Category: Introduction to sound art

Irreversible – Near Inaudible Frequency

*Caution: in this document, I discuss themes of sexual assault which is the center point of the film, I must stress this is all done with care and is taken very seriously on my part given the sensitive subject matter*

Here is the track that plays throughout the first 30 minutes of Gaspar Noe’s provocative cult classic Irreversible.

A background on Irreversible

Irreversible is the second feature film by filmmaker and provocateur Gaspar Noe. Irreversible premiered at the Cannes film festival in 2002 and instantly caused outrage and praise, both of which Gaspar thrives in. Below is the IMDb plot synopsis that describes the film in a short and concise way.

‘Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass.’

From that, you can see why the film caused outrage, even though the most difficult scenes in the film to watch were done very carefully to be respectful of the victims of these acts and to be safe for the actors. It is understandable why it upset people. Especially since the length of the aforementioned ‘rape scene’ is nearly 10 minutes in length. It brings up interesting moral dilemmas of ‘is it long for the sake of exploitation’ or to show how the act can cause such trauma on a person and the people that surround them.

The sound design

The music and sound design for Irreversible were handled by Thomas Bangalter (1/2 of daft punk). In terms of music, there is the use of techno and french house. For example, the track ‘Rectum‘ is played at the start of the film in the BDSM gay club. The track features these Shepards tone-esque synths that build this sense of anxiety and dread. As the track continues Thomas brings in these hard techno/hard bass drums that provide a bit more stability to the track. But as they don’t match with the pace of the synths, add even more to the feeling on unease. The drums become more audible at the climax of the scene, in which a character pummels a man’s face in with a fire extinguisher, believing him to be the rapist of his friend (but you do not know that at the time of this scene happening).

Famously the film uses a nearly inaudible 28hz tone that plays throughout the first 30 minutes of the film. This tone is to cause anxiety, vertigo, and nausea to make the first part of the film to be even more uncomfortable. It is an interesting trick and has been pretty common in movies before and since then. But because of the way it is used in Irreversible. It has become infamous. I decided to use this trick in my piece to subconsciously create more unease in the piece.

During the aforementioned rape scene. No music is played. The underpass has an echo to it, that provides an uneasy feeling before the scene takes place. And during the horrendous act. You only hear the actors and the sound design of this underpass. This is a smart move, adding music to a scene like this can take away from the gravity of the situation and would be incredibly inappropriate. So the use of only basic sound design and the actors voices was a good choice and showed how much care went into dealing with a scene as difficult as this.

References

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Subaudible Track from the movie “Irreversible.” [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuokWUhMGQc

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Thomas Bangalter – Rectum. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lMArVYkqZ8

Noé, G., Noé, G., Bellucci, M., Cassel, V. and Dupontel, A. (2002). Irréversible. [online] IMDb. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290673/?ref_=ttgf_gf_tt

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An overview on Eraserhead

Eraserhead is the directorial debut of director, painter, sound designer, and overall artistic marvel David Lynch. The film was started as a student project while Lynch was studying at the AFI Conservatory in Los Angeles, which is a graduate film school. He had created a few short films beforehand (The Alphabet, 1968. And The Grandmother, 1970) Eraserhead was filmed over a long period of time, filming started in 1972 and concluded in 1975. The reason it took so long to film was that they kept running out of money. And would film until they had literally nothing. Below is the IMDb plot synopsis.

‘Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.’

After the film was fully complete, Lynch met sound designer and musician Alan Splet, and the pair spent over a year creating the industrial and unnerving sound design that Eraserhead would become famous for. One example of how they created the sounds for Eraserhead would be this excerpt that you can read below.

“For a scene in which a bed slowly dissolves into a pool of liquid, Lynch and Splet inserted a microphone inside a plastic bottle, floated it in a bathtub, and recorded the sound of air blown through the bottle. After being recorded, sounds were further augmented by alterations to their pitch, reverb and frequency”.

Here is the scene they are talking about, the clip starts at the 3:42 mark.

