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]

Film-festival. Beer. Olives

The film festival has begun and of course it was time to end my two days of sobriety by going to the opening at Järntorget.

Contrary to my friends opinions, I found that most people in there were very pretty. In a we-look-good-and-we-know-it sort of way. It was also very crowded, so I set about drinking myself into the mindset of a bowling pin – I wouldn’t mind wobbling about and being pushed as much, was the idea.

It’s a strange thing. The promises of sleezy and (on my part) slightly flabby sex turned out to be nothing more than another sweet lie told to me by my friend the alcohol in order that it could mingle with more of his beer friends in my gut.

Sanity preveiled though, and at two o’clock Anna, Mateusz, Anna and Olle (AMAO) took a cab home where Mateusz cooked late-night pasta and proceeded with kicking Olle in the proverbial nuts at Xbox.

Then sleep. Good old fashion lonely, cold, sleep. bu-hu. and so on.

First post! W00+!

So, well, yes, I am just now trying out the new WordPress blog system, and I’ve had a lovely ten hours of repetitive banging the mouse against the screen, my fist against the keyboard and my head against two different walls, but it’s working more or less.

The blog on Yelah.net was taken down by some evil script-kiddie, and I’m not sure if all my wonderful prose, poetry and bile was backed up (No it wasn’t. If anyone has any backup of that stuff, I’d be happy to post it here). Oh well, might as well start over fresh.

So, starting things off easily (of course I’ll start out easily, I’ve fiddled with so much PHP for the last days it’s insane. Insane mostly cause I know no PHP at all and do it out of spite) I’ll just post an image of some coconut pumpkins I saw in Konsum a couple of weeks ago. In an ideal world I’d post it directly from my cellphone, but what the hell, I haven’t gotten that function to work yet.

So I’ll just leave it at that and go drink beer.

2009 Update: I really don’t know where that coconut pumpkin disappeared to. Prolly wanished in one of the annual server switches. I still get hits on that search term, so it’s kinda a pity. Not that this blog focuses on coconut pumpkins, but still, traffic is traffic, right?