Recorded Arts, Sound Art Picnic
Date: Monday, August 11th, 2008
Time: 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Park location: Great Lawn in Millennium Park, Chicago
Lounge on the Great Lawn and soak up sounds from the Jay Pritzker Pavilion's one-of-a-kind sound system. Bring a picnic, games, friends, and family to play, chat, stretch, eat and drink. Electronic music artists, local record label heads, music historians, expert DJs, record store impresarios, and a few surprise guests provide the sonic backdrop.
This week featuring:
This is Not a Test: The Chicago Sound Experience
Listen to a selection of recorded sound art from local, national and international sound artist recordings on the Great Lawn's state-of-the-art sound system. These field recordings, experimental works and abstract compositions will investigate time, place and space in the city of Chicago and beyond.
A List of Included Artists and Works Below:
1
Start Time: 6:05 PM
Title: ‘Vritti’
Artist: Jen-Kuang Chang: Lincoln, NE
Length: 3:39 Minutes
Vritti is a sonic poem depicting the fluctuation of human conscious during the meditative state. This piece uses both computer-generated sound sources and sampled files sourced from acoustic instruments and field recordings.
2
Start Time: 6:08:41 PM
Title: ‘Shikaakwa’
By: David Schmüdde: Chicago, IL
Length: 3:20 Minutes
Lake Michigan and the Native-American word Chicago are two of my favorite urban Midwest sounds. In this rendition, the hypnotic, mechanical repetition of the raw syllables roll forward like the relentless growth and progression of the city itself. As quickly as these build, they are even more apt to disintegrate into the washing shore. All residents of Chicago know the instant reprieve that the crashing waves provide when they face east and allow the temporal nature of the city to be drown out by the endless ebb and flow of Lake Michigan.
3
Start Time: 6:12:03 PM
Title: ‘Lone Construction Cry’
Artist: Peter Cusack: London, UK
Length: 4:27 Minutes
Field recording of central Chicago - recorded from a downtown 16th floor window on Saturday the 24the of July 2004.
4
Start Time: 6:16:32 PM
Title: ‘The Ambient Wasp’
By: Krispen Hartung: Boise, ID
Length: 5:11 Minutes
A captured a wasp in its nest before winter hibernation. In a small ceramic jar, free breathing and frustrated, this creature’s fury was recorded and processed.
5
Start Time: 06:21:45 PM
Title: ‘Lake Station”
Artist: Teresa Gale: Chicago, IL
Length: 1:10 Minutes
‘Your Favorite Chicago Sounds” project: CTA riders file through turnstiles at the Red Line "Lake" station, amidst ongoing repairs and renovation.
6
Start Time: 6:22:57 PM
Title: ‘True Crime’
Artist: Thomas Park / Mystified: Saint Louis, MO
Length: 4:46 Minutes
"True Crime" is a darkly funny sample collage hearkening back to the days of Prohibition in Chicago.
7
Start Time: 6:27:45 PM
Title: “Taste and See”
Artist: Peter Joseph: Santa Fe, New Mexico
Length: 5:24 Minutes
The church and parish of St. Michael's on the near north side date from before the time of the Chicago fire. In the fall of 2005 I returned to the church where I sang in the 7th grade choir some 35 years later. I had always remembered or automatically heard with in my head and body simultaneously the rich, moving sound or the cathedral. I came to appreciate the place, inside as one huge noisemaker and container for its unique signature sound. Of particular interest is the old pipe organ, the sound of the bell choir, voice, the volume of space revealed in these sounds. These are composed of field recordings made between Sept and Dec 2005
8
Start Time: 6:33:11 PM
Title: ‘A Spoon Full of Sugar”
Artist: Teresa Gale: Chicago, IL
Length: 2:04 Minutes
Your Favorite Chicago Sounds project: a holiday window display at the State Street Macy's features audio by Mary Poppins with a playful accompaniment by a Salvation Army volunteer.
9
Start Time: 6:35:17 PM
Title: ‘Grant Park’
Artist Name: Jennifer Swann: Chicago, IL
Length: 2:20 Minutes
"Grant Park" is a text-based audio work by Chicago artist Jennifer Swann. In the piece, Swann reflects on Chicago through her experiences watching the seasons change over the last year in downtown's Grant Park. The audio piece recalls sensory imagery of the music and lights that offer a peaceful escape from the noise and bustle of State Street.
