shapes for sound | inspiration

Julien Dutertre

I really love this piece by Julien Dutertre, which was featured in the show "Cette année-là" by the Villa Arson graduating class of 2010. The exhibition catalogue is available here.

From what I understand, the record only had silence recorded on it. The needle was made to dig into the recording, gradually scratch it over and over again as the record plays. 

 

Julien has a similar work on his website: 

Sans titre n°08 , 2009
trepied, saphir , vinyle, moteur, contrôleur atmel, servo .

Un vinyle sur lequel n’est enregistré que du silence souffre de la lecture inflige?e par des bras de lecture robotisés. Ils viennent en détruire les sillons et créent ainsi la composition de la pièce. Cette dernière se cre?e en fonction du temps d’activation et des conditions exterieures. Le vinyle devient donc archive d’une monstration. La mémoire de sa propre création. La piéce sonore est achevée à la désactivation du dispositif.

(photos from http://www.juliendutertre.com/)

Steina and Woody Vasulka, Studies (1970-1971)

During a recent visit to the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna, I was able to check out Changing Channels, Art and Television 1963 - 1987, an excellent exhibition of artistic reflection on the use of mass-media television from the 1960s to the 1980s.

(photo by flickr user --m--)

One of the works that particularly stuck me was a series of videos by Steina and Woody Vasulka, a couple who were technical pioneers in video art. Their main focus was the use of video as a means of exploring fundamental structures of sound and image production while maximizing the medium's aesthetic potential.

As described in the exhibition booklet, these Studies (1970-1971) are abstract videos resulting from an artistic approach that views the electronic signal itself as both the material and the medium. In doing so, special attention is paid to the interrelation and/or coupling of various levels of video and sound, whose transmission relies on the same technology. Specially developed synthesizers were used to manipulate - independantly and combined - both sound and video.

Extracts of these 6 Studies, as well as numerous other works, can all be viewed on the Vasulkas' website: http://www.vasulka.org/Videomasters/MA_index.html

I really liked the study Descends, because the beautiful abstract forms remind me a lot of some of the graphic shapes I see synesthetically with music -- but the sound associated with this video has quite a different shape, ironically!

  

The ebb and flow of Paris traffic

As part of its new evening series of Friday Lates, the London Transport Museum is staging Sounds of the Suburbs on 6 November. The multi-sensory event, curated by D-Fuse, will also screen a new short by design studio, FL@33, called 8min20sec. 

 The short film is part of an ongoing project by London-based FL@33, the design studio founded by Agathe Jacquillat and Tomi Vollauschek. 

8min20sec (2009), FL@33 vs Mercury Quartet from Tomi Vollauschek on Vimeo.

The DV footage was recorded in Paris, they explain, "at the Place Charles de Gaulle (aka Place de l'Étoile) from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. It offers a bird's-eye view to the exceptionally busy roundabout below, in which the Arc stands." 

The haunting soundtrack accompanying the hypnotic, looping film – which kicks in after about a minute and a half – was composed and performed especially for the video piece by the Mercury Quartet. 

(More information on the project can be found on the FL@33 site, here, which also includes a series of prints). 

8min20sec (2009) will be screened in HD on Friday 6 November at London's Transport Museum as part of the Sounds of the Suburbs late night opening.

Source: Creative Review blog