Category Archives: Contemporary Issues in Sound Art

I’m not meant to be here

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I may have picked the wrong essay question. I may have picked the wrong essay question as it’s sparked an anger, a sadness and a disonnect within me. I’m not meant to be here, studying at UAL, writing in this blog about all the pretentious art practices. Academia is a disease we use to intellectualise our humanity and place ourselves above others.

When I first started studying sound art, I immedietly felt othered. I felt laughed at by other students for being a DJ and not knowing who John Cage is. Why should I know who John Cage is if his work doesn’t move me. I thought “I’m not meant to be here”. Yet, I persisted. Sound Art also allowed me to view music as fluid, allowed to me rid constraints of “genre” from my mind and work. It allowed me to learn about practices which have made my art more refined, more meaningful. Sound art as an abstractification of the view of sound. That is what sound art means to me. I came to view everything in life through the lens of sound.

I am a thinker, not a doer, not a collator. My mind has become enriched with texts I would have never been exposed to without this course. I still feel like I’m not meant to be here. This isn’t to do with art, this is to do with academia. It takes a PhD to be allowed to be a thinker, up until that level, university is just a task of collating research and applying that to your practices, or expanding knowlege. Which is absolutely a good thing. Until you realise that because of this, the knowledge on this things we might want to learn isn’t available to us. I still feel othered, on this course. Perhaps this is the fault of my delusions, my view of the world is warped. Perhaps I shouldn’t have entered university without sorting this first, but how would I have ever been able to, when the institutional barriers in place to access mental health support are so prominent? My energy is drained and I am weak. I cannot create, I can only see the writing of society in anything I look at. The writing of society is the colonial roots it is built on, how this silences me in asking for any sort of help, and when I finally do, I am failed the access to support.

Perhaps this blog is a plea for help. Perhaps this blog is an excuse for the lack of quality of work I have produced throiughout this unit, and in the course in general.

I am aware that personal nuances aren’t an excuse in a lack of performance within academia. I believe I can channge that though.

I’m not meant to be here. But if I stay here and embrace the richness of knowledge the institution can provide, I will work my way to a PhD, where I will be allowed to think, allowed to theorise, allowed to challenge the institutional barriers that have come to weaken my happiness. I refuse to pause my studies, regardless of the mental challenges and the business of life.

This term I was not able to produce high quality work of passing standard, or on time at all. I am aware I may not pass this year but I need to.

Researching Black Sound Artists

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To write on the exclusion of black artists from the sound arts canon, it is important to focus in on a partticular artist’s work or methoology. I identified artists I could think of from previous knowledge, thinking on the ways in which they work with sound.

As my Knowledge of Klein is what iniially sparked my intetrest in sound art, I identified her as an artist I could speak about. Her practice involves performance using DIY instruments, as well as the manipulation of vocals and live triggered samples. Her “musical” works lack structure, rhythm and cohesiveness, likening them to the sound art works which we are introduced to throughout this course. Speaking about Klein would allow me to speak on perforance within sound art, as well as on this importance DIY cultures play in sound art. If I were to choose to speak about Klein within my essay, I would be held back in justifying my thoughts, as there isn’t any validated literature that concerns Klein’s work specifically. The documentaion of modern arts cultures, particuarly those coming from non-white backgrounds, is scarce. Therefore, Klein isn’t written into any litterature that can support my arguemnts through the academic lens. This not only exemplifies the prominence of the issue that I am attempting to discuss in this essay, but also creates an unmovable block in being able to write about Klein.

It made sense to look to artists working with installation / in a gallery context, as their works are therefore validated through an academic lense, even if not included within the sound arts canon. I decided to speak about Satch Hoyt, as his wrok with “Afro-sonic” mapping is something that really spoke to me.

I decided to speak about Actress, as I have a book that unpicks his methodology.