How it influenced this project

The industrial hellscape that Lynch & Splet created for Eraserhead is iconic at this point, and for good reason. It was groundbreaking for the time and still is. The general tone of Eraserhead was what influenced the concept of the darkness throughout the piece, both sonically and through the spoken word. As in ‘Eraserhead’ you follow this character (Henry) who doesn’t really know what to do with his life. He has an unwanted child who is not even that human. He has a girlfriend that hates him and has a dead-end job. Which sparked this idea of ‘Life is a dark corridor’ which I used as the centre point of the spoken word. This character in this dream doesn’t know what to do. just wandering around this industrial and hellish landscape.

Sonically Eraserhead has influenced this project. The use of dark drones. field recordings, noise, and samples had an impact on this project.

References

www.imdb.com. (n.d.). Eraserhead. [online] Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/.

Areti Efstathiou (2016). The Grandmother – David Lynch. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liVa7nEm3JU.

Matteo Pini (2014). David Lynch The Alphabet. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ_t1eOAipo.

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Eraserhead – The Woman Across the Hall. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr10sVW0h2g

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Who is Rebbeca Lennon?

Rebbeca Lennon is a British artist that works in various fields, those fields being video, text, performance, sound and music. She uses these fields to experiment with non-linear rhythms using her body, including her voice.

For me I found her lecture very interesting from a non vocalist point of view, and how she used her voice and how it created these dense layers using just the voice. It’s very reminicent of early Joan La Barbara work like ‘Twelvesong‘ off the album ‘Voice Is The Original Instrument’. But Rebbeca is very much doing her own thing with it which I found very interesting. Like on her peice ‘THE KNOT COMMONS 2021‘ She opens the peice with this rythmic vocal line. Then overlaying that with the phrase “This is mine, this is your’s’. Then using her voice to create a gasping noise that almost sounds like a drum. Also laying mouth clicks and different harmonies of the phrase “This is mine, this is your’s”

The way she used visuals was very complementary to the composition. The visuals of mosqitous sucking blood to the rythym of her voice was a good use of using music and visuals that are very different but go togther fluently.

This talk made me want to work with vocalists more (which I am doing as of now) and how I could utilies vocals in my work in the future.

References

Lennon, R. (2021). THE KNOT COMMONS 2021. [online] Vimeo. Available at: https://vimeo.com/641797899

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Joan La Barbara – Twelvesong. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SvVhDMLTbs

rebeccalennon.co.uk. (n.d.). rebeccalennon.co.uk. [online] Available at: https://rebeccalennon.co.uk/

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Brief introduction to musique concrète

Musique Concrète is a style of early electronic music, Pioneered by the likes of Pierre Schaeffer, Edgard Varèse, and Halim El-Dabh. The style of musique concrète is typically very raw, taking these raw sounds and using tape manipulation techniques and audio effects to alter these sounds. An example of musique concrete is Pierre Schaeffer’s ‘Études de bruits‘ which is a collection of compositions. This composition is from 1948 and some of the sounds used in the compositions are saucepans, canal boats, toy tops, percussion, instrument singing, speech, harmonica and piano. This compilation of tracks perfectly shows the how

How Musique Concrète helped the progression of Sound Art.

Artists like John Cage and Pauline Oliveros took the sounds of early musique concrète and pushed them further into the sound art scene in the 1960s and 1970s. By taking techniques like tape manipulation for example, and pushing it even further. A good example of this would be Pauline Oliveros’s piece ‘The Day I Disconnected The Erase Head And Forgot To Reconnect It’. This piece is about Pauline working at the University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio during 1966, and the guy who ran the tape/synth area of the university would yell at her when she would use the synthesizers and machines because he deemed it as ‘witchcraft’ or some nonsense like that. This also shows that musique concrète grew into expressing more emotions as well as pushing further sonically.

Musique Concrète in Sound Art During The Current Day?

Musique Concrète now is still prominent in current day sound art. One example would be composer Mark Korven’s homemade instrument called the ‘apprehension engine’. Mark Korven is a composer who is most well known for his work on director Robert Eggars films ‘The Witch’ and ‘The Lighthouse’, both of which had Mark create these atonal, and Avant-Garde soundscapes that relate back to the early days of musique concrète. The apprehension engine is a machine that is compiled out of metal rulers, a spring reverb tank, strings, and other pieces of equipment like the Ebow to excite the machine to create these horror movie-esque sounds. This I think is a fascinating way of taking old techniques of music concrète and early electronic music in general and putting a modern spin on it. I would highly recommend both The Witch and The Lighthouse as the sounds created for the movie are definitely up the alley of sound art and musique conrète.

