LISTENING: SOUNDSCAPES / SOUND ART





Important: You must listen to the samples using headphones in order to hear the binaural effect.

BINAURAL AUDIO SAMPLES


Charles Morrow & Alban Bassuet - Queen Bee
Charles Morrow & Bruce Miller - Comet, Fire, Water
Charles Morrow and Klaus Schoening - Child in Mother
Charles Morrow & Hugues de la Plaza - Train
CMA Studios Production (Charles Morrow/Matt Stine) - Charles Ives
CMA Studios Production (Charles Morrow/Matt Stine) - Waterfall
Katia Tiutiunnik - Dumuzi, Priest and King
Vlada Tomova - Snoshti e Dobra Do Sna Sedela
Phillippe Vandendriessche - Motorcycle
The llustrous Company (Martyn Ware/Vince Clarke) - Madonna 3D Remix
Buster Williams (prod. & arr. by Charles Morrow) - Take the A Train

SAMPLES FROM THE KITCHEN (FIRST SOUNDCUBE, 2004)


Olivia Block - heaving to
DB Henderson - Requiem for a Penny
Shelley Hirsch - Please Stop Scratching That Gash!
The Illustrous Company & Cathy De Monchaux - Sweetly the Air Flew Overhead
The Illustrous Company & Nicola Green - Laugh Out Loud
Miya Masaoka - Inner Koto
Steve McCaffery - Cappucino
Charles Morrow - Alive I was silent and in death I do sing - Wood Viola Violin
Phill Niblock - Sethwork
Scanner - A Natural Love
Michael J. Schumacher - Still
Stephen Vitiello - Cinematic, with Crashing Roof
Pamela Z - Syrinx



Charles Morrow & Alban Bassuet - Queen Bee

Simulation of the interior of a beehive Queen Bee chamber.


Charles Morrow & Bruce Miller - Comet, Fire, Water

A sonic sound story and experience for installaton in a 60 foot atrium. It tells the story of a comet crashing into Earth, causing fire and flooding. This is a way to understand the dinosaur age.


Charles Morrow & Klaus Schoening - Child in Mother

Morrow's realization of what the human foetus hears in the mother based on his own mental journey. One hears prominently two hearts beating.


CMA Studios Production (Charles Morrow/Matt Stine) - Charles Ives

Excerpt from "Central Park in the Dark" by Charles Ives. 3D remix by Peter Bowers.


CMA Studios Production (Charles Morrow/Matt Stine) - Waterfall

A sonic waterfall in 3D, created from diverse waterfall sounds.


Charles Morrow & Hugues de la Plaza - Train

Produced for DEMP and the Great Platte Rive Museum. 19th-century narrow gauge train arrives, passes and departs.


Katia Tiutiunnik - Dumuzi, Priest and King

Dumuzi, Priest and King is intended as a musical invocation to the Sumerian god Dumuzi (semitic Tammuz) while simultaneously being a symbolic expression of Tiutiunnik's vision of the god, in his role as priest, king, husband of the great Sumerian goddess Inanna (Semitic Ishtar) and the beautiful, innocently self-centered youth who dies and rises again, bringing both destruction and renewal with the turn of the seasons. He is the quickener of the child, the force that causes the sap to rise in the tree and the most ancient personification of the eternal cycle of life, death, destruction and renewal. A deity of fertility, vegetation and also of the netherworld, Dumuzi has also been called “the Shepherd” and “lord of the sheepfolds.” In the Sumerian King-List Gilgamesh was descended from “Dumuzi a shepherd.”

Tiutiunnik’s compositions have been performed in numerous international festivals, including the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival; Suoni e Voci del Lago, Lake Garda; Musica Nova Festival, Sofia; Festival Internazionale della Chitarra: Niccolo Paganini, Parma; Festival Internazionale della Musica Contemporanea, Milan and Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In September 1999, Tiutiunnik’s symphonic poem Noor, dedicated to Queen Noor of Jordan, was performed by the Orchestra of the National Music Conservatory, Amman, with Mohammed Othman Siddiq (conductor) and violinist Tymour Ibrahimov. This premiere took place at “Al-Khaznah” in Petra, as part of the 28th General Assembly of the International Music Council (UNESCO).