Documentation of Creative Project:

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Before actually conducting the performance I had planned, I decided it was important to even experiment with using multiple mediums at once. I connected one turntable and my laptop (with Logic open) to my mixer. I decided to use each channel as though I was mixing in a DJ setting in terms of EQing and volume levels, and blending into each channel. However, I did not adopt constraints of timing and using tracks of the same genre, or even tracks at all at some points, that there would be within DJing.

I begun my experiment by playing this vinyl I bought in El Salvador a couple months back. This was to signify that the work is about my heritage, a mark of my own sonic mapping. I have Vestax PDX-2300 turntables, which means that I can manipulate the vinyl to slow down and speed up in very large amounts, as well as reverse tracks. I decided to use these functions to manipulate the sound of the vinyl from El Salvador.

I started off by playing with the pitch functions, and then reversing the record where there was a drone-like loop. I thought about how I could apply this as a technique when producing music, as a sort of “live chopping” technique when sampling. I then played with this idea of live chopping, thinking about how I could incorporate splices from other tracks to sample. Using Maria Chavez’s techniques in abstract turntablism, I used my cracked vinyl to add variation of samples used on the one turntable. I then added a second instrument, my laptop, with Logic open, to trigger samples from tracks I created. It was difficult to do so without having pre-organised a set of samples or loading them onto a sampler, I was just attemppting to work with raw audio. I found it was easier to play synthesisers I had created, as there was less ryhthmic clashing, and I had more control over what was being played. I added a third instrument, flute. I thought whilst experimenting, it would be easier to use than a saxophone because it is quieter.

DOCUMENTAATION OF EXPERIMENTATION.

This video displays a “rough sketch” of what my performance would look like. To improve, I will pre-load synths in one project in logic so that I can access them more easily, and switch between them with ease. I thought about how my saxophone is broken, and this is a big reasoning as to why I am reluctant to use it. I then thought about the use of broken vinyl, and how the rhythms of the different elements clashed with each other. The idea of incorporating the broken saxophone then adds to the aesthetic of the work, and allows me to conceptualise it.

On Creation

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Writing on the exclusion of black artists from the sound arts canon, I came to discover the abundnce of black artists working within sound. I found that majoritively, artists who identify as black often tie their art to their heritage. Previously, I had thought this was something artists of colour may feel is expected of them due to the pressures of the academisation of art, and therefore the politicisation of black (specifically, although also extends to all non-white cultures) existence. However, in my research, I found that carrying the importance of heritage within many artists’ works was more about keeping history alive, and celebrating how that history has naturally reproduced in the sonic landscape of black and non-white art today.

I got to thinking about my own heritage, and how even though I am not actively particpating in the communities where my cultures reside, how it changes aspects of my life: how I am othered from those around me at times, how I have gained or lost opportunities, how generational trauma manifests within me.

I want to honour and preserve my own heritage and history the way in which prominent figures working with sound do. To preserve a history, though, is not to portray an idealised image. It is to carry fact, as Sacht Hoyt does with Afro-sonic mapping.

To take this idea of “Afro-sonic mapping” and apply it to myself would be to create a “REO-sonic mapping”:

For my creative piece, I am going to use all of my artistic mediums to create a performance based on this idea of preserving history and heritage. These mediums are saxophone, sampling using DAW, and turntablism. I will use field recordings from El Salvador within the performance, and images taken in South Africa as visual score.

Thinking on Essay Ideas

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Initially, I wanted to write on music’s place within sound art, and problematise the literature on dance music. I found that when reading Simon Reynold’s Energy Flash, there was much focus on the drugs culture of early rave music; the book was written very anecdotally, yet is taken as an academic source for documentation of early rve music and culture.

However, when reading modern readings in general, I found them to be centred around the social culture of the topics in which they speak on. I came to realise that whilst I still problemetise Reynold’s writing on UK dance music, I am now in recognition that the way in which academic writing has progressed into the twenty first century, more social and cultural observations are made, and there is less of a focus on technical research.