References

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Mark Korven – Improvisation on the Apprehension Engine – YouTube. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbtuaIJKMI4.

TheBillser (2020). Pauline Oliveros ‎– The Day I Disconnected The Erase Head And Forgot To Reconnect It. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CKVjO4wN5I.

Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Musique concrète. [online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%A8te.

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Who is Richard Pheonix?

Richard is an artist who works in painting, drawing, writing and creating music. The way I would describe his artwork would be colourful and abstract. Typically mixing these abstract ideas of humans with these colourful and also dark ideas. Below is an example of his artwork.

‘Whale’

2021
207cm x 182cm
Oil, oil bar and studio detritus on canvas and board

Richard is well known for starting up the creative community called Constant Flux. Constant Flux is a community that combines artists with learning difficulties and the D.I.Y. scene that is prominent in the UK.

Constant Flux

Constant flux is an incredible project. For many reasons, but I feel it’s important to note my experiences of working in the field of supporting young adults with learning difficulties.

I worked in care which specialised in helping young adults with special needs become more independent and expressive. I worked in a group in which the young adults had the most tendency to be extremely violent, in this group it is running on a 2-1 basis. 2 staff, 1 young adult. This job could be fun, but incredibly difficult and it could switch at the flick of a switch. So you are constantly looking out for yourself, staff, and more importantly, other young adults. Apart from that 2 days a week I would work with a musician called Stephen Noyce, who is a multi-instrumentalist. He would come into the facility and he and I would bring instruments like an electronic drum kit, guitar, microphone and percussion in for the young adults to play on. Typically to a song they have chosen, which is typically a Disney track or some rock/pop from the ’70s-’90s e.g. Micheal Jackson.

We found this to be a great way for the young adults to express their emotions and themselves through music, it’s very fun. The environment in these classes would be very upbeat and supportive. I learnt a lot from the young adults and they learnt from me, so it’s a win-win situation I guess.

Anyhow, the way I found Richard approached this was excellent, getting people who are sadly marginalised from society to express themselves through art. Whether it’s playing in bands, creating visual art, or anything else. It seems like a very safe space for them to create and not feel suppressed by societal norms that shouldn’t exist in the same place. I like the way the group releases music through various formats e.g. streaming, cassette. Having multiple ways for people to find this work is great and how Richard has set up tours for bands formed in this space and one-off exhibitions is fantastic for them to get themselves out into the world of touring in a safe environment.

Closing Words

I will definitely be applying what I’ve learnt from Richard and his indevours when I go back to working in care over the summer.

References

richardphoenix.com. (n.d.). Richard Phoenix. [online] Available at: https://richardphoenix.com/.

Anon, (n.d.). Constant Flux. [online] Available at: http://constantflux.co.uk/about/.

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Early musique concrete sound

mixing both electroacoustic sounds with synthesisers.

techno bassine. Overly distorted 808 or 909 kick drum/bass.

vola lfo being messed with.

Introduction

The prominence of Germany in the pioneering of sound art and experimental music is detrimental. With artists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen,  Peter Vogel, Christina Kubisch, and Ulrich Eller. All hailing from Germany.

Germany still to this day is pushing the boundaries of electronic music and also in the terms of constantly creating new ways to create music. For example, Koma Elektronik is a german company that is creating incredible pieces of equipment like the field kit series. Which are built to help with experimentation whether you’re doing early musique concrète style sound or Whitehouse-esque power electronics, it can do most things.

Artworks

In Germany during 1980, a renowned sound art exhibition called ‘Für Augen und Ohren’ – which translates to ‘For Eyes and Ears’ in English, was held. This exhibition was huge, having 74 participating artists and musicians. Playing sound from both deceased and alive musicians at the time. The exhibition had work dating back to the 14th century. An example of that would be this astronomical clock in Strasbourg from 1354. Inside the clock they’re are these automatically operated bells. Here is a video that better shows what I’ve explained. The bells start at the 1:10 mark.