Vlada Tomova - Snoshti e Dobra Do Sna Sedela

A 3D mix of a Bulgarian folk song, sung by Vlada Tomova, a Brooklyn-based Bulgarian microtonal singer, recorded in front of four microphones at three different pitch registers.


Phillppe Vandendriessche - Motorcycle

B format recorindg decoded by Peter Bowers/CMP in 3D, of a motorcycle reving, leaving, returning and passing by.


The Illustrious Company (Martyn Ware/Cince Clarke) - Madonna 3D Remix

A 3D remix of a Madonna tune by The llustrious Company (Martyn Ware/Vince Clarke). Used by permission.

Martyn Ware (b.1956, Sheffield, UK) founded Illustrious Co. Ltd. with Vince Clarke in 2001 to exploit the creative and commercial possibilities of their unique “Heightened Reality” 3D sound technology.

In 1978, Martyn signed as a founding member of seminal electronic group The Human League to Virgin Records. He formed the production company/label British Electric Foundation in 1980 and formed Heaven 17 the same year. He has produced and been featured as performer on records during a 25 year career, working with many recording artists, including Tina Turner, Terence Trent D’Arby, Chaka Khan, Erasure, Marc Almond and Mavis Staples.

Vince Clarke is best known for his work as a member of Erasure, Yazoo and Depeche Mode and as an influential and highly regarded pioneer in the field of electronic music. He has also worked extensively providing musical scores for film, theatre, television and radio.


Buster Williams (prod. & arr. by Charles Morrow) - Take the A Train

Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn - “Take the A-Train” - Buster Williams Band with vocalist Melissa Walker - 3D arrangement by Buster Williams and Morrow. Music for the Empire State Building.


Olivia Block - heaving to

Produced and arranged as part of a 2003 Harvestworks A.I.R .

Stormy layers consisting of processed recordings of wind, falling rocks, electronic sounds and cello passages come in and out of focus in different parts of the space, creating complex textures and movement and activating the unique dimensions of the cube. Running time: 5:00

Olivia Block (b. 1970, Dallas, TX) is a contemporary composer and sound artist who combines field recordings, scored segments for acoustic instruments, and electronically generated sound. Her recorded work seeks to introduce, set at play, and ultimately reconcile nature with artifice in the realms of music and sound. Olivia has several CD releases, creates sound installations for galleries and public urban spaces, and consistently performs in tours and festivals all over the world.


DB Henderson - Requiem for a Penny

Douglas Henderson has been composing, performing and installing projects in New York City and internationally for more than 20 years, solo and with a variety of collaborators: John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, and Guy Yarden, Jude Tallichet to mention but a few. He has composed music for numerous modern dance works, often involving “surround sound” compositions with extensive speaker installations, including works by choreographers Jeremy Nelson, Luis Lara Malvacias, David Zambrano, Jennifer Munson, and Ricochet Dance, UK. He has toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe in various duo and trio formations performing original work. He is currently focused on multi-channel sound installations and sound-producing sculptural installations that have been presented in galleries and museums from New York to Seoul. He also designs and builds experimental instruments, such as the double-neck and 8-string guitars employed by Elliott Sharp and the electric harp employed by Zeena Parkins.

He studied music composition and theory with Elie Yarden, Milton Babbitt, Paul Lansky, and J.K. Randall. He received his Doctoral degrees in music from Princeton University and recently chaired the Sonic Arts Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was a 2002 Artist in Residence at Harvestworks, NYC, 2003 guest artist for Cabinet Magazine and 2004 ARM Fellow at Dance Theatre Workshop. He received the 1998 New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for his work on Mia Lawrence’s Kriyas. Performances of his large ensemble compositions have enjoyed the support of grants from The Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Program, Meet The Composer, the Cary Trust, The Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fund, and the New York State Council for the Arts.


Shelley Hirsch - Please Stop Scratching That Gash!

Produced and arranged as part of a 2003 Harvestworks A.I.R .