This means that the way modern works in art are written into history from this new more culturally focussed lens. This allows us to use these resources as research into social perspectives of issues. However, it could also begin to seperate newer art forms from older ones, disallowing them to exist in certain canons.

We can problematise this particuarly in the case of black sound art. Whilst my intial interest was to write within the topic of dance music, I came to read Teklife / Ghettoville / Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century. Actress’s practice as a producer felt akin to the way in which sound artists create their sound. Well, Actress is litteraly using sound as his median, why isn’t he considered a sound artist? I thought about how the term “sound art” has been presented to me by educators and experiences as a very broad term, with sound art being able to be considered visual art in many cases. If sound art is a fluid art form, how can we explain its undeniable exclusions of certain artists from its canon? I beleive that the fundamental reasoning for this is the way that soubnd art, and art in general, have become academic practices; the study of them in order to validate oneself as an artist, the mass inaccessibility of historical readings or knowledge on practices.

When choosing to study sound art, I wasn’t sure what it even was- to be honest I’m still not sure what it actually even is. We had Jose telling us in first year that music was NOT to be created within the course, an overall feeling of dislike for structured music from the educators on the course. I thought about Actress speaking on his own music in Sonic Ecologies: “I wanna hear form, I wanna hear structure”. I thought about how I, too, want to hear form and structure. There is something about rhythm that feels like I inhabit it within my body, where music without a clear sense of direction or groove, I feel detached from. Does this mean I’m not a sound artist? Maybe. But I would like to propose the idea of sound art as litteraly any art situated around sound. And would like to further propose the idea that exclusions of partciular artists from its canon is due to sound art’s position within academia.

When chossing to study sound art, I looked to Berlin based artist Klein, from South London. I percieve her art as sound art. Maybe it is not, but then we must unpack why. I don’t have a statistic or anything to prove it, but I know that there is a clear exclusion of black artists from the sound art realm. I see artists who created very musical works, such as Harold Budd or even Brian Eno becoming main proponents on the topic, yet Actress’s avante garde experimintalism with field recordings, isn’t even considered sound art. Isn’t what he does quite litteraly the definition of ecological sound art? I believe that the barriers put in place in what is and isn’t considered sound art are institutional barriers; with instituitional racism being the root of the black exclusion. Therefore, I have decided to us ethe opportunity of writing this essay to speak on the reasons for exclsuion and highlight the issue.

Anthropology of Sound

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Anthropology is the study of, and everything within, human culture. When thinking of the anthropology of sound, it opens up questions around the problemetisation of anthropology, as well as questions around what is sound. Practices within the field of anthropology are known as ehtnography; ethnographic research entails the practice of “field work”. Field work involves direct contact with the environment and people involved with the cultures which are being researched over an extended period of time. Ethnography can be therefore seen as research based on personal accounts and experience. Where this can be seen as problematic, sensory ethnography seeks to recognise the researcher as part of the environment, as well as any political or ideological agendas that may be at play.

Anthroplogy is further problemetised when ackowledging its roots in eurocentrism. SOAS inversity, one of the largest research centres in the world for world cultural studies, was initially founded as a place of study for missionaries to become acquainted with the values ad lifestyle choices of the cultures they would subsequently come to infiltrate with eurocentric, Christian standards. This would therefore make many of the sources involving ethnographic research shrouded in outdated eurocentrism. This opens questions around the meaning of “truth”- it can be seen as a concept of male perspective. Sensory ethnography may seek to acknowledge that “truths” are gained from “situated” experiences. Timothy Morton offers the idea of nature as a concept of human construction in their book Ecology without Nature. “Truth” and “nature” are here likened as concepts that should be beyond human construction, however, have been dicated as such. Anthropology, where it concerns nature and the envoronment, is undebatably favoured to a eurocentric perspective.