‘Sehen und Horen: Design und Kommunikation (Seeing and Hearing: Design and Communication)‘ was held in colonge in 1974. This a more lesser-known exhibition but an equally important one. This exhibition but an emphasis on the senses of sight and hearing. How they did that was by butting 600 instruments from 16 different countries in a room. I personally find this fascinating, as there are so many different types of instruments from different cultures it is good for people to learn what cultures from other countries.

Hotspots

Strasbourg automatically operated bells

Sehen und Horen: Design und Kommunikation (Seeing and Hearing: Design and Communication

Für Augen und Ohren

Glossary

‘Kommunikation‘ – German for ‘Communication’

‘Objekte‘ – Object

Conclusion/Future Work

In conclusion, this article really shows how detrimental Germany was to the growth of sound art as a whole. With exhibitions like ‘Für Augen und Ohren’ having 74 musicians in one place, having music spanning from modern-day, all the way back to the 14th century. Showing that sound art wasn’t just a modern thing.

And ‘Sehen und Horen: Design und Kommunikation (Seeing and Hearing: Design and Communication ‘. Having over 600 instruments from 16 countries, showing a mixture of sounds and styles from all over the world. I found that in these two exhibitions there is an emphasis on mixing cultures and different time periods together. This perfectly sums up what a lot of sound art represents (to me at least). Mixing cultures and time periods together to create something forward-thinking.

References

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Astronomical Clock Strasbourg Cathedral. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKgZB3P45Kw.

Noy, I. – Touching Sound Art – Curatorial Practises in West Germany

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Introduction

What we think of as sound art did not start in china till the 1990s. What we think is the westernized version of it. But the form of sound art has been prominent in China for thousands of years.

China has created many interesting acoustic creations such as the echo wall surrounding The Imperial Vault of Heaven. This place is more welcoming known for the wall that surrounds the building. The wall is referred to typically as the ‘Echo Wall’. The way this wall works that is the bricks are laid so it is completely air-tight. This makes wireless communication happen with two people who speak in their normal voices.

Artists

Qiu Zhiiie – Qiu Zhiiie is a contempary Chinese artist. She works with Video, Sound and Photography. Her work explores themes of social fragmentation (people becoming more attached to the digital world creating a divide of the ‘digital world’ and ‘real world’. She also explores themes of self assertion.

Christiaan Virant – Virant spent most of his young life in south China but moved to Beijing sometime in the mid-1990s. Christiaan was a very active member of the underground music scene of Beijing. In the year 1999, he formed a group calledFM3, Who are pioneers of electronic experimental music in China.

He has also worked with Throbbing Gristle. Christiaan is well known for develop his own types of pedals, he co created the Buddha Machine loop device in 2005 and then developed a loop pedal for the aforementioned group throbbing gristle.

Here is an example of his work Christiaan Virant & Zhang Jian: Buddha Machine 1-5 Box Set [@ 432 Hz]

The work is quite calming, it feels like he is mixing both traditional instruments with more modern technology. And it creates quite a soothing and relaxing atmosphere. Very much something I will be further looking into.

Artworks & Hotspots

The Imperial Vault of Heaven (Echo Wall)

The Bionzhong of Morquis Yi of Zen

Christiaan Virant & Zhang Jian: Buddha Machine 1-5 Box Set [@ 432 Hz]

SomsonYoung Im thinking in a room,different from the one you are hearing now (homage to Alvin Lucier),2011.

Conclusion/Future Work

China has a lot to offer in terms of sound art. China is so disconnected from the world we live in, in terms of culture. Sure we have places like Chinatown, but it doesn’t even compare to the monolith that is china. Lots of artists born and raised in china use their work to fight against the communist regime, and also to express themselves. I would love to visit China and learn about how that culture applies its learnings to sound art.

References

Discogs. (n.d.). Christiaan Virant. [online] Available at: https://www.discogs.com/artist/632708-Christiaan-Virant

Tate (n.d.). Qiu Zhijie born 1969. [online] Tate. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/qiu-zhijie-10259.

Yao, D. – Sound Art in China: Revolutions Per Minute.

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