Voices, text, arrangement: Shelley Hirsch. Sound excerpted from Simon Ho's piece "Dust. Instrumental music excerpted from “A Rupture in the order of Reality” performed by Simon Ho. Running time: 5:53

Shelley Hirsch (b. 1952, Brooklyn, NY) is a vocalist/composer/interdisciplinary artist whose staged performances, improvisations, installations, have been presented in theaters, museums, clubs, concert halls on 5 continents. She is a recipient of many commissions, fellowships, grants and residencies including ones from NYFA, NEA, NYSCA, the DAAD A.I.R in Berlin, STEIM A.I.R in Amsterdam. Her autobiographical work-in-progress, “A Rupture in The Order of Reality” is supported by a 2002 Creative Capital grant and will feature music by Hirsch and Simon Ho and stage set/installation by Jim Hodges. Hirsch can be heard on dozens of CDs among them the solo CDS “The Far In Far Out Worlds of Shelley Hirsch” (Tzadik) and “States” (Tellus); O’ little Town of East New York w/ David Weinstein (Tzadik) and “Duets” improvisations with guitarist Uchihashi Kasuhisa (Innocence). The interactive audio visual installation “All The Way With Jim and Shel” with Jim Hodges was exhibited at Portland Museum of Contemporary Art during the summer of 2002. http://www.shelleyhirsh.com

Special thanks to sound engineer Paul Geluso and to Carol Parkinson and Hans Tammen.


The Illustrous Company & Cathy De Monchaux - Sweetly the Air Flew Overhead

Martyn and Cathy decided that the piece should embody calls to prayer from around the world. After extensive research, the evocative and moving recordings used in this piece were combined with Cathy’s own private writings (whispered by Cathy herself) to create a beautiful concomitance of universal sonority and spiritual significance. This recording, made specifically for the Soundcube, is an abridged version of the original one hour piece. Running time: 6:08


The Illustrous Company & Nicola Green - Laugh Out Loud

This work explores the sounds of laughter—a powerful and revealing portrait of any individual. Laugh Out Loud is a remix of The Laughing Record, an artwork made from the sounds of people from all over the world laughing in all different situations including Horse Guards on parade at Buckingham Palace, commuters on rush hour tube, my dentist and 100 journalists at a porn film premiere. The extraordinary thing about the sound of any proper belly laugh is that, like during orgasm, we lose all self-consciousness and we reveal our true selves. Our experiences, our culture and our fantasies all inform the way we laugh. It is pre-verbal communication, our most precious universal language. Running time: 5:04


Miya Masaoka - Inner Koto

Produced and arranged as part of a 2003 Harvestworks A.I.R. This piece, constructed of koto plucks, strums, knocks , twangs, and processing, was built to replicate an enormous koto the size of a room, creating a hollow-bodied, resonating koto sound-box for the listener. This work was recorded with placing eight microphones over and under the koto to preserve the three dimensional quality that is re-created in the SoundCube. Running time: 5:19

Miya Masaoka (b. 1958, Washington, D.C.), musician, composer, sound artist, has created works for koto,laser interfaces, laptop and video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. In her pieces she has investigated the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological response of plants, the human brain and her own body. Within these varied contexts her performance work investigates the interactive, collaborative aspects of sound, improvisation, nature and society. http://www.miyamasaoka.com


Steve McCaffery - Cappucino

Cappucino was spatialized and layed by Charlie Morrow and Peter Bowers.

Cappucino is a sound text comprising words and part words taken from the index of a mathematics text-book and grafted onto Italian suffixes. It is dedicated to the French mathematician Henri Pointcaré who claimed himself to be the last mathematician capable of knowing all mathematics. Running time: 3:36

Steve McCaffery (b. 1947, Sheffield, UK) is author of 15 books of poetry and one novel, Panopticon. He received the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Poetry in 1993-94 and 1994-95. Theory of Sediment was nominated for the Governor General’s Award (1992) and The Black Debt was short-listed for the 1990 Before Columbus Award. He is co-editor with Jed Rasula of Imagining Language (MIT Press, 1998) an anthology that gathers two millennia of conjecture on the written and spoken sign. His next collection of critical writings, Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics, is forthcoming. He is currently at work on three other books: Slightly Left of Thinking which will gather poems, interviews and critical essays, Seven Pages Missing (new and selected poems), and an annotated edition of his two decades of correspondence with Fluxus artist Dick Higgins. He has performed his poetry world-wide and his work has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese, and Hungarian.


