Update

I've been working all day and night on grant proposals.

Noise Education Discussion, now with bold

Way back before leaving for Ohio, Ian and I discussed the Noise in Schools section of the thesis.
We are considering preschool as our first concern. Later on, the focus will increase in age until we get to the teenager section. For them, we will need to instill a digestable amount of noise history and prehistory. Cambrian, Forungian noise sea creatures, etc. Trilobites and Conalaria as musicians.

insert: I feel everything is related to my thesis. the beauty and harmonic vibration of the natural histories seems to coincide with the information inherent in musical noises. There are intersections everywhere.

Anyways, we made a list of possible instruments to teach (preschool):

1. Conventional Instruments - Trumpets, drums, etc.
2. Guitar Pedals - Ian has a better handle on this stuff
   
3. Computer - mouse, see built stuff
   
4. Theremin - Also provided by Ian.
   
5. Built stuff - arduino board, dance pad, etc.
6. Tuning Forks - suggested by Ian & Sarah
   

and Ian mentioned this and the people at the preschool loved the idea:

Video?

I can handle it but I am still working as to how to incorporate the idea into the thesis.
Think of this: children dancing and controling video feedback as performers and as audience members. This could relate back to the fluxus post along the length of Intermedia in combining the forms on the local level (happening) and the global level (the film).

Oscillators and miscommunicated TV's,
It's not a bug, it's a feature.

One Little World Apart

in the meantime,
OTHER PEOPLE HAVE SAID:

"So I was in the Airport this morning, coming back from a trip. As I was walking through the terminal in the morning I was thinking about how amazingly beautiful airports are. Not just on a solely aesthetic and technological standpoint, but more in the sense of what they represent in our culture. They're like hyper intesified microcosms of our daily... Read More lives. There are all of these perfect strangers all sharing this personal impersonal experience, people saying goodbye for maybe the last time, people saying hello for the first time. Some people may never see the cities they've just came to/left from every again. I love it when real life becomes surreal. And I love your band, and it's name....and I think I get it."

"your show felt like meditating last night

it was nice."


thank you lovely audience.

Meantime

Dear readers,

I need to figure out how to exactly put what I'm going to say.
A lot has happened in the past few whiles and I need to sort out my thoughts.

Expect much!

Transmodality

*This space intentionally left blank


I suppose posting at 2:30 in the morning isn't the best way to update a blog. (edit: especially whent it takes me an hour to write a single entry)

Friday night after writing the two blog entries and responding to emails,
I saw Our Brother The Native : http://www.myspace.com/ourbrotherthenative
They dealt with distortions through various pedals and sources creating waves rushing against slow gratifying beats billowing airflows huddling echoes of landscapes together. Surgical dancing guitar work, clarinet, delay pedals, goat toes, samplers, electric organ. Whirly.

But information,
Take it / distort it / study

create:
a viable language of non-language //
embracing lost artifacts in methods of translations

*

see: http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/sine-wave-speech/

Rubin, N., Nakayama, K. and Shapley, R. research the perception of sine-wave degradation of voices. The degradations are created by signalling out the formant frequencies and synthesizing waves in the center between each formant:


I recommend you check out the samples on the website shown to understand the audio manipulations. To quote the site directly:

"As you listen to these four examples, you may find that you get better at understanding the sine-wave speech first time around. This is an example of perceptual learning. Having heard several examples of sine-wave speech, your perceptual system has tuned into this form of distortion, so as to be able to perceive new sine-wave speech sentences more clearly."

*

Simply,
The noise musican has the sonically educative power to expand the naive ear to hear sound anew, within themselves and their community.

Later: Saturday research.

Visuals/ Feedback/ Spinning Vortex Kittens

I have been VJ-ing a lot lately. I've taken the identity of VJ Goldstein. I made a promo with spinning cats in a starfield. There are also lots of footage that remind me of Colleen Lynn Cox's work of archived ancient video that I'm implementing. I'm using Isadora on the laptop, VCR's, VHS Cameras, and a pretty nice video mixer from the school.

There's a link I feel with the prospects of live video mixing with the thesis. It exists separately but with an underlying hum. There's the concept of feedback I use with the mixer. Either I aim the camera at the screen or I plug the mixer back into itself. This builds on some sort of fractal video oscillation that yields out interesting colors and patterns. The results are usually trippy or sick. I will post videos of the results when I have produced them in a cleaner setting.