The anthropology of sound is a highly autoethnographic practice; oral traditions are exactly that- oral traditions. Where anthroplogy is considered a writing practice, the idea of the anthropology of sound as autoethnographic is supported. Sound is percieved differently by different people, and can be hard to be captured by words. So therefore where sound is written into anthropological literature, it cannot capture the exact sameness of what that sound actually was.

Sonic Practices of Resistance and Activism

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Many artists are inspired to create becuase they want to make a change in the world. Art created with no meaning has little longetivty. Art where the atist has poured their heart and life experiences into are the works of art which stay most implemented within history. Art made with these intentions may be seen as sonic activism.

Sonic Activism takes many forms and shapes. My good friend Tom Costello, Boy Lucid, leads nature walks across London and Ireland with the intention of opening up the question: “how can we re-engage with our environmental landscape?”. AM Kanngieser uses their sonic practices to contribute to ecological and geographical research. The Afrika Shrine founded by Fela Kuti was not just a place of cultural gathering, but also political gathering, where young Nigerians could discuss the future of post-Colonial Nigeria. Anything can be considered activism, as long as you speak on its intentions.

Ultra-red is a sound collective with an investment in activist art. As a collective, they look at social issues through the lense of Pierre Schaffer’s different listening modes, and look to work of Paulo Freier’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which focuses on the use of converstion to reach a goal of humanisation between a group of oppressed people. Conversation promote collective listening, allowing people to become more immersed within a community. This helps to work towards a goal more aligned within everyones needs. Thinking on my own community I have started to build, Happiness Starts with Dancing, I am becoming aware of the importance of establishing conversations in order to build that communal value, to build connection between people. But in what ways is my community a form of sonic activism? Perhaps as I stated earlier, anything is activism as long as you speak on the intent.

“Culture as an aversion to politics”

Where I don’t particuarly wholeheartedly believe in any validated political theory, it would feel wrong to ground my community with “political belief”. However, I believe that with this stance, political change is much more tangible. Rather than create loud, angry movements that stigmatise the goal which one works towards, peaceful, creative outlets are more likely to inspire. At the moment, I am just throwing free dances during the day, which aleady changes the perception of what dance music is. It doesn’t have to be in the cold, dinginess of the night. It doesn’t have to be enshrined in an alcohol or drugs culture. I am not solely booking “big name” DJs, who are typically white, cis males. I am hoping to broaden the perception of who can fascillitate the sounds of the dance. Meanwhile, I am sharing online resources about the culture of the music which we share at our dances- I am hoping to expand this into a book club, which will fascilitate conversation, the same way Ultra-red does.

“If I can’t dance, I can’t be part of the revolution”

Happiness Starts with Dancing is remnicsent of 90s resistant movements in response to Government bans on musical gatherings.

“The function is anti-function as a function”

Sometimes, we need to just plant seeds, and live in the way we hope to see the world be. Then the world will become. 🙂

Sonic Ecologies

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The field of ecology is one of nature and ecosystems. It is a field of interconnectedness, sensitivity and presence. It is a lense that anything in existence can be analysed through. Ecology is simply the analysis of the relationships of any given thing to the environment in which it lives or exists in.

Jonathan Gillmurray looks into “ecological sound art” as a field of study. He makes the claim that environmentalism in sound art isn’t as recognised as it is in other art forms, and wants to make a case for ecological sound art to stand as its own distinct field outside of other ecological art practices and saound art istelf. He thinks of ecological sound art as specifically concerned with environmental issues. Whilst there is a “clear innaction” against the worsening environmental issues the earth faces, Bill McKibben noted back in 2005 that art and religion are mediums that humans truky digest, so to talk about issues and implement change, they must be adressed through these mediums, particuarly art.

