Vinyl Requiem: Lol Sargent & Philip Jeck (1993)
This was an acclaimed piece created by artist Philip Jeck in collaboration with Lol Sargent in 1993, an award winning performance that involved 180 vintage Dansette record players and multiple film and slide projections. Vinyl requiem was an installation/performance based with audio but what really catches my eye are the projections and the set. the whiteness and impact of the sheer scale of the piece. Projections over musical items and objects is a really interesting idea that left a big impression on me and is something I may look into applying or incorporating into my work. It also shows that my work does not have to be just a projection onto a screen but could incorporate a more physical and structural element too. Possibly drawing on Nam June Paik as well as Jeck.
Jeck began his artistic life in the visual arts but then was diverted by explorations into using turntables to compose music in the early 1980s. The phrase ‘turntablist’ doesn’t seem quite right for his approach to vinyl appropriation and use of primitive sampling keyboards and minidisc recorders reveal an artist who still manages to create a tender sound despite all the tech. I have not been able to find any audio or video for it but in order to get a feel for what it may have been like I did find some footage of Jeck playing. No turntables but it gives a feel of his approach.
Janet Cardiff: 40 Part Motet (2001)
40 Part Motet by Janet Cardiff is a audio only piece installation but is almost structural too in it's presentation on a multitude of speakers. 14 minute 40 track immersive contemporary sound installation playing polyphonic choral music written in the mid-1500s by Thomas Tallis. The installation consists of 40 speakers arranged in a large oval turned inward. Sung in Latin and a cappella by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir, one singer’s voice comes from each speaker. The audience are allowed to move amongst the configuration of speakers to discover what the artist describes as “walking into a piece of music.”
The experience of the piece which unfortunately I have not been lucky to participate in must have been amazing. Reviews of the piece include “Achingly beautiful” by the New Yorker and “Transcendent” by the New York Times. Even from the video clip below you can get a sense of the immersive qualities and impact of the piece. I love the way that it is also structural with the 40 speakers and can only guess at the tech needed to create the installation. The all embracing immersive quality of the piece is also a really interesting idea.
It is these last two points that I will take forward to my piece the immersiveness and the uses of multiple speakers. I want to use multiple tracks of music so could a similar technique be used to move the different music one piece to the next around the room?
Rachel Rose: Palisades (2014)
This was a piece I visited last year at the Serpentine Sackler gallery. The main piece was Palisades a wonderful blurring of time and place, vision and audio and set up on one screen in it's own space. Set in various time zones Rose used tromp-loeil editing techniques to create almost optical illusions to link together a present day character in the Palisades Interstate Park in New York on the banks of the Hudson to different moments in the sites history.
The sound element on this was also hugely important and a real inspiration and an exercise in building narrative and story. The outside of the gallery wrap-around walkway of the gallery created a sound installation inspired by the piece and the other piece she was exhibiting, using a newly imagined mix soundscape from Palisades and A Minute Ago. This journey throug a space using sound really inspired me and i feel that this may be something to look into in my won work.
A multitude of speakers ere used so the sound literally moved, swallowed, chased, haunted and followed you as you went around the exterior walkway. A sigh sound bridges past and present, shouts, screams and gunfire and cannons bring moving images of old paintings to life. Most strikingly a subverted version of Bang Bang (My baby shot me down) by Nancy Sinatra weaves to gather the past and present. I use of sound was amazing and sparse and focussed rather than an onslaught. It drew on a variety of effects from atmosphere, voices, ambience, music, library and possibly foley to build and create meaning. Meryl Streep's voice whispering "I am the voice of dead people" flows into a static which crackle which then in turn changes into historical gunfire. Without a shadow of a doubt the audio mix was as important as the visuals and the glue that at times held everything together.
Bruce Nauman: Raw Materials (2001)
Raw materials was a purpose built site specific sound installation in the Tate Modern in 2005. It incorporated fragments and elements of Nauman's previous works to create an interactive sound installation that could be self edited by the audience depending on how they approached the piece. It was a mix of chants, cries and mantra-like repetitions resonating around the main turbine hall. It assembles fragments of audio build to create their own associations much like Eisenstein's montage theory of the collision of audio in this case creating their own connections interpretations and meanings.
The video clip below is pretty basic but it gives a sense of the piece. I love the scale and the invisibility of the piece as all of the speakers were made as invisible as possible so the sound must have seemed to belong to the voice of the building itself. Also the way connections could be made between the sounds to create your own individual journey, narratives, messages and ideologies.
This last point may be something that I could take and experiment with in my piece. Could the audience build their own versions of the Amen Break piecing together the clues from many different areas and speakers to try and create the whole.
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