Great documentary (1)

I've just returned from watching a great new documentary titled Soundwalkers directed by my friend, video director and sound researcher Raquel Castro. An intensely and splendidly researched and illustrated work, beautifully and masterfully crafted.

Its density turns it almost into a fairly comprehensive catalogue of the entire repertoire of the acoustic ecology field. But Raquel's documentary also touches, almost imperceptibly, upon the political dimension of this theme, an issue in my view rarely, if ever, present but desperately needed in the AE debate.

For those of you interested in acoustic ecology I strongly recommend that you watch this documentary wherever you have the chance to catch it. 

Check out the web version here.

Fragments of a mutant reality

Hearing is believing

My wife took her car to the auto-shop today. The mechanic asked her what seemed to be the trouble with the car and she explained that she thought that one of the cylinders was not working. "Maybe a faulty spark plug," she said. "You'll have to start the engine," he replied, "I have to see" and he pointed to his ear. She started the engine and he immediately -- and I mean, immediately!-- noticed that there was a problem with at least one cylinder.

She thought for a moment that this was a precipitated gesture but later he repeated: "I can hear through the exhaust tube if the cylinders are all working properly.”

Hearing is believing.

Not long ago I read that new technicians at the French Citröen factory are trained to distinguish a “vocabulary” of over 20 sounds that identify multiple engine malfunctions. 

Feeling alive

A friend told me an interesting story about a relative who was in the intensive care unit of a local hospital. He remained connected to all sorts of noisy medical equipment. According to his testimony the different noises of that equipment helped him feel that he was alive, as each specific noise corresponded to a certain organ that was functioning properly. Listening to the noises thus meant that the flame was still on. 

Standing dead basses

The aura of music

I recently watched an interview on TV with the Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache. Among many other interesting issues, Celibidache discusses the problem of recording versus concert. He dismissed the former in favor of the latter based on the uniqueness and unrepeatability of the live performance. It is interesting that Celibidache uses a recorded video to manifest his thoughts on this issue.

This is of course a variation of concept of aura that Walter Benjamin explored in his famous article "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (if you can read Portuguese I wrote a paper on this; you can get it here.) Celibidache is not the only musician I've heard addressing this problem.

The question I asked in my article is basically the following: to what extent can we talk discuss the concept of aura when we evaluate works such as John Chowning's pioneering 'Turenas', a piece conceived and produced digitally that does not exist outside of the digital matrix? In other words, how is 'Turenas' physically present? And is it possible to obtain a unique and unrepeatable work that is conceived for a medium that allows infinite and perfect repeatability?

Where is, under these terms. the aura of the digital culture? Does Benjamin's concept make any sense, particularly in this day and age? 

Deep time of media

It has been some time since I have learned so much from a single book. If you are a student of media, expression of thought or the scientific origins of its associated technologies, this book Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice) by Siegfried Zielinski is a must for you.

Listen

There's one particular aspect of the creative output of the artists that leads to what I have seen described as perceiving reality through their eyes. Under this principle, when we admire a picture by a certain painter or read a novel by a certain writer we are perceiving reality through this particular painter or writer's sensitivity. Sometimes this might not necessarily be a privilege... 

But what is the reality depicted by a creative musician or a composer? If we can depict the complexity of reality through art (probably one of Art's eternal goals) what is then the "listenable" dimension of reality (this is a book yet to be written...) and how can we portray it? The problem is that what we can perceive of this portray or the "listenable" dimension of reality reaches us through... listening.

We cannot see it.

And in this day and age of easy and carefree listening, of course, we are probably missing not only an important part of our surroundings but also a great deal of what sound artists and composers senses attempt to convey.

Yi-Fu Tuan

Yi-Fu Tuan has always been one of my favorite authors. It is both a pleasure, a privilege and a permanent inspiration to read his work. I suppose that only if I'd had the chance of being one of his students would I have felt more privileged. I became familiar with Tuan's work through my friend João P. Leão and also through him I learned about his, then, newly created website. While I was reading the latest of his "Dear Colleague's Letters" I wondered what should deserve more praise: his scholarship, his provocative thought, the ever surprising originality of his themes or the generosity he shows in sharing all this with the rest of us through this wonderful medium. 

Portrait of the artist as a shadow of himself

Witch hunt

Color splash

Erudition

A discussion on erudite music vs. non-erudite contemporary music is (would still be) interesting today. Can computer music, for example, ever become erudite computer music? Or was it "erudite" from the inset...? Computers and music software are ubiquitous and the discussion seems more than ever necessary. I will probably return to it sometime. In brief, does the expression "erudite music" equals lesser known or even obscure music? Or is "erudite music" simply a construction geared towards keeping other musics (even a few quite erudite ones...) out of the "erudite" realm. Or is the expression simply a way of encouraging, legitimating and promoting the "iconoclastic" behavior of people like André Rieu, the Three Tenors and others...? 

Slight detour

Grabbing the suns