learning the ropes

I needed about ten minutes of a spooky wind for “Off the Beaten Path,” but couldn’t find a good recording. I first tried making some wind sounds with my mouth, but found I couldn’t sustain the sound for long enough. The thought of manually editing a string of my ten-second samples into a ten-minute wind was not appealing, so I dug up one of the filter patches we worked on in Audio Art to adapt it.

The patch was already feeding white noise into a filter, so I figured I could automate the frequency parameters to simulate howling.

I used the “drunk” object to randomly walk through numbers between 0 and 128 and then scaled those numbers two different ways to drive the filter and cycle frequencies. Initially I used a resonant filter type, but I found that the wind hissed too much. To get a lower, moaning wind, I tried sweeping the frequency of a low-pass filter instead. After tweaking the frequency ranges, I duplicated the wind generation and routed it to the left output channel so I could make a swirling stereo wind.

Since I need to burn this file onto a CD for the show, I connected an “sfrecord~” object to the outputs of the wind generators and then let it run for ten minutes.

Download MAX/MSP patch
Download sound sample (9MB)

• Theatrical performance — the shows I’m working on
• Instructional performance – thinking about Kelly’s first day of school. Is content delivery a performance?
• Performative surfaces – while considering Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” my mind turned to the place where a performance occurs… and then to playing surfaces — and architecture. Some spaces are designed specifically for performance: theaters, concert halls, broadcast studios. What makes these spaces different than “normal” spaces. Isn’t it possible to perform anywhere?
• Radio Drama

A story of the public performance of a marketing strategy for a product called “Airborne”

excerpt from http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2006/04/created-by-school-teacher.html

“The School Teacher Diversion
Magicians know that the best way to trick an audience is to divert their attention away from what the magician is doing with a flamboyant gesture or joke. The fraudsters at Knight McDowell Labs elevated this to an art form with an insidious diversion that turned a liability into a “viral growth” marketing engine…”

Description
(what elements are there? what is going on here?)
I viewed a video of Yoko Ono performing “Cut Piece” at Carnegie Hall in 1965. Ono, wearing a black sweater and skirt with fishnet stockings, sits alone on the stage with her legs folded beneath her and thrust out to her right side. A pair of shiny metal scissors lie on the surface of the stage in front of her. One by one, audience members approach the stage and the use the scissors to cut pieces of fabric from Ono’s sweater, skirt, and eventually, her undergarments.

Ono looks forward throughout the piece and does not appear to make eye contact with anyone who cuts a piece from her clothing.

Analysis
(how do elements work together? why?)
The action of the piece centers around the scissors, which the audience members use to cut pieces of fabric from Yoko Ono’s clothing. The elements physical elements work together in several ways. The sewing scissors are intended to cut cloth. Ono is seated on the stage in a submissive position; her posture does not oppose the action that takes place. The audience members’ performance in the piece is prescribed (cutting fabric), yet allows for many expressive interpretations.

Interpretation
(what is the intended communication? what is the actual communication?)
Ono seems to use the performance of “Cut Piece” to explore a number of issues. We can hear in some of the off-camera comments and reactions a cross section of negative attitudes towards women. One man says, “Come on, make a piece for Playboy, Richard.” Ono sits quietly, unresponsive as she is revealed to the audience by the audience. But that revelation communicates something else to me. The audience cuts Yoko Ono apart on stage, but why do they cut? Is it only because they have been given agency to do so? If Ono sat on the stage, dressed the same, but without the scissors, there would have been no performance. It would not make sense for the audience to take the actions they did without the scissors she provided. What I see is the artist giving the audience the tool to ultimately reject her art — to cut it up metaphorically — to critique it — to reveal it down to its very essence, down to her nakedness. But her nakedness is paradoxically not the essence of her performance. Once the audience has cut away her clothing, they have neither come to know her more deeply nor to understand her intentions (save for her resolve not to react). They have revealed her bare skin, but have not objectified her in her nakedness.

Decision
(what works for you in the piece and why? what does not and why? what more would you like to see)
The only element of the performance that does not work for me (from the video recording) is that I can’t see why the audience has begun to cut in the first place. Did they begin on their own or were they prompted to do so?

Other observations
A recording of a performance is different than a performance. I cannot adjust the camera angle. I only see what the camera sees. On the other hand, I can replay a recording to watch for nuance.

(more…)

I have been designing sound for the Hudson County One Acts Festival at DeBaun Auditorium.

Come out and hear what I’ve been working on, but more importantly, check out these innovative shows.

September 14, 15, 21 & 22, 2007 at 8pm
$15.00 adults/$10.00 students & seniors/$5.00 children