Quiet Open Space for Active or Passive Enjoyment


Main||Technical||Archive



To Get It (*) or Not

That is a question. But it may be a wrong one. A new aesthetic work, especially one which is an ephemeral event, embedded in a particular time and space is a conversation and question of it's own accord. The discussion during conception, "what if we....", turns into many different conversations. Those conversations can be among one person or a group of persons. Furthering a work often means securing funding, where one must present ideas about and around the work. This both widens and limits the scope of conversations, where the idea of work is discussed excluding input from the work itself. As the work of building the piece begins, conversations with the materials and the work itself begin. This dialog helps the artist(s) understand the affordances, opportunities and limitations of materials and indeed the scope and intentions of the work itself. Installing the work in a given space, the presentation space and the anticipated type of audience interaction begins to inform a new set of conversations. The sonic, spatial and physical opportunities of a space reshape the work. Even when things have been prototyped, rehearsed and imagined in detail, reality changes everything in both subtle and not so subtle ways. An audience entering into dialog with a work intiates an entirely different trajectory in terms of conversing with a peice. Until this point, the piece or the event has been growing outward from a the seed of an idea. As the audience and space interact with the work, feedback loops emerge between elements of the work and the what the audience brings to the experience. In turn, audience members circle back (directly and indirectly) to the artists who worked on a piece, providing new perspectives and observations. The cycle multidimension exchange contines as memory and atrophy reshape what was into something new.

Get It? Well yes, there are things to get, some of those might be similar notions/observations across makers and audience, but many of the things one gets will be unique to the experience of being present in a work. What is documented in this website are some ideas and notions which nurtured the progress of making the resultant work. The tone of these documents is largely declarative, by convention of "putting it down in writing." But that does not mean that these ideas are what one will or could get. They are the working out of questions. Questions that have arisen as a result of different conversations.

(*) It's kind of humorous that "it", could be I.T. - Information Technology. There is certainly an information of techne (the Greek root of the word technology, driving at the "making" / "doing" / "craft" component of the word). Indeed, "Crafting information by doing", feels like a suitably encompassing and succinct statement.




Sound as a Delineation of Space

Spreading disease via aerasolized particulates has brought attention to the invisible boundaries which we are prone to traverse. The common method of sound consumption in a concert setting or with music broadcast from car, home stereo, or simply some speakers, commonly places listeners in a position of envelopment. The listener is bathed in an excess of sonic energy. The reality of sound is that it propegates through a medium, most commonly air, and as the energy dispates, the ability to hear that sound changes. Like a virus borne on the aircurrents propelled by exhalation, sound slides around any given space. One magical aspect of sonic energy is that it is altered by the propogation process, being absorbed, reflected and otherwise influenced by the journey. Indeed, sound is not just a consumable all encompassing full saturation event, but rather it can be a low energy radiation which has borders and limits. Following the edge of soundmass, discovereing where it can and can not be heard, is like tracing the line between the ocean and land.

Projecting sound into a wide open space at a medium to low level, the limits of the projection describe a flucuating border which can be observed by listening and moving. This delineation of space is not fixed at any one position in time and space, but is subtle and fluid. At their source, the sonic fluctuations are a result of the specific frequency and amplitude energy. While each sound has a unique character, as it progresses in time and space, there are other factors which alter it. Other sounds in a space can mix with, cover or contrast a given sound. The interplay of the sonic energy of multiple sounds plays an important role in the evolution of a sound. As a sound propegates from it's source location, it will encounter physical things, which can absorb energy (such as velvet curtain) or it can be amplified by reflections and sympathetic resonation (such as the echos of a resonant cave). Again, the morphology of a sound is altered by the ways in which it's energy transfer is shaped by it's journey. One can quickly become lost in imaginging the myriad ways in which energy propogating through the medium of air can be altered before it reaches our ears. By bringing awareness to the places where sonic energy slips below the abily of the human to perceive it, there is an opportunity to discover liminal zones, places where the source of sonic energy is lost to the conscious mind and the listener discoveres a rich intermidiate zone of subtle and shifting energy states. Just as the curious visitor can become enwrapped in the infinte depth interplay of the ocean and the shore, so vast are the zones where sonic events disolve into another the ambient soundscape.

