Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds
David Toop
Serpents Tail, 2001
pp. 256
MESSY, MESSY NOTES:
p. 103 - "Stockhausen rejects sounds triggered by "body rhythms" since they arise out of the animal body and show down the evolution of the human race."
(I get the concept, but this is wrong. Its just accepting reality and making the best out of it. Biofeedback interfaces work this way. Even a violin works this way, its a loop between physical actions and perception.)
Some more good remarks about body & world-sounds on these pages.
p. 104 - "disco cyborg future" nice term
p. 108 - "deep pattern, we've become sound collagists. The energy of those kind of combinations has a very long life. It outlasts rhythms and melodies. (made sense when i wrote it)
p. 109 Rheingold: "some aspects of life in a small community have to be abandoned when you move to an online metropolis; the fundamentals, however, scale up."
- "body crisis films" Tron, Videodrome, Existenz, Matrix,
- non-corporeal
- connection between psychic illness + music
p. 113 Perry: Alchemy - "we cornbread ... The sound might becoming from the foodzone."
p. 114 John Zorn: "rapid dislocations on hairpin structures."?? what does he mean?
It's a kind of spiritual book describing the influence of modern techonoloy upon society.
p. 124 "chronotape" "timespace - with no priority to either dimension"
p. 127 "Music is intangible, yet recording has added flesh and permanence, security, continuit and depth to collective existence, James Clifford; Now musicians have to learn insubstantitiality allover again. All that is xxx into aether."
MCLuhan Quote: "Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act - the way we perceive the world. When those ratios change, men change."
p. 128-129 Brian Eno "dreams" a 3 1/2 minute sound recording in Hyde park.
p. 150 Tanizaki
Everything is nature: toilet brush and computer chip
Bird singing on subway station,
falling asleep after 30 minutes.
St. Giga: Kawasakis Buddhist tapes made in Nara - programmed by tidal patterns, sunrise, sunsets, changing p. p. 153 phases of the moon.
"the cyclical patterns created by these various natural forces are combined to form a single line which it used as the guiding live for programme scheduling."
p. 158 IRCAM, STEIM, Xebec, sound art + consumer research.
p. 159 !
TOA "postpone ... for benefit in the future." / rich life!
SKIN TWO: "We need a world where we can have both the computer - and the campfire."
p. 193 "Without a basis in vernacular rhythms , it failed to really go anywhere." Robert Palmer
Recommendend book on p.104 "Folk song style and culture" Alan Lomax, remindes absolutely of Tomatis. I wonder if they knew each other. Could someone follow this strand, please?
p. 195 Sakamoto faxes through the world during his concerts: "Feeling connected across great distances to like minds."
Outernationalism: Internationalism is still national.
etc.
Critique: Of course this is great, but it only works when you have an identiy of your own. And this would be regional. If you haven't got this - you have no spiritual home. A child growing up like that would have difficulties as an adult, i asume.
- Fennesz field recordings: An echo from the past. Ergriffenheit.
p. 242 Jim Nollman made some sound inventions. Which?
Gregory Bateson insists that "the exclusion of "things" from their contexts distorts our view of the interconnectedness of the world, and by the philosophy of deep ecology." "That adjective "deep" has allways confused me, because it tries too hard to imply a secularised version of what the deep edologists themselves comprehend as a spiritual relationship to nature."
p. 247 Stuart Marshall: "To a certain extent musical performances must address itself t the performance space but only to subjugate its specificities." > Musical space amplified brainwaves as a sound-source.
Pauline Oliveros: the reverb of sound makes the future come to you from the past. simultaneity of time.
p. 249 Jessica / Oliveros
p. 256 John Latham: "context is half the work"
"give 50% or more over to context is to open music out into an immersive environment." A theatre of chaos and complexity.
p. 257 Book: Victor Turner: "Dramas, Fields and Metaphors" Victor Turner
- "Cymatics" (study of wave forms) Hans Jenny? (Light Designer)
a triadic world model of a) configuration b) wave c) power
p. 258 Chladni: "Sound paintings" with violin bow and sand on a metall plate.
"But it must be stressed that these affinities are are not merely metaphors or analogies but involve the recognition of homologous systems."
- Artaud + MTV "New Atlantis" Sound Houses
p. 274 Bateson: 1966 "Steps to an ecology of mind"
Inherent to language is something is done with something. (structure / syntax) Dolphins have no language!
Book: Celtic Myths: "The voyage of Maelduin"; island of talking birds.
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