Re: [-empyre-] live performance vs. studio/other

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@rhizome.org>]

> tobias wrote:
> 
>>> I see that as presenting the
>>> audience with an anchor to keep them engaged in what's going on, to ease
>>> their level of comfort. In a sense, the visuals metaphorically become the
>>> blank wall that is stared at during zen meditation, if we're to take that
>>> as a model for concentration -- but by using a set of images rather than
>>> one static image, it is easier for the audience to remain attentive; it's a
>>> bit much to ask that the audience remain silent and mindful of the sound
>>> without a visual focal point, especially if they aren't used to that type
>>> of deep listening situation.
>> 
>> Since when did art become TV?
>> 
>> Why do we pamper?
> 
> 
> I fail to see your point. There's a slight difference between watching an
> episode of "Married by America" and watching an abstract video which
> accompanies a microtonal audio performance. ;-)

[SNIP]

This is long --  my apologies -- but if we are here to discuss, and hear
discussion, so let it flow ...


Hi John,

1
Let's remove my provocation here from a comment on work I have not
seen--yours--and simply ask the question of "visuals" in relation to sound,
which I think can be explored productively, although I will reserve the
right to remain playing the role of sparring partner .. with swords blunted,
of course (phallic imagery abounds ..). The visual / sound-art relation
perhaps needs a little explication, at least in its history with
electronically-based music, sound-art, microsound, beat-oriented or
otherwise.

2
Zap this memory tape .. rewind: besides film, "visuals" as a form of
eye-based expression for music seems traceable back to the psychedelic
gatherings in the '60s (the use of coloured oils with overhead projectors in
SF pioneered the moment). While film loops and experimental, often macabre
video were used in industrial events, and disco primarily engaged lighting
to create a space of comfort and, arguable, worship (especially early "gay"
house etc.), it was probably rave culture that created a legion of separate
visual-production artists adept in producing imagery specifically for the
event (industrial had its own stage antics, and so rarely did the films
upstage the onstage).

3
While early attempts in rave culture used similar techniques to the '60s and
salvaged 8mm film loops, later the art grew along with computer technology,
home video and digital video, to the point where many of yesteryear's
rave-visuals-dudes are now quite successful, financially and also, to a
degree, artistically, via contracts in installing visuals for massive,
contemporary rave-parties and superclubs worldwide. At the same time we had
the mixture of visuals with turntables, resulting in Scratch Video, which
has perhaps found its niche more in hip-hop than microsound or sound-art.
The art-end of the spectrum also broke off, either into Vjing or producing
standalone digital video, and with many video-artists entertaining
rave-visuals, and experimental cinema returning to engage electronically
produced sound. By the time laptop production hit, creating and doing
visuals and sound in one box was a possibility and it became quickly
embraced. Vjing relies upon this moment. Vjing is the offshoot of Scratch
Video, and engages similar premises of "mixing" source streams and effected
video to the music, and often, working in tandem with a producer to produce
collaborative audio-visual work [as I am in the process of doing with Johnny
Ranger from the SAT Mix_sessions collective and have done in the past with J
@ Moment Factory].

4
At its best, Vjing demonstrates a subtle, improvisational relationship
between audio-artist and video-artist, while at its worst, the medium
abounds in easy-to-dazzle-effects and music-video-like aesthetics.

5
[In fact, we hit a nut of the issue I have with visuals serving audio: the
*form* remains equivalent to TV, and induces similar attention-states,
especially when arranged to do so. The content, in this binary-sense, does
not exceed the form of the arrangement. The way in which we hear and see
need to be expressed in a manner that is different not only in the way that
abstract visuals & sound are from "Married in America" in their obvious
content, ie the level of meaning or of symbolic code, but also in the manner
of presentation, of crafting the physicality and thus affecting the
mentality of the particular experience itself. As I think one of the
innovations of electronic music is in challenging the ways in which we
normally experience media, I think it remains important to engage this
challenge as we observe contemporary and transactive media--such as the
Net--become reduced to a one-way "freedom-of-shopping" form, one which
becomes reduced to a parody on par with television. For Hakim Bey, the Net
is "second-rate heroin" while TV is something like fourth. While I don't
agree with Bey's neo-Ludditism, I think we can understand the ways in which
the production of the media's positioning, or we could say frame, can reduce
the magickal, if not "transcendental" (as that which you are aiming for)
moment to a simple, and habitually trained exercise of "reception" -- be it
of art or advertising .. the production of a practical, emergent,
transcendental movement or crossing is one which becomes immanent, but only
when the potential of alternative framings are given exposure .. ]

6
The question I'd like to as is *why* many audio-artists feel the need to
work with visuals. Visuals in the, reductive and entirely subjective (but
researched) opinion above often *serve* the music, or act as a
framed-catalyst to a certain experience, be it dancing at the rave and
inducing trance-like states or shocking participants (porn was a favourite
thing to insert), or, on the other hand, seducing the listener to sit
comfortably and quiet, like in a film or lecture. There is nothing degrading
or wrong about such art, but it should be noted the ways in which it serves
certain aims, which I think is what John has well-explained: his aim to
create a space "in which to think." Basically, the parameters of such
art--like rave culture--are of the happening, or the event in and of itself.

