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Conversations and Intercourse
Club21
sound art listening sessions at Club21
 
 
As sound and performance curator for Club 21 (the exhibition starting 13 Oct next door to Frieze Art Fair in London), I invited about thirty great sound artists (composers) to contribute extreme stereo pieces based on the idea of the conversation, between left-right (hemispheres, perhaps) but also between work and listener (option of indicating listening instructions). Fortunately about half of the invited artists responded, and with very interesting ideas indeed.

What should clubs be like in the future? Maybe a bit more like multifunctional art spaces. What should galleries be like in the future? Maybe a bit more like clubs. How should sound art be presented in an oculocentric world? Maybe as intense, organized listening, one time only, one piece at a time. Not a bunch of irritating loops droning away in the corners of the gallery or the museum.

The following is a list (in progress) of the works contributed, and an informal discussion about the state of sound art today (what can we sell???) that grew out of our email conversations leading up to the event.



Elliott Sharp

Title: Opposite Attracts
Elliott Sharp (text, guitar)


Elliott Sharp is an American composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and curator central to the experimental music scene in New York City for over thirty years. He leads the projects Carbon and Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics, and Terraplane and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction.

Comments: Sound Art is already an art-system commodity and has been so for years. By virtue of declaring a work "art", it automatically is defined as a commodity in this world whether we desire it or not. Sound is the most physical, visceral, and ephemeral of media. The traditional modes of recording and capturing sounds create objects that may be sold but may also be easily reproduced thereby devaluing them as commodities. Can one sell the process or the pure concept? The question for many artists whose work is included within that realm is "What exactly do I sell and how do I go about selling it?"




Jacob Kirkegaard in the anecoic chamber

Title: Labyrinthitis
(courtesy/released on Touch Records)

Jacob Kirkegaard is a Danish artist who focuses on the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and hearing. His installations, compositions and performances deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain imperceptible. Using unorthodox recording tools, including accelerometers, hydrophones and homemade electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard captures and contextualizes hitherto unheard sounds from within a variety of environments: a geyser, a sand dune, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself (as in this piece). For an article on Labyrinthitis by Douglas Kahn go to: http://fonik.dk/works/labyrinthitis-kahn.html


Comments: If one needs to categorize art I of course think that Sound Art is a valid term as well. To me, Sound Art basically means the use of sound as a medium or tool for art. Just like a painter uses paint. What makes sound art unique from the term Music is that sound art doesn't aim to be musical. Instead it can just be sound, without a specific emotion.
I don't think that sound art necessarily should be for sale. But it depends on the medium used. Some of my pieces are just sound in a specific room and cannot be sold. But other works are physical resonating objects and they are for sale.




Ken Ikeda photo of his cool instrument

title: 写真

Solo CDs: 2000 Tzuki(Moon) (Touch), 2003 Merge (Touch), 2007 Mist on the Window (Spekk), 2010 Mosame (Spekk).

The question of sound art is so difficult because it's not easy to sell real conceptual sound art in galleries. But I think a lot of visual artists feel the same way about conceptual non-sound art. Unknown artists or young artists always have to think about what collectors want. And some real artists feel as if they don't have a true place in the art system today. Hopefully the art world will change, and I think the key is collaboration with artists, composers, performers...
I pay my respects to your project "Club 21". Thank you.




Gary Chang

Gary Chang, sound artist and composer, is one of the entertainment industry’s most prolific soundtrack artists. Chang’s musical style uses an array of innovative expressions by incorporating atmospheric sounds with a variety of instruments and melodies.

Club 21 was held in a beautiful deconsecrated church designed by John Soane. Gary was already working on a series of installation pieces for churches. His contribution was heard to excellent effect in the main hall, with the huge solar-panel cross by Jota Castro.

"The music entitled Sanctuaries is for installations in churches, environments of spirituality and meditation. The music is ambient in quality, designed to fill the space with warmth and emotion, but it never confronts the visitor - though there is some abstraction, the dynamics of the pieces are quite controlled, never overtly dramatic. In the best of all things, I am hoping that the music installation will simply be another contribution to the specialness of the Church's ambiance - a simple prayer in the space. 'Reparations' follows this line of thinking. In loving memory of Diana Lee Chang.”



Helena Gough

Untitled
Zimoun + Helena Gough
Sounds by Helena Gough
Composition by Zimoun
Year: 2010

The piece is a collaboration between sound/installation artist Zimoun and sound artist Helena Gough. Helena is an English sound artist currently based in Berlin. Her work initially focused on the collection and manipulation of 'real-world' sound material and exploration of its abstract properties. Occasional deviations into synthetic and instrumental sources are now developing. Each new sound-space is created by taking everything possible from the tiniest element, working to make something from nearly nothing. This reduction in means yields density and richness of results.
www.helenagough.net

Zimoun
The sound sculptures and installations of Zimoun are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry. Their structural simplicity opens like an industrial bloom to reveal a complex and intricate series of relationships, an ongoing interplay between the «artificial» and the «organic». Zimoun is interested in artistic research on simple and elegant systems to
generate and study complex behaviours in sound and motion. He creates sound pieces from basic components, often using multiples of the same prepared mechanical elements to examine the creation and degeneration of patterns.
www.zimoun.ch

«My compositions are less focused on getting from A to B than on creating static sound architectures that can be entered and explored acoustically, just like a building. The focus lies on the altercation among void, density, space, structure, interfacing, statics and balance.» Zimoun

Discussion comments: Helena: I use the term 'sound art' to define what i am doing because it is still a relatively open definition. The alternative statements of 'composer' or 'musician' come with too much historical baggage and too many expectations, though privately I consider myself to be both of those things. Beyond this, I don't have any opinion to state regarding categories. These are not debates that i involve myself in, as they lay down limiting boundaries that i don't have any use for.

Discussion comments: Zimoun: in general I think everything (and even nothing) can be sold. Often it’s probably not so much about what it is, but about how to get there. Regarding categories – I never really understood why there should be a need for categories... I personally prefer just to discover works and things.



Steve Piccolo with Lu Cafausu



Gak Sato



Phoebe Legere



Peter Zummo



Letizia Renzini



Charlie Morrow



Laurie Spiegel



Peter Gordon



Reinhold Friedl