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Twice-told tales Interview by Luke Duncalfe L: What was your method for sampling these sounds, and where were they originally situated? Are there stories behind the sound? N: The source recordings were made with a consumer grade mini-disk and DV camcorder. I often have one or the other with me, particularly when traveling. My practice includes video, sound, and interactive works, so these areas tend to hybridize for me. Sometimes I make a video recording of what happens to be located in acoustically interesting space and later find myself editing those happenstance images into a visual piece. The converse of this occurs with the sound work too when I find sounds on video recordings that were originally made because of a visual interest in something. I often listen for or simply notice acoustically interesting situations and seem drawn to sound-scapes that are affected by the physical attributes of architecture or landscape. I'm also very responsive to both human and animal utterance, sounds from nature, and machine and urban hum. Some of my most favorite recordings are moments when sounds of these various types occur together. The sounds for twice-told tales are taken from my collection of personal recordings and have had little post-production processing. If there is a story in twice-told tales it is diaristic, I have vivid memories of the moments when each of these sounds occurred. L: The work is derived from a text that treats sound as a solid entity, that has a physical base similar to our elements of the periodic table. I'm reminded of scientific alterations of light, where a lasered ray can be slowed down to a sub-c speed. What were some of the ideas Kahn attributed to his story of frozen sound, abstract or real? N: Your mention of scientific alterations is really on target. I am very influenced by scientific representations and tend to view them as dense constructions rather than something absolute. The writings of Jean Painleve resonate with my thinking here. There's a good anthology of his essays titled "Science is Fiction". The title screamed at me from the shelf in the bookstore when I first saw it. I came across the frozen sound reference while reading Douglas Kahn's book "Noise, Water, Meat". He relates an episode of Francois Rabelais's "Gargantua and Pantagruel" that describes sailors at sea hearing a strange collection of sounds. They make landfall to investigate and find the sounds from a winter battle scene held as frozen lumps on the ground. It's spring and the sounds are thawing but are now heard out of the original temporal sequence. Because of the time shuffle the sailors couldn't connect the sounds to the events when heard blindly at sea. I really was struck with this notion when first reading it and really didn't know exactly why. It seems to relate to the way speech uses sound to represent something often at the expense of forgetting that a name is not the thing named. This forgetting makes for many lost opportunities to be in a sound rather than it's wrapper. It also risks reducing experience to comfortable packages that fall short of what's happening around us in other ways too. So something about these thoughts have lead so far to twice-told tales and some other recent video work. L: The interface for the work is particularly interesting, and the way in which you have provided for the interaction and re-sequencing to occur. What were your intentions in realising it the way you have? N: Well the interfaces for my reactive works are grounded in a desire to make something function without words. I particularly want the web work to be accessible to people regardless of their primary spoken language. I want children that can't yet read to also be able to enter the work. My daughter was a great help in that regard with developing the interface for twice-told tales. She's grown quickly since then and now reads well but I still value her responses and opinions as much as those of anyone else. In addition to this the effort here was to allow a composition to unfold in various ways within a simple set of parameters-- to let the sounds happen in a small way related to how they originally occurred without an overwhelming imposed structure. L: The field of digital recording and performance has been increasingly changing the field of audio art. What does it mean when 'real life' sounds are translated into binary? Do you imagine they reference the analogue or digital forms more, or are these distinctions unimportant? N: I see digital and analog as being two sides of the same page. They are intertwined and I certainly don't view them in opposition to each other. My experience of a digital sound recording is analog. I hear the analog of the pressure wave pushed by the speakers. I can't hear bits. In my studio I use a combination of analog and digital tools. One of my primary instruments is a small modular synth put together from modules found on ebay mixed with a few units I was forced to buy new. I also use a tube ring modulator/wave shaper. And everything I produce passes through a tube amplifier. I don't use these tools because I'm a purist or luddite but because I like the way the sound made with them fills my ears. At the same time I can't imagine working without non-linear, non-destructive digital editing and sound processing tools. I follow with what seems to work best for what I am trying to do. I also enjoy finding and using unexpected sounds that occur because of collisions of digital processes. Those things that aren't suppose to happen but do can sometimes be amazing if I take the time to really listen to them. L: New Zealand has a very active community of Audio Artists. What are some of the activities in New York that would be particularly interesting to people from over this side of the globe? N: Well I currently live in rural western NY state so not much here but there are some places in New York City I can share. Some of these are not sound specific organizations but do offer sound works as part of the mix of things supported. EYEBEAM: |
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