a sound show & sound for civil war show

1.
i have a new sound piece in a show opening in downtown l.a. at studio sereno. there are two receptions - one on october 3 and one on october 10 - both from 7-9pm.

the show consists of 4 works created for the site and a 4.1 sound system. artists are richard chariter, yann novak, robert crouch and myself. each piece is 10 minutes, so the whole shebang can be heard in 40 minutes.

my piece includes field recordings from the site, as well as field recordings recently made in rennes france, as well as using my voice, old tape recorders, etc.

for more info see here

2.
also upcoming is a sound piece commissioned for the exhibition a strange and fearful interest: death, mourning and memory in the civil war, at the huntington art gallery in pasadena. the exhibition  includes numerous rare civil war era photographs, many of which are battle scenes - as well as civil war era ephemera (some amazing pieces related to lincoln). the curator, jenny watts, invited me to create a new sound work for a room containing three stereoscopes with some civil war death scenes. for this work, i used 3 late 19th century instruments - a strohl viol (circa 1910), which is a 1 string violin with a gramaphone horn for amplification, and two diddly bows, each with a cigar box resonator and roughly from the same time period. all three have a single metal wire for a string, and the sounds were activated with an ebow (i.e. electromagneticism). i also worked with a recording from the early 1930's of an interview with the last remaining person who was present when lincoln was killed, erasing all of his words, and keeping only the pauses and an occasional mouth noises.

for more info see here

from the first 100 pages...

"well, as i was saying, the world is eaten up by boredom. to perceive this needs little preliminary thought: you can't see it all at once. it is like dust. you go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. it is sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on your teeth but stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. to shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be forever on the go. and so people are always 'on the go.' perhaps the answer would be that the world has long been familiar with boredom, that such is the true condition of man. no doubt the seed was scattered all over life, and here and there found a fertile soil to take root..."

"when writing of oneself one should show no mercy. yet why at the first attempt to discover one's own truth does all inner strength seem to melt away in floods of self-pity and rising tears..."

"i dare not say i knew nothing of god when i was twelve years old, because mingled with so many other calls like thunder and rushing water sounding through my poor little head, already i could recognize His voice."

"geologists teach us that the very ground which seems so solid in reality is only a thin film over an ocean of liquid fire forever trembling like the skin on milk about to boil... how far down would one need to dig to rediscover the blue depths?"

"to judge us by what we call our actions is probably as futile as to judge us by our dreams."

some excerpts from georges bernanos diary of a country priest

four scores...

1. cross your feet in a strange or difficult way.
2. ride your clarinet as if it were a motorcycle.
3. pass through music to get somewhere else.
4. rub sand on your records and listen to them.

my band = two dudes, a lady, two kids, a guitar, some flowers and two lions...

a recent find of two polaroids from the early 1970's. one says "my group" on the back... so they did make music, but i know not more.

when movie stars have great taste in books...

well... i started this blog in 2006, and in all that time i have never posted a review of my work or shared press on the blog... until today. but yesterday, i got an email from dust to digital telling me that richard gere - yes, that richard gere, mentioned my book "i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces" in an article from usa weekend (i believe that is the magazine that comes with usa today) - as one of the 5 books he's reading over the summer (and i'm on a nightstand book stack with moby dick!). what makes this all very very important is that while i was growing up, richard gere was hands down my mother's favorite actor, making this, at least in her eyes, the most important piece of press i've ever gotten!

when superheros knew what they were fighting for...

one hundred birthdays...

images from a 1970 issue of the japanese art magazine BT that includes a small blue flexi disc of cage's music for marcel duchamp played by aki takahashi... i was hoping to share a recording of the disc in all its glistening surface noise, but blogger does not to allow audio files... so you will just have to use your imagination.