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!!!1. -- Spaces & Expanses -- (after the essay by Bastien Gallet) {TOC} Around and through places, all hypothetically listening spaces, there are sounding expanses that are played, or fortuitous plays or ambiances; A listening situation is a conglomerate of sites, each revealed by the sounds that stretch until they vanish in time, and in the distance that separates us from them; The expanse of a sound is represented by its spreading in a space; Emissions of sounds remain, most of the time, localized, drawing acoustic perimeters distinguished by reflecting and reverberating surfaces among which, we listeners, are positioned still or mobile; Our listening is established based on the acoustic variations of sound intensity (and expanse) revealing the distances between our listening station and the production of sounds, more or less close by or distant, and also based on the modulated differences stemming from the acoustic extents echoed by the sites; Our listening is made of these permanent acoustic modulations; The sonic ambiance of a place is represented by the endlessly fluctuating entanglement of these spaces in our listening perimeter; sounds, above or below the constantly changing atmosphere of a place, use such reverberations (and echoes and repercussions) in order to be distinguished and build a listening variation; When we select our listening station, we place ourselves in the crossing of acoustic spaces that echo through places and also on our shoulders and our bodies; Our listening is usually confined to rooms and locations possessing acoustics determined by the walls surrounding them as perimeters of reverberation; our music, our shows are generally independent of such spaces; They can be reproduced in any location without taking into account the negligible variations or the distinctive properties of each place, and without consideration of the listeners' positions and courses; Distances are absorbed in order to remain homogeneous and also to set a listening based on the slight variations of intensity whose scale remains widespread whatever the location of the listeners and the spacing between them; The duration of the sounds is also accentuated at the start and at the end of emission between two silences, the silence beforehand and the silence afterwards, both more or less identical and neglected or negligible signatures of the site's acoustics; The common duration between the beginning and the end of a listening indicates the musical duration and the making of music, without any input of the acoustic memory of a place and the soundscape which turn this place into a listening site crossed and traveled through: the listener's position is more or less momentary and a located station of a listening modulated by scales of distance and duration; In this common case, music can overlook such reverberations and the listening is made without mundane acoustics; The listener's station is independent upon his travels and wanderings through the soundscape created by the distances and durations of the incidental and locations of everyday life; Most of the time, distance listening is proscribed and condensed to the commonly accepted average distance in our auditoriums and such average distance rescinds ambiances, remoteness and spacing between the listeners; The allocation of sounds is bound by a “perimeter” in a face-to-face topography (the stage, the audience) and momentarily prescribed to a duration of musical listening: The durations are advisedly determined; The most relevant musical intent would aim to saturate and “watermark“ the place of the music concert which is set on its walls and comfortable acoustics in order to make the listening critical, in other words, to make it distinct from the listening of other resonant, spatial and temporal spaces; Our listening is constant and not only limited to the places dedicated for listening; they relentlessly build circuits and relationships between the soundscape and the places, through our travels and the mobile sounds from our surroundings and sounds played; This creates a shared listening connected to our decisions of making ourselves available to the listening and to point out listening stations to other listeners; Listening refers to offering an undetermined situation, to be assessed together, and such situation creates a circuit, a relationship among us, through the intricate soundscape crossed by us; Listening indicates a critical attention, in other words an attention that reveals the surroundings, the soundscape and durations and suggests a slow down and slowness of our crossing spaces and moments: the attention to the temporary patterns of our time-passing, both individual and collective; When, instead of the built walls of our auditoriums, we use other locations, such as non-prescribed ones or those already existing in our environments, thus we suggest the listening of other spaces and expanses and other variations of the soundscape which, at first, seem too eccentric and unusual for conducive listening; However, then a second dimension of the soundscape appears, extending the music to other locations and acoustics through other methods of acoustic propagation; The first example, that we will not develop here, relates to interrelating distant