Harry Charlton’s Sound notes

Lucia H Chung

Lucia H Chung (AKA ‘En Creux’) is a Taiwanese experimental audio artist based in London. Lucia began her talk by presenting a visual piece called ‘Tell me a story’, she describes the work as a reaction to the culture shock of moving to the UK. She was working with a small group of MA students in Winchester, Lucia was the only non-english speaker and as a result was quite shy and reserved. Lucia was interested in the ‘gap’ between translations, and how a person can get caught in that gap. Lucia would whisper something in mandarin to her partner, and the partner would whisper some English phrases back. This process was filmed with a two channel video set up, the absence of understanding was expressed clearly in their faces. During this time at Winchester, Lucia was primarily working with video to explore themes of communication, and the differences in personality when speaking different languages. She conducted a visual investigation on herself, filming herself speaking English, and then speaking Mandarin.

After these works Lucia started working more with sound in video. The piece Lucia showed was a film of her doing a full body prostration, a buddhist ritual that is repeated 108 times as a way of offering yourself or to repent. She was interested in the psychological transition from the first action to the 108th repetition, an ‘untranslatable mind space through a very physical repetition’. Lucia didn’t perform 108 repetitions, instead she edited the video to invoke the psychological mind space. She sped up and slowed down the footage, emphasising the frequency change in the audio.

Continuing her investigation into translation, Lucia found a researcher called  Sarat Maharaj. She quotes an article by the South African man,

‘There emerged, it seems to me, a notion of translation which activates both the visual and the sonic. Beyond the sense of the word and image are sounds which cannot be entirely drawn into the net of signification, and cannot be entirely decoded or deciphered as meaning this, that or the other. This larger sonic pause, the penumbra of the untranslatable that shadow and smudge language, and for which we have to venture beyond language.’

This quote gave Lucia the confidence to ditch visuals and focus on sound as a material medium. Lucia started her PHD at Goldsmiths, she was trying to understand what sound arts is. Lucia discovered Jacob Kirkegaard, a sound artist who had an interest in space. Lucia specifically talks about his piece ‘4 Rooms’, an art piece in which Jacob went to the zone of isolation in Chernobyl. He then recorded the ambient sound of 4 public spaces, he choses these spaces because of the public traffic they once hosted. The recording were then played into the room and rerecorded, repeating this process 10 times for each room, a technique pioneered by Alvin Lucier. Lucia appreciate the hidden dimension of the space Jacob was revealing, she equated this to her investigation in translation.

Next Lucia presented a piece she created in 2009 called ‘Spring Piece’, an audio piece created at a time of transition for her. She had just moved to London, specifically New Cross, she recalled it as a horrible place with rats and an inordinate amount of noise created mainly by passing buses. She described how her room would shake when the busses drove past, which would happen very frequently. This was a stark contrast to the quant medieval town of Winchester. She recorded the sound of her room, and used a piezo microphone to play the recording through the single glazed Windows pane, then rerecording this. This was Lucia’s first sound piece.

Lucia takes a lot of inspiration from sculpture, and says she felt a lot more comfortable using sculpture as a medium. Although she was working with sound, she still hadn’t found a way to equate it to working with a physical medium. She then recalls the breakthrough moment when she made that connection. Lucia recalls seeing Whiteread’s piece ‘Ghost’, a casting of the inside of a living room. Its a piece displaying negative space, a casting and documentation of a living space. Lucia compares this to Alvin Lucier’s ‘Im sitting in a room’, equating the plaster in the casting of the room with Lucier’s mapping of the room with sound as a catalyst.

Richard Phoenix

Richard Phoenix is an artist that works in paint, drawing, writing and music with an emphasis on how these things can help people be together. He works with autistic and people with learning disabilities, encouraging people to make and share art.

Richard started his artistic career when he was 16 playing in bands with his friends, he predominantly played the drums. These bands are where Richard came to value a DIY approach to creation, he values the idea that anyone is capable of becoming a musician and sharing their work. He sees it as an empowering process that helps communities and individuals overcome obstacles and achieve their goals.

In 2006 Richard moved to Brighton and started volunteering for an organisation called carousel that supported artists with learning disabilities. This was his first exposure to working with people who had learning disabilities. He recalls being blown away by a band called ‘Beat express’ who played at one of the gigs, and describes it as a lightbulb moment where he realised he had never seen bands with learning disabilities. This moment sparked 15 years of work, his aim is to get these bands the time and space they need to produce more music and play for more people. Richard started using the skills he had learned playing in DIY bands to support these new bands, putting on shows and recording. Richard started a night in Brighton called ‘rock house’ which gave time for these bands with learning disabilities to play every month, this night has been going for 10 years and is still going.

Richard fell in love with a Finnish punk band called PKN, and he was determined to get them to play in England. To do this he started an organisation called ‘Constant Flux’ in order to be eligible to apply for arts council funding, he managed to get £10,000 to bring them on tour. Phoenix describes the merging of working learning disabilities bands and DIY punk bands as a life changing experience, he managed to find a way to get these bands a diverse audience.

Richard later produced a one page print manifesto for Goldsmiths fringe and underground music group called ‘DIY as privilege- 13 point manifesto for musicians’. This was designed to talk directly to DIY music scenes, and to ask them to consider access within their scenes, to consider who is not in the room and what they can do about it. Richard started fundraisers to provide practice spaces, to transport people to and from the spaces, and to pay for shows. This lead to people with communication barriers being able to work together in order to write songs, Richard makes a point of saying that the money is used to provide structures that help people to do it themselves, this maintains agency and creative freedom.

