Luigi Russolo, futurist artist of the very early 20th century, was perhaps the first noise artist. In 1913, he published L'Arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noises), a manifesto about non-traditional instruments. The image here is of Russolo with his Intonarumori, noise-generating devices that he designed and constructed. Russolo assembled a noise orchestra with his instruments, and his most famous performance, the Gran Concerto Futuristico (1917) was met with strong disapproval and even violence from the audience (as he himself had predicted).What is Sound?
Sound can be described as a traveling wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas. These vibrations are sensed by the organs of hearing and interpreted as sound. Using electrical or mechanical inscription, sound waves are recorded and then can be played back. Recording and reproduction can be analog or digital. Typically, sound is recorded using a microphone, a device which has a diaphragm that can detect changes in atmospheric pressure (acoustic sound waves) and can then convert them into an electrical signal that can be recorded. Digital recording and reproduction converts an analog sound signal from a microphone to a digital form by a process of digitization where audio is translated into series of binary numbers in a way that the human ear perceives the result as continuous sound. Digital recordings are considered higher quality than analog recordings not necessarily because they have higher fidelity, but because the digital format can prevent much loss of quality found in analog recording due to noise and electromagnetic interference in playback, and mechanical deterioration or damage to the storage medium.
Terms and styles to explore:
Noise Music
Musique concrète
Sound Art
Sound Collage
Soundscape
Sampling
Electronic music
Radio plays / Radio dramas
Radio plays / Radio dramas
Hiphop
Chopped & Screwed
Crunk
Baile funk / Carioca funk
Below are some links to works or references from class:
First Sound Recording Ever Made?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4-Bm6tAM00
I Am Sitting In A Room (by Alan Lucier, 1969): http://ubu.artmob.ca/sound/source/Lucier-Alvin_Sitting.mp3
Mashing/Remixing:
DJ Kool Herc talks about break beats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw4H2FZjfpo
Ms. Jackson Chopped & Screwed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z0H4UEwhCM
Greg Gillis (Girl Talk) shows how he samples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KykbPtRb0K4
Some music videos:
White Stripes: "Fell in Love with a Girl" (dir. Michel Gondry): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRDi67G0Siw
Lykke Li: "Little Bit" (dir. Mattias Montero): http://www.lykkeli.com/films.htm
Radio programs:
Radio Lab: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/
* We listened to an excerpt from the "Musical Language" episode
* We listened to an excerpt from the "Musical Language" episode
This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org
Other related sites:
Free Music Archive: http://freemusicarchive.org/genre/Experimental/
OpSound: http://opsound.org/
Last FM: http://www.last.fm/
Below: DJ Spooky (Paul Miller) talks about the history of media and shares his thoughts on the roles and challenges of media in contemporary culture. He discusses and demonstrates the unexpected side effects of free speech, law, and copyright while showing the power of remixed art. He ends with a discussion about the future and meaning of remix culture.
Below: DJ Spooky (Paul Miller) talks about the history of media and shares his thoughts on the roles and challenges of media in contemporary culture. He discusses and demonstrates the unexpected side effects of free speech, law, and copyright while showing the power of remixed art. He ends with a discussion about the future and meaning of remix culture.
I found this video extremely interesting. It looks at media as a whole and how they all come together.It mixes together sound similarly as film and images. Sound was never something I found captivating but now after seeing this lecture I view it in a entirely new light. It is not just something that I have to do at the end of a short but something to experiment with to make your projects more captivating. I really enjoyed the question and answer segment at the end.
ReplyDeleteI really liked his use of samples, and the idea that music was based on memory. I also thought that the concept of music being part of a gift economy was interesting. This will eventually become the same type of situation that film will be in, so it's nice to know that industries can adapt.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed his references to historical films. I love film history, so that part really related to the base knowledge that I already had and built on it. It also helped me realize how closely related film and sound were.
My favorite part of the lecture was concerning the story telling in an urban landscape. since we are working on story telling projects, I got to thinking about how all art shapes cultures and also breeds additional cultures, because the artists are like cultural anthropologists who synthesize and mix mediums of cultures in their work. I also like what he said about sampling being a layered collage, and stop-motion photography showing fragments of life. Everything he spoke about braided itself together perfectly for me to understand the concepts of art being universal, cultural, and for and by people.
ReplyDeleteI liked the video a lot. I thought DJ Spooky would be doing more of a sound sampling and just so examples of his work, but he had a very knowledgeable lecture and seemed passionate about sound as a whole. I liked his reference to art in the past, how it's beauty is relevant through scarcity, but this art form is different. The media can be copied, duplicated, and appreciated by many. Also, when he mentioned the fact that his lecture was not displayed in chronological order, art is thought in pieces and is strung together by the maker in a way that they are pleased with.
ReplyDeleteSo I jumped in on this video right in the middle, and found him talking about Birth Of A Nation. It sort of freaked me out because for some reason I keep running into this film lately, just in conversation, class and random occurrences like this one. He talks about how he recorded a 75 piece orchestra, from a computer that was sitting in the middle of all the instruments. He talks about how it gave a "Spooky" effect (hah). I wish that I could hear what that sounded like, it seems like a pretty original idea.
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