[-empyre-] Thursday, 19th: Hearing and Listening

[Anna Friz]

Hi all,



To my mind, a most basic condition of art is for something to be revealed, though what that/those thing/s are will never be singular. I don't believe there is something essential about what sound art/audio art/ music can reveal, but the conditions of expression and experience in sound and vibration, within the convergence of techné, politics, economics, culture, history, the immediate environment, etc, do offer something specific (though not necessarily unique). 

To segue a bit from yesterday's questions towards todays's, it's an interesting point Seth raises about the status of a sound 'work' or an art 'work' for that matter.  I create work, and I do think of it as work, not because I can actually bracket it off from the rest of the world under my name, but because it is about labour, personal risk, instability, and yes, intention. I seek situations to be personally affected, and work to amplify/modify/express/transmit this onward. Perhaps especially because I work with transmission systems that are very prone to influence by all sorts of conditions, I am constantly made aware of the instability of the situation-- how little control I as an artist/maker have, how immediately I lose that illusion of control, how fragile the relationships between people and between people and things are, and how little I know or perceive of those relationships at any moment. But whether I'm working on a concert, a pirate radio
 broadcast, a site-specific installation, or an audio file on soundcloud, one thing I do consider is that every part is listening, including me; everyone is a listener, in the broadest sense of being effected by vibration and electric signals. In this way things and people are not so different. In this way, I hope and seek modest if cumulative revelations. 





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Anna Friz
radio * art * sound * research
Wavefarm/free103point9.org transmission   artist
steering member, Skálar Centre for Sound Art and Experimental Music
nicelittlestatic.com



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