10
Start Time: 6:37:39 PM
Title: ‘The Astrolabe’
Artist: Eleazar Garzon: Argentina
Length: 10:07 Minutes
“The Astrolabe of Eleazar” is an acousmatic composition finished in September 2007. It was made with sounds produced by cross synthesis and samples of orchestral-alike sounds transformed by filters, granular synthesis and Ocarina-alike sound played by the composer.
11
Start Time: 6:47:48 PM
Title: ‘Dying Underground’
Artist: Alfonso Carrasco Martz: Spain
Length: 6: 28 Minutes
In today's society, individualism produces sounds related to different situations. I try to translate these sentiments in this piece: the accelerated pace of the cities, indifference, loneliness and death. The utopian ideas fade in our time. The media shows conflicts around the world every day, and we are so used to this barbarity that we have learned to ignore it.
12
Start Time: 6:54:18 PM
Title: ‘Kira’s Murder’
Artist: Margaret Noble: San Diego, CA
Length: 3:11 Minutes
On June 26th of 2007, Kira Simonian, a beautiful and talented Chicago artist, student and friend was brutally murdered. One year later it was revealed that the murderer was her husband. This piece is a direct response to the shock and brutality of this crime. It is a textural piece generated from analogue synthesizers and the only recording I have of her voice.
TWO-MINUTE PAUSE FOR DISC CHANGE AND CLOCK RESET
13
Start Time: 7:00:00 PM
Title: ‘Untitled #209’
Artist: Francisco Lopez: San Francisco, CA
Length: 8:54 Minutes
http://www.franciscolopez.net
14
Start Time: 7:08:56 PM
Title: ‘Chicago_Street_Performers Episode’
Artist: Peter of Noise Inc: Poland
Length: 11:48 Minutes
Various Chicago street performances captured in March 2008 as field recordings. It is my sound vision of Chicago's downtown, it is the way I hear and feel this amazing and beautiful city.
15
Start Time: 7:20:46 PM
Title: ‘Boarding Pass’
Artist: David Fodel: Colorado
Length: 2:41 Minutes
Between 2005 and 2007, I traveled back and forth to Chicago as part of my work. Along the way, I recorded hundreds of small cell-phone movies of the process of getting on and off commercial airplanes. I utilized these cell-phone sound bits with DASP processing to create this recorded work.
16
Start Time: 7:23:29 PM
Title: ‘To the Water’
Artist: Noleian Reusse: Chicago, IL
Length: 6:10 Minutes
Lake Michigan is Chicago's saving grace. The skyline couldn't be as dramatic and well formed if it wasn't guided by the shoreline. ‘To the Waves’ is an interpretive documentation of traveling through the city to get to the lake.
17
Start Time: 7:29:41 PM
Title: ‘CHI-TAPE, Excerpt 1’
Artist Name: Meri von KleinSmid: Vancouver, Canada
Length: 8:34 MInutes
CHI-TAPE is an experimental music composition created in Chicago, Illinois in 1992 — with only one cassette tape and one tape recorder-radio unit. This is not a love letter to Chicago, but a sprawling sonic megalopolis of religious testimonials, advertising jingles, gospel music, public service announcements, fractured language, and popular songs from Chicagoland area radio, all corrupted by some of the thinnest, cheapest cassette tape stock in the world.
18
Start Time: 07:38:17 PM
Title: ‘Jumping Over Koons’
By: Rory Shackles/Idle Production: Chicago, IL
Length: 7:21 Minutes
This piece is composed of two recordings. The first, a field recording taken at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago during the Jeff Koons exhibition, and the second, a live recording of a skipping compact disc player.
19
Start Time: 7:45:36 PM
Title: ‘Free Sound’
Artist: Alfonso Carrasco Martz: Spain
Length: 5:28 Minutes
"Free Sound" experiences on sound art and electronic music. Playing with a simple tonal theme and field recordings made in Barcelona, I try to find similarities and differences in the artistic discourse through the game between both sound art and electronic music. The abstract language of music and sound art make "Free sound" reaffirm the tool of these two artistic areas, through recordings, digital synthesis and instrumental. Through these tools I create a composition to ask myself what sound art and music mean for our society.