7
The question remixed .. is whether we can make a distinction between
sound-art in such cases and happenings. La Monte Young, although I admire
his high-volumen, early sine-wave work, desperately wanted people to keep
still in his influential performances. The stillness of the body, in this
relation, has always been equivocal to thought, reflection, meditation.
Rave-culture speaks otherwise, but rarely is rave culture considered
equivalent to the avant-garde for numerous interesting reasons that perhaps
return us to the sound-art / happening distinction, a distinction which is
simply between the need to often supplement hearing with another sense,
usually the visual. Ravers also wore fun-fur suits because they felt nice.

8
I am suggesting that sound-art's position to visuals is one that can quickly
become not an immersive experience but one where the visuals are utilised
only as backdrop for the sound, or where the experience quickly
"transcends"--in a positive way, most likely--its experience as sonic. At
which point we can ask: why have visuals at all, or conversely, why claim to
still be doing something sonic, and based on sound?

9
If sound-art is the goal, should not it simply be presented as such, to
listen, and to cultivate listening?

10
I find that whenever I work with visuals, the audience often only critically
comments on what they see, and not on what they hear (yes my visuals are
abstract as well, although these days more often surreal -- but my "visuals"
are not "visuals" -- they appear only in the realm of digital video). The
situation of the eye is such that our (necessary) addiction to site
overrides, by habit, the immediacy of hearing sounds otherwise filtered and
unperceived. Often, with careful, microtonal / microsound and sound-art
works, visuals do not cultivate listening, but simply reinforce what we are
used to when sitting down and all facing one direction: film, or television,
where we distract and filter away the sound of the kids blowing up the
neighbour's dog, a vicious car accident and honking horn-fest going on
outside, or whatever else is going on.

11
The use of visuals, when accompanied by claims to "ease [the audience's]
level of comfort" and to "remain attentive" is one in which, I think, we
need to think: "comfortable" in which manner, as to what? "attentive" in
which manner, as to what? I recognise the drive to relaxation, thinking and
meditation if not somnabulance and quasi-dream-states, but if this is done
in a manner that is akin to passing out in front of the Telly, we need to
reconsider the postscript of such practices [I'm not saying John's
performances are doing this or are akin to this, but rather following a
train of thought].

12
For there remains a strategy of control, of surveillance, to an extent in
the .. well, I guess we could say "the gaze." Alexis Bhagat is speaking on
sound, control, cut-ups, reverb, and surveillance and paranoia tomorrow at
the [SAT] here in Montreal: http://www.quadrantcrossing.org/bhagat

13
While I appreciate deep listening and wish to further advocate meditative
listening, and mindfulness--all the Buddhist buzzwords--I think one also has
to become very attentive to the ways in which the visual "focal point" often
(but not always) subsumes any *active interpretation* of the sound, which I
think out of its own logic needs to occur without a Yantra. This is how I
would interpret Francisco Lopez's use of blindfolding the audience and
having them lay down in a circle. This type of scenario--tactically--seems a
more radical way to approach sound-as-art than a visual "metaphor," which
remains just that: a metaphor, crutch or aid, unless the visual can be
strongly made to transact or interact with the sound, at which point we no
longer have sound-art, but something entirely other, a happening or
transactive experience, at which point there is no reason why the audience
should feel they have to remain in chairs, sitting obediantly ... unless the
happening is an experience in bondage.

14
How active can an audience become before we feel it is no longer an "art
performance"? Is this not a primary division between the rave and the
gallery? Perhaps instead of continously invoking rave culture, I should
invoke Burning Man, or the mandate of the 2003 LEM Festival in Barcelona,
all of which call for something along the lines of: No Spectators ..

15
What I am trying to say does not erase a relationship with the audience or
"making art in a vacuum." However I think exploring these issues more fully
gives some depth to the sound-visual relation when the primary art IS the
sonic, and I think when we embrace the visual in a *predominantly* sonic
scenario, we crutch the magick of the visual. I think we also need to
carefully evaluate the use of media and technology, so especially when we
seem so ready to adapt the techniques of television and film--one-way forms
of production--in creating "art."

15
There's a great story from Genesis P-Orridge where he talks about the first
performance by Throbbing Gristle .. they built a big box in the courtyard,
climbed inside, and locked the courtyard and the box, and began playing.
Video-cameras broadcasted the performance, without sound, to monitors in the
surroundnig building (I think it was a Uni with closed-circuit TV).
Meanwhile the sound could only be heard from I believe the courtyard, where
the speakers were, but no one could get in. The crowd completely rioted,
demanding to SEE AND HEAR T.G. . How do we renegotiate this demand and
understand its framework?

best, tobias