spaces and locations through the transportation of sounds and suggests a distance and live listening of acoustic spaces initiated by other disconnected locations from our listening position. Such acoustic spaces, purposely tinted by their space of origin, reverberate in our space through the process of electroacoustic diffusion: it is the case of networked music and the networking of acoustic spaces, which create a fabricated soundscape and a simultaneous listening of acoustic spaces (distant spaces as well as the multiple spaces of the listeners) all the while allowing to foresee, through such process, a chain of acoustic and sound pick-ups and feedbacks, through distance transmission and the diffusion of the ambiances and sounds between these spaces, and a chance to create “dubbed” and simultaneous electroacoustic configurations producing a virtual place made of the original locations; Parallel to this example of listening experiences linked to our current apparatuses of sound transmission, a second case is represented by “outdoor” sound expanses created from the undetermined entwinement of surroundings plays and sounds, contextual and fortuitous, using the multiple listening situations of the listeners spread and wandering freely in a site with heterogeneous spaces; Such configuration of concerts and sound and music performances plays upon the variations of distance and acoustic diffusion; in this case, the listening experiences become multiple, differentiated and localized: we need to lead our listening and direct and adjust ourselves in the opportunity presented; However unusual it may seem, we are already familiar with this listening position and come across it everyday as it leads us to “turn the distances and travels in acoustic spaces into instruments of playing situations” and modulate, live, the conditions of our own listening: the social relationship created in the situation of listening together from individual listening locations and experiences creates this common musical moment, the moment of a listening event; Music spreads, outside walls, in the occasional dimensions linked to open spaces and long and slow temporalities: it generates a wandering listening experience in order to explore the various acoustic spaces and extents, as well as the sounds produced creating them, it can be mobile and intently circulate in order to generate variations of intensity and remoteness; Acoustic movements and localizations, associated with the wandering of listening experiences in order to adjust our perception in an open space, lead to a situation of assessing “together”. Decisions are made concerning listening positions (the spaces between sounds and acoustic wakes, reverberations and echoes of the said sounds) and comprehension (seizing) of acoustic moments and spaces; We may not all hear the same thing, even though we recognize or distinguish the source or the cause of a sound transmission; some elements may still not be perceived because they are too remote or “concealed“ and filtered through other spaces; The reason why music becomes a series of sound expanses, besides the unusual acoustic and sound transmissions and spreading in the open space and outdoor open acoustics, relates to its opening up to the mix of ambiances and places and to a “musical transformation” of the social space. In other words, music opens up to an attentive and aiming attitude intensifying our (mutual and individual) consciousness through the listening of what comes to us and the music that we create, fabricate and compose. Extended music, whether it is “outdoor” or, as we mentioned earlier, transmitted through distance and sound transportation and diffusion systems into other remote acoustic spaces, is neither antagonistic or complementary of the music aimed for concert houses (‘Musikhaus’ or ‘Kammermusik’). Both diffuse various facets of the real and are linked to diverse listening experiences, between a directed listening, intended to perceive everything in space (“panacousticon“) and a listening we must direct and adapt, and which will remain, probably partial and wandering, all the while profoundly altering our perception of our environments and our interpretation of the world. The reason why today I wish to explore the conditions of an extended music, through concerts and performances, most of the time improvised, based on minimum saturation and intensity of acoustic spaces (“merging into the surroundings”) and the devices of networked music (or ”telemusic”) or distance listening in which the alien, fortuitous and the “set” interfere through the rebuilding of perceptions of distance and spacing, is because it seems to me that music is linked to the fabrication of listening experiences. One needs to explore and experience this fabrication in order to question our surroundings; The sounds I listened to at Tung O Beach on Lamma island during the Around festival organized by soundpocket, based on my past experiences as a listener of “outdoor“ shows by Akio Suzuki and the work of Kawai Shiu, have haunted me until now. These sounds mix with my thoughts about extended music that I have just developed above. Both artists, each in her own way, collaborate with the environment and experiment with acoustic expanses. {br}{br}
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