20
Start Time: 7:51:06 PM
Title: ‘Chicago Downtown Train Episode’
Artist: Peter of Noise Inc: Poland
Length: 13:53 Minutes
On the train and in the buildings of Chicago and processed with gleetchlab, this work is a 100% live performance. Thanks to the preacher, drummer and blues singer I met on this occasion.
TWO-MINUTE PAUSE FOR DISC CHANGE AND CLOCK RESET
21
Start Time: 8:07:00 PM
Title: ‘Lovely Banalities’
Artist: Gintas K: Lithuania
Length: 2:26 Minutes
Music you will hear often is described as microsound or noise, but my purpose is not to create within the frames of these styles. My primary interest is studying the physical effects of sound on the human psyche. For this study, I utilize sine waves, digital sounds, expressive synthesized tones, noises and complex rhythmical structures.
22
Start Time: 8:09:28 PM
Title: ‘CHI-TAPE, Excerpt 2’
Artist Name: Meri von KleinSmid: Vancouver, Canada
Length: 6:17 Minutes
CHI-TAPE is an experimental music composition created in Chicago, Illinois in 1992 — with only one cassette tape and one tape recorder-radio unit. This is not a love letter to Chicago, but a sprawling sonic megalopolis of religious testimonials, advertising jingles, gospel music, public service announcements, fractured language, and popular songs from Chicagoland area radio, all corrupted by some of the thinnest, cheapest cassette tape stock in the world.
23
Start Time: 8:15:47 PM
Title: ‘Topography of Darkness’
Artist: Martin Bedard: Montreal, Canada
Length: 3:57 MInutes
This work is inspired by the principal character of the novel, Notes of a Night Watchman by Alexandre Zinoviev, The night watchman in an unreal round in the full heart of darkness where guided by a dark light and the echo of his steps, all could see the interior of each one of these transfigured places.
24
Start Time: 8:19:46 PM
Title: ‘Anechoic Pulse’
Artist: A. Kokoras: Greece
Length: 9:44 Minutes
This sound material, not easily recognized most of the time, undergoes a rather simple transformation in terms of sound processing using editing tools such as hard-limiting, maximizers, cut-n-paste, dynamic envelope changes, time stretches, and binaural specialization. The piece ends with a pulse drone created with tiny strokes of a metallic stick on a 19-inch timpani.
25
Start Time: 8:29:32 PM
Title: ‘106th Street Bridge’
Artist: Joshua Manchester: Chicago, IL
Length: 8:20 Minutes
The industries that once reigned supreme in South Chicago have left some monumental scars on the area, from a swamp filled in with slag, crossed by power and rail lines, and called a park to massive, quarter-mile walls that used to contain coal. Standing on the 106th Street Bridge, you gain a glimmer of that old Chicago.
26
Start Time: 8:37:54 PM
Title: ‘Sra’
Artist: François Dumeaux: France
Length: 5:20 Minutes
Pièce composée à la demande d'Annette Vande Gorne, pour le concert - anniversaire des 80 ans de Bernard Parmegiani, festival L'Espace du Son, Bruxelles.
27
Start Time: 8:43:16 PM
Title: ‘Bastet’
Artist: Elsa Justel: France
Length: 10:48 Minutes
Bastet, inspired by the Egyptian cat-goddess, was commissioned by Aprem-Nevers. The piece starts in the interior regions of the piano. Bewildered by these unfamiliar surroundings, she tries to escape whilst scratching the strings. This work explores the meaning of ambiguity, instability and chance.
28
Start Time: 8:54:06 PM
Title: ‘Leaving Chicago’
Artist: Thomas Park / Mystified: Saint Louis, MO
Length: 5:10 Minutes
This is a short work, abstract / ambient, based on my experience of visiting Chicago, then leaving the city by train. Chicago is a kind of dream city to me, being a place with incredible scenery. Architecture, culture, and excitement. After a recent visit, I tried to capture the sadness I felt when leaving this great city by train.
http://margaretnoble.net/
