud and ferocious guitar music through the influence of my parents and siblings’ particular taste at the time. Consisting of lots of disco, Damien Rice, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. The things that stick out to me the most in music are the use of unusual techniques in both composition and overall sonic characteristics. I’ve become so interested in breaking down the ways in which I can make my instruments sound unrecognizable but melancholic through the use of effects processing, sampling and building big walls of sound. 

Over the years I have developed an interest in composing for films. This interest has been fuelled by the work of Jonny Greenwood from his mind bending guitar trickery to his well crafted soundscapes and demonstrations of atonality, sincerity, darkness and how to clash sounds. 

To me, sound arts is the ability to curate and take sounds from their initial source to build new associations with the songs and sounds we surround ourselves in. I want to develop my understanding of practical spaces, engineering sounds, designing my own effects pedals, building and breaking down microphones and to find new and innovative ways to destroy and warp sounds for conceptual practises.