History of the sound art as we know it today is undoubtedly intertwined with the history of electronic music. Since recording and editing of the sound became possible, those recordings became a very maluable and in a way, endless source of material for further sonic explorations.
A very interesting example of an early experimental electronic pieces that was composed for 5 speakers is Karlheinz Stockhausen’s: Gesang der Jünglinge (1955/56). It features human choir and electronics, and was originally utilised through 5 speakers located across the concert hall.
I came across Polish Experimental Radio Studio – opened in 1957 in Warsaw, and formally closed in 2004. PRES can now be recognised, among those from Paris, Cologne, and Milan, as one of the first studios devoted to musical experiments in Europe. It was the first such institution established in Eastern Block. During its 47 years of activity, PRES has been responsible for numerous productions important for contemporary music and been the most important cultural institution in Poland, considering the growth of electroacoustic music globally. The studio has become an incubator of the most forward-thinking ideas about sound and music of the twentieth century.
One of the people working in the studio was Eugieniusz Rudnik. Some call him a phono-poet and I think this name is very accurate. He was an engineer who worked with many great composers in Poland and abroad. He started playing with tape recorders because he, as he said in one of the interviews, was bored. He became a pioneer of electro-acustic music in Poland.
His incredible collages of rejected and unwanted sound objects cut out of many different tapes, became symphonies forcing the listeners to experience sound and music differently, revising their ideas about the world and emotions.
His lack of classical music training and great technical knowledge, gave E. Rudnik the ability to make something completely outside musical norms yet extremely original and fresh. He is a great inspiration for me. Here is one of my favourite pieces of Runik called “Gilotyna”
A very popular technique used in musique concrete is repetition. I experimented with it by cropping a 2 bars sample from one of my recorded jamms. I then played it on a loop and added layers of the same sample played in 4 different BPM
In the other example I played one short loop on repeat, changing few parameters on the way to get a bit more texture (I can’t remember what the parameters were)
Architecture and sound
Structure-born sound (traveling through walls, floors, rooms) and airborne sound (when we stand on front of the loud speaker).
sound art is concerned with
examining not only all apparent sounds of the environment, but all unapparent sounds as well
Sound and privacy
There is something unsettling in a thought of using other peoples voice recordings. Picking up peoples mobile phones conversations may be a bit much, but also opens up a conversation about privacy of the sound. What is private and what is public?
Do I have a right to record people as they pass by me on the street, or the sounds coming from outside my bedroom window? I live opposite the school and most days the noise is just unbearable, why wouldn’t I then have a right to record those disturbing voices and use them somehow? I work a lot with field recordings, and they often include random peoples voices. I tend to edit those sounds quite heavily and give them another meaning, therefore i abslove myself from all the guilt..
First recording is a part of a filed recording i made while walking ariound Peckham.
The other recording was inspired by the art work of Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) who did numerous recordings and performances picking up people’s cell phone conversations using a scanner,
which he would mix in with electronic music. I used an old walkman tunning radio and run it through volca modular
I left filed recorder on the window sill and captured the moment when kids are being picked up by their parents after the classes. I modified it using korg monotron ribbon mini synthesizer.