Charles Morrow - Alive I was silent and in death I do sing - Wood Viola Violin

"alive I was silent and in death I do sing (old harpsichord motto)

This is the first in a series of 3D sound works placing the listener in a dialogue between raw materials and musical instruments made from them. Using microphones and disc transducers, we recorded in the workshop of David Segal, master violin maker, a vocabulary of inside and outside the instrument sounds: knocking raw wood and dropping bridges on a surface for quality of sound shaving, filing, planing and sawing wood. These making sounds are placed at the heart of the Sound Cube. Running time: 4:05

A strolling performance by Yaniv Segal passing a row of microphones on viola and violin creates an orbiting musical ring around the crown of Cube. Both instruments were made by his grandfather, Mendel Segal.

Low frequency waves pass across the Sound Cube base.

Team: David Segal, workshop sounds; Yaniv Segal, viola, violin, assistant engineer; Peter Bowers, digital engineer; Matt Stine, assistant engineer; Doug Henderson, mastering engineer; Recorded on location and in the CMP Studios, NYC; Mixed and mastered in CMP Studios; Charlie Morrow, composer, producer. Program notes and sound work © 2004 Other Media (ASCAP) New York, NY

Charlie Morrow (b 1942 Newark, NJ), is a conceptualist whose music work covers many styles and forms, and ranges from events for media and public spaces to commercial soundtracks, new media productions, museum installations and programming for broadcast and festivals. He is president and creative director of Charles Morrow Productions LLC, founded in 1967 as a music and sound design firm, along with its not-for-profit affiliate, New Wilderness Foundation (NWF), a workshop for experimentation time-based arts. Morrow's museum sound installations include the exhibition “The Vikings Saga” at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, a Knoll Furniture Retrospective at the Louvre, the Whitney Museum's 2nd Acustica International, “Arctic Sounds” at K A H in Bonn, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry's “General Gas Exhibit,” The Hall of Planet Earth at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, and others. Winner of the 1996 MILIA D’OR Award at Cannes, The CD-ROM, Scrutiny in the Great Round combines Morrow’s music and sound design with visual art of Tennessee Rice Dixon and interactive design of Jim Gasperini. http://www.cmorrow.com


Phill Niblock - Sethwork

Seth Josel, unamplified guitars played with e-bow, recorded samples (2003). Running time: 5:03

Phill Niblock (b. 1933, Indiana) makes thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres which generate many other tones in the performance space. Simultaneously, he presents films / videos which look at the movement of people working, or computer driven black and white abstract images floating through time. He was born in Indiana in 1933. Since the mid-60’s he has been making music and intermedia performances which have been shown at numerous venues around the world, among which: The Museum of Modern Art; The Wadsworth Atheneum; the Kitchen; the Paris Autumn Festival; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; and many more. Phill Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai and Touch labels. A DVD of films and music is available on the Extreme label.


Scanner - A Natural Love

Spatialized by The Illustrious Company (Martyn Ware/Vince Clarke)

This work explores the astonishing sounds of seduction and passion in the natural world, using wildlife recordings of matings calls and sexual activity in such creatures as bats, albatrosses, tungler frogs, asian lions, billygoats mute swans, elephants, puerto rican tree frogs, peacocks, swallows, beluga whales, capuchin birds, blue tits, cats, bees, grey lions, toads, satin bowerbirds, grey seals, hammer headed fruit bats, swallow gulls and elephant seals. 5:45

Scanner, British artist Robin Rimbaud, traverses the experimental terrain between sound, space, image and form, creating absorbing, multi-layered sound pieces that twist technology in unconventional ways. Born in London, Scanner is committed to working with cutting edge artists from a varied range of genres including dance, music, and the visual arts. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sound art, producing concerts, compositions, installations and recordings, the albums “Mass Observation” (1994), “Delivery” (1997), and “The Garden is Full of Metal” (1998) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music. His diverse body of work has been presented throughout the United States, Asia, Australia and Europe.
http://www.scannerdot.com
http://www.posteverything.com/better