So if ecological sound art specifically regards the state of our natural environment, then it must use these environments within the art. Perhaps this is why environmentalist art is often referred to as “land art”, as it is quite litteraly art made from the land. Gillmurray points to a growth in texts surrounding environmental discourse leading to a growth in the art based around these issues. The symbiosis of environmental academia and art can be seen in the field of ecomusicology, which concerns music, culture and nature. Gillmurray notes than sound art is not recognised within the field of ecomusicology. But why can’t it be? Gillmurray suggests that perhaps the term “music” within ecomusicoloy is too narrowing. But isn’t music a part of sound art, and would that not therefore mean that sound art could be one lense to anaylse culture and nature within ecomusicology? It feels as though sound art wants its own seperate validation and pushes itself out of broader art fields, rather than those art fields pushing away sound art. Because at the end of the day, what even is sound art? If we prescribe certain attributes to the meaning of sound art such as “art that contains sounds but cannot be too musical” or “art that contains visuals but cannot be too focussed on the visual”, it gives sound art a sense of elitism and pushes away artists from considering their art as part of this field. These attributes are essentially what Gillmurray is prescribing to sound art when he claims that it is not “musical enough” nor “visual enough” to be included within ecomusicology.

Perhaps the entire argument Gillmurray presents here in this article is based on personal feeling about what sound art means to him. Personally, reading his article affirmed to me how much a part of ecomusicology sound art is, and how interwined sound art is with every realm of the art world.

Being in El Salvador, a country built on volcanic land, preserving many of its indigineous traditions, I have been inspired to create what I would consider to be ecological sound art. Using field recordings taken (so far) from the top of the volcano using both the stero recorder and a contact microphone, I have begun creating music that will be scored to the visuals for my second Happiness Starts with Dancing film, Happiness Starts with Home. It is important for me to be able to construct the sounds made using sounds from the land, meaning I am quite litteraly making “land art”. The sounds I am creating are quite musical- they are inspired by the musical soundscape of El Salvador (Cumbia, Merengue), but perhaps according to Gillmurray, this would therefore make my art not be sound art, as it is too musical. Perhaps in that sense then, according to Gillmurray, I am not a sound artist, as I do not want to create sounds that leave the listener in a state of anxiety or clulessness. I want my sounds to provide a sense of safety and familiarity- a sense of home.

Introduction to Reading + Writing

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I would like to base my research around the inaccessibility of academia, and how this restricts the topics which are recognised within the realm of sound art. I am going to research recognised DIY practices in the realm of sound art in comparison to DIY cultures in the world of dance music to show the latter as a valid sound art. To be able to tackle this topic, an understanding of DIY cultures, how academia becomes recognised as such, and the political landscape of educational institutions will be of importance. 

I believe this is an important topic to research due to a number of reasons. The main reason is because of my recent realisation that my practices within the dance music world may be seen as a novelty; the cultural implications of being a DJ takes this practice very far away from an academic context. Perhaps this is because the literature surrounding dance music culture and the practice of DJing focuses on the cultural history, particularly pertaining to its strong association with drugs and free party culture (for the most part). Authors such as Simon Reynolds have played a part in tackling this lack of knowledge surrounding dance music culture, with his detailed Energy Flash being one the texts I will use in reference when writing the essay. Perhaps though, this only makes speaking on this topic important for myself and my ego. Something else I hold of importance within work I create is to create a sense of interconnectedness and community. It would therefore be important to analyse this topic from an ecological standpoint, ecology in sound art therefore needing to be understood.

So the initial building of this essay will be based on texts surrounding DIY cultures, dance music and ecology. I have therefore identified Riot Grrrl, Energy Flash, and Ecology without Nature as my initial chosen texts. However, these texts will not provide insight into the main topic of my essay, which is the innaccessibility of academia. A text that I have identified to gain an understanding of the problemetising of academia is Dark Academia: How Universities Die by Peter Fleming. Hopefully through analysing these initial texts, I will be able to gain an understanding of what the actual issues are within academia which classifies it as a restrictive field, and how these relate to dance music and DIY cultures, and will therefore be able to build a solid question that my essay will respond to.