A design component of Quiet Open Space for Active or Passive Enjoyment is the exploration of the perception of sound as a personal journey. Each participant walks the same path, but the sounds that they encounter are different. The performance material is similar throughout the piece, but the subtle changes create different pulsing patterns. The ambient sound of the park and how that mixes with the work is continually changing and how these elments effect the perception of and mix with the performed elements is therefore altered. The pathway through the open grassy space leads to visual frames which likewise are radically different from moment to moment depending on the light and visual context. In our daily existence, we largely ignore this continual shifting and state of flux. By emphasizing slow and subtle shifts at a low amplitude level, the attention is drawn into a landscape of perception occuring at a different rate. One way to illustrate this difference is to think of the way light and sound proceed through water. Submersed in water, the perception of light and of sound is different because light and sound travel at a different rate in this medium as compared with air. In the context of stimuli moving at a different rate from that of the normal daily situation, there is an opportunity to tune ones perceptual apperatus to the rate of a constructed situation (or artpiece if you like). From the vantage point of this new perceptual rate, the objects and sounds which are occuring on different timescales come into a newness. By being present in a different timescale, the participant has the opportunity to peer out at objects and sounds which define the habituated timescale of daily life and, for a fleeting moment, sense a poignant difference.




Point of Departure

It happened in 2012 that I and my partner were able to set off for eight months of sailing on our 36 foot ketch. We departed from San Francisco Bay bound for the the Sea of Cortez. Like any sailing trip that is not supported by lots of money, support crew and lifetimes of experience, we encountered many a challenge and spent a good amount of our time working on the boat. The saying goes that cruising is working on your boat in exotic places. As the trip progressed and we fell into a routine of passage making, landfall, repairs, exploration, wash, rinse repeat; a sense of wonder took hold. We increasingly learned about ourselves, our assumptions and some valuable lessons in self reliance.

In my journal from this trip I note the sense that our craft (SV/ Corinna) is playing an increasingly important role in our experience. There is the obvious stuff like, floating us and being a self contained adventure pod; but then there are the moments where Corinna heads off the wind consistently, or the engine breaks down 30 miles offshore and within drifting distance of Santa Cruz Island. These things and many more happen and they often lead to us being in a safer place than our intution or agenda would have put us. It is as if Corinna is playing a role in the success and safety of the voyage. It is no mistake that people refer to a sailing craft as she/he and not it. A sense of personality emerges the more ones pays attention. This is not to advocate for the sentience of a sailing craft. No, this is an observation that there is something there that is more than the sum of the inanimate parts. Facing life threating situations and natural forces beyond the scope of human perception, one learns to pay attention to different details than those which pervade the daily grind. After the trip and returning to an existence on land, this idea became less present, the way morining mist sends water back to the sky.

In the spring/summer of 2020 I and partner found ourselves on our trusty craft with a new shipmate, one born into a unique physical location and moment in human history. Our conservative adventures around the Bay during this time of great uncertainty brought us back to basics in a profound way. The old ideas found a new light and fertile space for consideration. Again, Corinna seemed to protect and guide us, only the stakes felt much more significant with a very new and vulnerable shipmate aboard. Our hours at sea were counterbalanced with increasingly frequent visits to our local parks. As I and the wee shipmate journeyed about our enighborhood, the vessel of choice became the perambulator and the prefered destination, Boulware Park. At 1.5 blocks from our domicile, it certainly boasts proximity and ease of access. While there are more expansive and more playstructure populated destinations, Boulware began to take on a different sense than other places. It is here that our newest shipmate makes certain to enter the circle of Redwoods and gaze up into their lofty heights. We often spend half of a perfectly good hour tracing the patterns of bark or finding the one corridor of wind which is always present in the park. The space increasingly suggests new avenues of internal and external exploration. That familiar sense of something more, something guiding us, which had first emerged while aboard ship, seemed to occupy this otherwise unnotable tract of perfectly docile land.

It is true that my sense of this place and time is radically charged by the emergence of a global threat to human existence and the supporting and observational roles I undertake in the emergence of a new human consciousness. Yet, as we daily return, I peer deeper into the lessons I learn from this space and I am struck by the gifts and the lessons shared. How they seem to arrive at the right moment and prevent catastrophies I could not anticipate or guard against. It is not only benevolent, there are also hard lessons which I learn. It is a sense of a community leaning in to gently provide guidance. The community in this case is a place and not humanity. With the emminent risk which humans present in this brave new world, I make a point to avoid the crowds of people and busy times where humanity would otherwise provide helping hands. Indeed, a perfectly placed plant in the middle of a grassy field, arresting the progress of a running toddler and warding off what might have been a face and brain altering run in with a concrete baricade belies more than providence. It is these series of fleeting moments, where things do and don't happen and progress forward continues, that a sense of more than the sum of parts emerges.

