Sound course: Coarse sounds in my head.

I missed the last week of the sound course, and this week we’re back at HDK – I missed the first half hour and never got the name of the Stockholmian chap that was presenting his work. It had something to do with creating sounds for commercial installations (think event-based marketing and added consumer experience stuff).

This could all have been fine and well; It’s always interesting to hear how advertising agencies make us drool like oh so many retarded Pavlovian dogs. Problem is that we’re supposed to do something as well. Which is the point in the lecture where I dart off (in the cover of lunch – I am still rather polite about things. or, well, i try) to buy sushi and write this post.

Except some odds and ends I doodled in the notebook, i also did this.

Don’t know if the sound that my lonely felt pens made in the silent classroom counts towards an performative sound art installation, but give me a day or two an I’ll draw up a theory around it. Or not, it would be rather boring.

Anywho. The people in the class are nice enough, and the course description is nice enough, but I can’t get my head around what the hell I’m supposed to do. On one hand, I like the freedom to do whatever I’m interested in, on the other hand I’m not interested in working with other people. Seriously, it’s nothing personal (most often i should add. some people are just idiots) I’m just not cut out to brainstorm in a group to come up with an idea of lowest common denominator.

Party party

Here’s my theory on having fun. If you’re trying too hard, you’re not going to succeed because your expectations are way up high in the collage-movie-stage of fun.

We had some people over in the studio last weekend, and even though all were nice and such, there was this anticipation in the air. It took two minutes for someone to react even when I put on some Mochipet, and I had done it out of spite (I do like Mochipet very much, but most of the people I hang around don’t appreciate his music. Not at a party anyway). That’s how distracted people were.

Sexual frustration is a big thing at context & media right now. Most people are engaged in oral sex all the time, and it’s getting to me. (Yes, this is a so called pun, and by oral sex I mean that they are talking about sex a lot. I lifted this pun from Terry Pratchett, who is talking to me all my waking hours thanks to the never-ending supply of his audiobooks on the pirate bay.)

Way too much to do. Managed to get some filming done a week ago, and had a three-dee course as well (jhezuz it’s a mess to play with 3 dimensions). I’ll be posting some pics of the masterpieces I put together. Or maybe not, they were kinda crap.

Sound art, performance, perserverence and endurance

My new years resolution (Technically, I came up with this a couple of days later, when Anna asked if she should sign me up for a reality tv show) was to say yes to things rather than my hitherto standard replies no, hell no and the occasional how much would you pay me to perform that?.

So I joined some of my newly made friends from the sound course to Musikens hus here in Gothenburg to watch three bands have an improv night.

I’ve always had the nagging suspicion that “improv night” meant “you have to be a musician to enjoy this, ’cause ours is a music for the brains, and you have an oh so tiny brain”. I wasn’t totally proven wrong.

I came in late for the first group, a three man jazz combo that played with a lot of umpfh. The band after that was called ‘Boogie’ (what’s the matter with the bad taste in naming things here in Gothenburg? Two days ago I listened to a classical music quartett called Kvart i ett which is a pün or play on words, meaning ‘a quarter to one’ and sounding like ‘kvartett’! Don’t your sides just split in despair over this?) and consisted of a drummer and a singer (and assorted bells and whatnots). When they didn’t improvise it sounded kinda like Coco rosie, which is double-plus good, and when they improvised it sounded like improvisation and bells and whatnots, which is un-good.

Anywho. It was nice and my simple mind could appreciate the beats and the singing. Short break, I go smoke, finish my beer and sit back down, and listen to 25 minutes of this:

[audio:Recording3.mp3]

And this sort of combined three elements of stuff I really can’t deal with:
* Performance
* Live show
* Experimental sound art

I don’t like performances on principle. It has something to do with my gut reaction of “what the hell made you think this was a good idea and how come no-one stopped you?“. Then again, I can’t watch embarrassing moments on TV either, so it’s probably just me being squeamish and such.

I don’t like concerts ’cause it’s so seldom that the music coincides with my fancy at the moment (When I’m sulking, I’d like to have Nick Cave standing by, but at other times I probably wouldn’t appreciate him as much), so most often I’m just not in the mood.

Finally, I’ve listened enough to experimental sound art to know that what they were doing had been done in the 70s and was abandoned because after the dust settled all you were left with was a bunch of noise that could only be appreciated while on drugs or heavy theoretical academia. Yes some people can probably relate to it. Yes it sorta pushing the boundries of how we interpret sounds and musical narration.

It’s just not very interesting. And it really doesn’t matter that those who are playing are very talented within their fields – There are a whole bunch of people who are really good at what they are doing, but what they are doing is shit.

Anywho. The three bands are going on tour. They hit Oslo next, and then Stockholm.

Avant garde falafel run

When you’re used to working on a few pieces of art-produce a year, there’s something liberating with getting a very short time limit and goal for a production. I’m taking a full time sound-art course this semester (apart from my regular full time studies at context & media), and we’re hopping around different faculties and trying stuff out.

This week we got divided into three groups, each of which had two days to produce a work according to instructions. Me and a music student (the first person named ‘Vanessa’ that I’ve met in real life) were supposed to put together a walk. That is, a audio-guided physical walk for people to listen to and walk/obey/experience/yawn at.

We went the low-brow way and came up with Falafel run: A sound thing for two people – One of whom is sitting in a couch reading, and the other is going to buy falafel. The two have phone contact through the whole thing, and the idea is that others who are listening to this are gonna follow the same route and end up with two falafels.

I wouldn’t call this a ‘good’ work, but rather ‘fun’ or ‘veering in an amusing direction’ maybe. if you’d like to give it a listen (or a try, if you’re in Gothenburg), just click below. If you’d like to download the files, they are here: www.monocultured.com/audio/falafel_run.zip

This is the walker
[audio:A-mixdown.mp3]

This is the sitter
[audio:B-mixdown.mp3]