The manifesto was later expanded and published for rough trade books. Here Richard included more personal stories from creative people that he knows, had worked with or supported. Richard clarifies that he is not speaking on behalf of disabled people, he is speaking on behalf of himself. The experiences he has had working in his field and putting on the events he has, as he says, shifted the way he sees the world and making music. This book was intended to share that knowledge with other people to try and influence their perspectives. Richard says that one of the big issues with disability is fear, fear of doing the wrong thing that stems from ignorance. This ignorance is put upon us and disability can be a very silent part of society.

‘Every art-form is intimately related to a type of life experience. The difference between chamber music and jazz is not one of quality, finesse, or virtuosity but two ways of life, which the people involved did not choose but were born into.’ – John Berger

I do think it’s too easy to be set in your own perceptions, due to our experience of life many people unknowingly have a solipsistic outlook. We should make the effort to consider others experiences and perceptions in the creative field. I’ve always been focused on the process of making and the only thing that matter to me is if like it. However I do think it’ll be interesting to explore the perception and origins of art, much like Sam Auinger talking about all of our perceptions of sound being different. Ive rented ‘Ways of seeing’ by John Berger from the library and Im going to give it a read, id like to see if it applies to my practice.

Sam Auinger

Sam began his talk by talking about his origins. He was born in 1956 in upper Austria. As a child he recognised that sound was basically information and music was social. This means that people needed the help of auditory information to function in their daily lives, Auinger gives the example of running a farmhouse. He recalls that his grandfather was famous for a practice of listening to the sound of hay in the summer to determine the weather. Sam later realised that he was listening to the moisture levels in the material, and with knowledge of the interdependencies between air pressure, materiality and weather was able to deduce the change of the weather. Sam provides another example of auditory information as a warning of people approaching, before CCTV he says they would rely on the sound of the geese. Auinger says that listening to the environment in any field was a daily practice, the sounds ‘talk’ to you. Bringing the same concept to the city, he says that the sounds are talking, but without any meaning for you.

Auinger describes a game he would play with his friends in his youth, one person would hide in a wooden hut to obscure their sight, and they would have to guess what type of car or truck passed by relying solely on sound. He says that each machine had a distinct sound, and this is the crux of his talk. He believes that it is getting harder and harder for people to rely on their ears.

Auinger talks about the catholic influence on his childhood, he recalls the mass being a huge event, and that the churches were built with the intention to enhance your experience, especially the architecture interacting with the sound of the organ. Certain types of cathedrals are even taking advantage of geographical location, making sure the sun hits a stain glass window at the time of the mass. They have used the ability of design to underline their message. But you can take this concept and apply it to all architecture, all buildings influence peoples psychology.

After studying economics and mathematics, Auinger studied composition and computer music in the 80s. There are many properties of sound we take as a given, Sam says, during in this study he learned how to describe the many different qualities that make up a sound and actually talk about it meaningfully. He would have to talk about an imagined sound in order to try to replicate it with computers. Here, he notes, he would quite often get stuck using sounds he already knew from traditional instruments. Sam equates this to trying to imagine a deep sea creature, and the fact that nothing we imagine can be weirder than what is actually in the sea. Certain principles of sound reoccur all over the soundscape, in different practices and sources. Much like evolution in sea creatures, there are structures and systems that form the way sound works. Through this line of enquiry he found psychoacoustics, realising that his body and listening apparatus reacts very differently than a microphone.

Through learning to program sounds Sam became interested in public spaces, because he realised how much daily life was influencing the way he perceived music. He provides the example of his mother hating the Rolling Stones with a passion when he was younger describing it as just noise, and later on in life, as his mothers life had changed, she grew to like it. Now she was able to decode the song structure, in the sixties when these songs were released, it was impossible for her to enjoy the music due to her upbringing on upper Austrian folk music. Auinger raises the question, how many systems are in play that influence our perception of sound?

An example of a system would be the shape of our ears, the shape enhances a certain type of frequency spectrum. A young healthy human has a listening range from 20 Hz to 20000Hz, so when Sam hits a pen against a glass almost all people will hear it, but his grandson will hear more overtones than him. Over time our ability to hear high frequency decreases, this produces a problem for our language centred society, language is constructed with vowels and consonants, our ability to hear consonants decrease as they are mostly found at 8-10 kilohertz. Auinger realises that he is missing quite a lot of his higher range of hearing, and he gives an example of how this effects his perception. If you were to imagine somewhere with a very lively nightlife, lots of people and talking, a lot going on, for a young person with healthy hearing they can perceive this as energy, something that enhances you. If an elder person listens to the same thing, there is a lot less frequency response in their hearing, so for them they perceive the same situation as stress. Another system that influences us, and for Auinger is the most important, is our personal history or context. He gives the example of some people skating in the parking lot of an office. If you are the skateboarder the sound means success or failure of a trick, or seeing a friend. If you are working in the office and have nothing to do with skateboarding you will perceive this sound as annoying. It is almost completely impossible to hear a sound in the same way as someone else. Another interesting point that Auinger brings up is that loudness steals space, for example walking in London on a busy road, you will perceive the other side of the road as a silent movie, the road acts as a border in space.

Auinger stresses the importance of learning how we listen, that it will give rise to many different avenues of research and will deepen your listening experience of the world.