As a vehicle to contemplate, explore and observe this place which has such depth and richness, the idea of a deliberate tracing of the space both in sound and physical movement seemed the right solution. The sounds we employ are based on recordings of the materials of the decorations. The simple phyical layout of the sound elemnts in the park space, a center monolith and two satelite performers, offers the person moving through the space tangible sound source locations. The slow build and decay of each tone and the multiple locations from which it might origionate challenges the consciousness to consider the source. With the consciousness occupied and with the use of a prescribed path, the senorial apperatus moves through the physical space and the materials provide an opportunity for inner reflection. The clusters of trees which boarder the parks grassy space, each emerge erupt in a shifting pattern. The path guides the visual apperatus to consider each cluster in it's situation and in relation to other elements. The path is both aparent and obvious, it does not impart any sense of hidden outcomes, but rather provides an opportunity to be present in experiencing the elements of this space and this work. Through proximity to and in entering into consideration of the space, the space and the relation of the person within it may begin to emerge.




Sonic Composition

The physical elements of the piece are the substance of both the visual expereience and the sonic expereience. Using recordings of the ceramic Shide as the basis for the six tones of the sound work, the compositional process becomes one of exploring and learning the vibrational resonances of the materail. Through repeated listening, listening in various sequences and listening to different simultaneities; the salient elements of each sound emerge. Having stretched the sounds in time and created slow fades both in and out, there is never a starteling impulse, which enables the act of listening to very deliberately trace each contour and listen inside of a sound to explore it's rich inner world. It is worth noting that the slow fade in and then back out mirrors the usual sonic trajectory of a human breath cycle. With this ability to consider each detail because of how the sound is presented, the performance situation (for creating the studio element of this work) is constructed so that the studio experience is the act of recording these tracings. The composer is tasked with listening to each tone and using a single string to emulate the trajectory of a single element of the sound. This idea is based on the notion of spectral decomposition, the idea being that a sound can be decomposed into an array of different pitches and by knowing the exact pitch and amplitude of each, the sound can be reconstituted synthetically. (grossly simplified description of some cool math). This idea that sounds have a unique spectral signature is best understood by considering that a piano and a guitar can both play the same pitch, but the the timbre of each instrument is unique. In this composition, the studio practice uses this mathematical decomposition of sound as a suggestion for a performative exercise, which involves a focused listening and having fixated on an element, recreation/performance of that element. In this way, each tone of the six tenes used for the composition is literally drawn from a focused observation and expression of that experience. There is certainly a more exact and literal way of doing this transcoding of sonic energy, but this process is designed to locate the composer at the nexus of that process in order to create situation where the sound of the composition is something which imparts the process by which it was made. The listener does not likely focus on the fact that the recorded sound is guided by the hand of a performer, but it is likely felt.

The performance instruction for the performers is to listen to recorded part, which is generated semi randomly (more details in technical description) and to move the turning key with out hearing where it lands (ie, do it physically with no sonic feedback) then bring in the tone and make it blend with the existing soundmass. Slow changes may be made to the tuning key in order to adjust the pitch, but these changes should be so slow as to not be perceptable to the listener. The held tone may last across multiple clusters and should be faded out when it seems musically appropriate. This performance provides the performer with phycial, listening and higher order musical/compositional tasks. The task of making a pitch that fits in is one that is pretty simple, but, it requires the performer to think about the implications of each action on multiple levels. The tasks demand the performer to empathize with the listeners position, by occupying a similar place in the sonic event. The neccesary focus and deliberate movement that the performer must use in order to gradually bring pitches in and out requires a good deal of focus. This performative focus must also be placed on the surrounding sonic material (both recorded and in the space). The physical manifestation of this level of concentration, which the performer displays, is perceivable by people who are listening. While the adjustments are very subtle, they are present and as another person listens, it becomes apparent that decisions are being made, decisions which are not prescribed but are based on the instincts and intuition of the performer(s). This in turn draws the listener into the fabric of the piece, the interactions become apparent in that they are felt, not cognitively tracked. The rules of this piece emerge as for the listener as something which are familiar. They are familiar because the performer is interacting within a known universe of posiblilites, yet there is uncertainty as to the exact sequence of events and what might happen next.