Michael J. Schumacher - Still

“Still” projects 31 sounds into 3 virtual rooms, one near, one distant, one in-between. Though the sounds themselves are active, the structure is sedate. The listener is encouraged to take a moment-to-moment approach, allowing the ears to be carried along by each new gesture. The inspiration comes from the paintings of Jackson Pollack and the large-scale works of John Cage, such as “Roaratorio.” Running time: 3:10

Michael J. Schumacher (b.1961, Washington D.C) is a composer/performer, concert producer and curator, studio engineer and computer music programmer, and has received degrees in music from Juillard School of Music and Indiana University. Director of the sound and intermedia galleries, Studio Five Beekman and Diapason, he has produced exhibitions by David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, Stephen Vitiello, La Monte Young and other pioneer sound experimenters. He composes electronic sound installations using 2–16 speakers, computer-controlled random structures, taped and live music and acoustic works for piano, chamber ensemble, voice, and orchestra, and has presented his sound installations at major art institutions in the United States and Europe. His discography includes five solo CDs, including a double CD set on the XI label Room Pieces (2002).


Stephen Vitiello - Cinematic, with Crashing Roof

Spatial processing, Peter Bowers; Technical assistance and conceptual support, Michael J. Schumacher

This multi-channel sound work combines two principal elements: an excerpt from a recent concert recorded at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and a short field recording from the Brazilian Amazon. The field recording is of a small outpost shack with a tin roof that is being pulled at the seams by a strong wind. To create the sounds from the concert recording, a small photocell was used to translate light frequencies into an audio signal. These sounds were then fed into various analog audio processors and mixed live on-stage. For the Sound Cube, tracks were further processed via Doppler-effects, plotting out various swirling patterns and mixed in a mock-up of the Cube. The field recording is used as a sporadic interruption, somewhat like a memory flash-frame from an un-specified film. Running time: 4:23

Stephen Vitiello (b.1964, New York City) is an electronic musician and media artist. Recent exhibitions include the 2002 Whitney Biennial, Ce qui arrive at the Cartier Foundation, Paris, curated by Paul Virilio, Yanomami: Spirit of the Forest, also at The Cartier Foundation and solo exhibitions at The Project, NY and The Project, Los Angeles. His sound work, World Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd has been presented at museums and on public radio internationally. CD releases include Scanner/Vitiello (Audiosphere/Sub Rosa), Bright and Dusty Things (New Albion Records) and Scratch Monsters, Laughing Ghosts (New Albion Records) a collaboration with David Tronzo and featuring Michael J. Schumacher, scheduled for May 2004 release. Since 1988 he has collaborated with musicians, visual artists and choreographers, including Pauline Oliveros, Tetsu Inoue, John Jasperse/White Oak Dance Project, Rebecca Moore, Tony Oursler, Nam June Paik, Scanner, Yasunao Tone, Frances-Marie Uitti.


Pamela Z - Syrinx

Produced and arranged as part of a 2003 Harvestworks A.I.R .

Syrinx is a sound work for human and bird voices. To create this piece, I worked mainly with the songs of two birds: a wren and a finch. I time and pitch-expanded the very quick bird sounds enabling me to hear their surprisingly complex melodic material and learn to sing it. I then worked with combinations of various contracted and expanded samples of the bird songs and my own voice to created this layered work. For the spatialization, I have most of the bird sounds originating from the top four channels of the Cube and my sounds from the bottom four. I play with blurring the boundary between the two so that the bird voices and my voice intermix and are at times difficult to distinguish. The term ñsyrinxî refers to the vocal organ of a bird. Running time: 6:11

(B. 1956. Buffalo, New York) I live in an artist building in an industrial neighborhood in San Francisco. My daily sound environment includes the idling engines, turn signals and reverse signals of large trucks, the sounds of large items rolling along a conveyer belt, and forklifts loading and unloading cargo. And, thanks to one of my neighbors who has built a garden complete with bird feeders on our fire escape, the soundscape is also laced with a cacophony of the calls of finches and other chirping birds. I not only welcome this daily concert, but it has inspired me to think about and closely examine the songs of birds.
http://www.pamelaz.com


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