Feedback is a concept I hope to explain in the video documentary as it is very important in audio generation in noisy circumstances. I have to ask this: Where are the points where audio feedback and video feedback intersect? Can they be used to define one another?

Snagging the last cup of pie at whole foods

This week has been a little harder as I'm sure at times the empty white pages of a diary can speak more than words. I will let it speak for itself as it is unrelated to the project.

I have been buzzing the idea of Fluxus while washing my hands in my friend's restroom.
Quoting Wiki on Fluxus:

1. Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.
2. Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.
3. Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.
4. Fluxus is fun. Humour has always been an important element in Fluxus.

see: http://www.ubu.com/sound/fluxus.html

I'm remembering the work about a tour-group that took the audience around Museums to show ceiling fixtures, lights, fire extinguishers, etc.

This focus on the mundane/ hidden/ overlooked objects as (soundful) artistic creation lays in the background of my video documentary. It might behoove me to reference fluxus ideology to better explain the subconscious sounds of our surroundings. Of course, I will have to research further than Wiki.

Joey will arrive soon. I should write a nice blog about him in the coming week as he is important to the synthesis in technical aesthetics.
I've rented out the HVX 200 and we will do tests.
I have created a shot list - a rather poetic looking one at that.
We will discuss the metaphor and beauty of tone generation.

LIST:

Distorted/ Glitch Body and truth
Feedback and TV
Instrument Set up
and more.

Noise Classes Elaborated

My previous one or two posts mentioned teaching noise to children and my progress with that concept. I also have a textbook about education psychology with wonderful things to consider thanks to my good friend Rachel. I will go into more detail about that later on.

To answer feelgood's comment, I hope to film the children while the noise moments happen. I choose this for several reasons:

1. To educate the children, to get to them before they learn the harsh realities of so-called musical standards that become creatively oppresive.

2. To set the audience in the child's perspective just like children to the new forms of audio. As the team and I find a viable language in its simplicity and concrete nature, the audience will too learn in effort to shake off their predispositions.

3. To place more respect on children by listening to their voices in our worldly creative pool.

Is that my cat or my dad?

I spoke into my phone several ideas. Let me tell you them.

Theo Jansen was really inspiring - particularly when he demonstrated his system of "liars."
Consider three liars in a room X, Y and Z. Each input they received, they must output the inverse.

X says Yes! to Y,
Y says No! to Z,
Z says Yes! to X.
X says No! to Y
and so on.

He used this to demonstrate minds and the transfer of information within a cell body.

I wonder about this with the schematics of a tone generation device, or a synthesizer
and whether or not a metaphor or narrative can be derived in a creative way.

I thought of people with lightbulb-heads holding hands and blinking at each other.

I spoke with my father about this. We are thinking it through. Hopefully there will be an exchange during breakfast tomorrow morning!

Consultation

Wednesday Night:

Approached preschool with Ian - pitched idea of Noise Jam Sessions.
Ian showed pictures from Poundhouse. They loved the idea. Schedules need to be checked.

Ian's instruments are childproof but mine currently are not.
I will have to collaborate to make childproof instruments. The free-duino board I ordered a while ago will come in handy in this portion. My bandmate and friend, Brendan is currently outputting physical sound interfaces and will be a great partner in this section. John Marshall & Rodemer will also be useful in this area. Fellow friend, Tiffany Lambert offered to assist me with laser cutting for skinning the machines.

Studio Update Start-time

Tuesday Night:

Airport (band = Ronen Goldstein, Ian Fulcher & Brendan Coates)
Session: 25- minute performance applying direct feed from Obama's acceptance speech into noise-space. Idea brought on by Ian and directly manipulated under his control in conjunction with effect pedals, chaos-pad, theremin, morse-code machine and trumpet. Xylophone was out but not used. I was playing keyboard, mic-feedback, drum machine into feedback mixer. Brendan played guitar with computer and physical interface that he recently developed. Guitar was out of tune and B deemed it unusable. B mentioned computer issues yet still enjoyed the set.

Radio became freeing empowering fountain when intertwined with feedback drum machines and crowd cheers as space became transportable and delivered to my living room/ main space.

Dozen + 1/2 crowd present at Obama/ Airport performance.
The method was an odd flourish. Noise + Patriotism. Patriotism revisioning.
Feedback control, complete control of chaotic sound - embracing/ working with machine ghosts oscillation addressing past/present harmonies.

Opened by Laurel & Halolos and opened for Skeletons and Kings of all Cities.
They were all wonderful.