"Shared Frequencies"

Kabir Carter is a performance and installation artist based in NY. His work could be described as an eloquent study on the interactions and interpolations between sound, space and the body.  I was introduced to his work while doing research for the book Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves and I was intrigued by the physicality of his creative method as well as his attentiveness to the spaces he uses for his work.  Kabir Carter will be performing tomorrow Tuesday, October 18th, at the Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves book celebration at Issue Project Room.

"Report"

When did you start to develop a sensibility about space in all its different manifestations (public, private, indoors and outdoors). What was the first interaction/experiment or project that sparked this idea in your head and consequently in your work?

What set me to actively consider space in my own work was Shared Frequencies. Several years ago, I received a grant to go out on New York City sidewalks and set up a loose array of radio scanners, signal routers, and analog synthesizer modules atop a pair of folding tables. My first few realizations of the work required me to rethink my relationship to sound in space on the fly.

I determined ways to make small monitors project reflective and resonant sound that could be heard within and alongside the energizing high SPL auditory events that blanket urban locales. These and other challenges that I faced while presenting Shared Frequencies in public outdoor spaces led me to better consider architectural acoustics, and how our bodies move through sound and space.

The correlation between sound and space plays a very important role in your work. In the equation between a sounding space and a transformative sound, which of the two is more prevalent?

My use of sound requires space – or at least the idea of space as it applies to a medium – in order to be tangible and concrete. And in terms of sound, space is largely perceived by what it carries, or what demarcates it. I’m interested in how both sound and space can be shaped by transformative energies, and I look for ways to highlight how a signal chain can extend into architecture, and in and out of one’s body.

"Report"

Space would need to be included in such a chain as well. So signal, space, landscape, architecture, and body would all fall along in a variably arranged series of modulated possibilities. Additionally, I feel that sound in the visual arts is at once liberated by its mutable nature, and complicated by its partially formed discursive condition – as something that historically grows out of mostly experimental music practices, and is inscribed with artists’ wholly or partly decoupling from that history and adopting trends originating from late twentieth century visual art practices. Returning to the question, such a correlation will yield very different values depending on where one chooses to stand in relation to these two histories.

Do the advances of technology corrupt our relation to our surrounding environments, the spaces we inhabit and interact with or even reality to some extend?

That’s a rather complicated question – if we are considering acoustic technology, I think it remains a concern that media technology is, historically speaking, partly bequeathed to us through the military. In this light, one might appreciate experimental music practices that are centered on what Friedrich Kittler termed the “abuse” of such technological systems. Part of media arts collective Mobile Image’s eighties era manifesto also merits repeating here: “the counterforce to the scale of destruction is the scale of communication, and… our legacy or epitaph will be determined in many ways by our ability to creatively employ informal, multimedia, multi-cultural, conversational, telecommunications and information technologies.”  Today, we seem to be very much enmeshed in a struggle with and against media technology, and perhaps that is the least that we can hope for – a doubled movement with and against technology.

"Soft Errs"

You have at times used  radio as a source material in your installation work and performances. What is it that you find appealing in this sound source?

While I’ve mostly stopped using radio in my work, my initial attraction to it was as both a source and a site. So in Shared Frequencies, radiophonic signals and radiophonic space are both considered as performative materials that can be worked with over time. I gradually extracted bodily behaviors from my experiences with Shared Frequencies to generate a series of works that focus on how one’s body can be used to move radiophonic sound events through multiple sites or physical locations. And after working on a few projects without using radio technology, it became clear to me that my interests were more closely aligned with sound and space in general, and not so much with a particular and singular kind of signal source or set of propagating conditions. If anything, I attend to spaces that are inhabited by bodies, and among these, spaces for listening to dance music tend to excite me as a listener far more than radio does. But I do expect that I will continue to try and work with its airchain in the future.

Artist Website: kabircarter.com

Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves Book Launch Event:  free103point9.org/events/3657

On Tuesday, October 18^th, free103point9, PAJ Publications, Issue Project Room and Electronic Music Foundation will celebrate the publication of Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves by Galen Joseph-Hunter with Penny Duff, and Maria Papadomanolaki (PAJ Publications: 2011). This event will feature performances from Todd Merrell, Kabir Carter, Terry Nauheim, Lázaro Valiente, Joel Chadabe/Milica Paranosic. Performances begin at 7 p.m.

PROGRAM INFO:
Transmission Arts: Artists & Airwaves Brooklyn Book Celebration
(http://free103point9.org/events/3657)
Oct. 18, 2011: 7 p.m., free
Issue Project Room
At the Old American Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215

ABOUT THE BOOK
In this ground-breaking look at a new art genre, Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves brings together a genealogy of 150 artists and artworks—and more than 250 images—from 1921 to the present that encompasses performance, video, radio theatre, sound art, media installation, networked art, and acoustic ecology. Here is a fascinating account of the ingenuity and creativity of artists who have made new discoveries in broadcast, public works, performance composition, sound, and text, stretching the boundaries of both transmitter and receiver. At a time when public access struggles with corporate control of the airwaves, artists have combined activism and communications technologies to represent alternative worlds on the electromagnetic spectrum.

"Folding In On Itself" (2011, Type Records)

Ezekiel Honig is a NY based music producer, sound artist and founder of two respected labels – Anticipate and Microcosm – well known in the circles of music connoisseurs and art enthusiasts. Many people, including myself, have fully embraced his solo work with the beautiful and enigmatic “Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band” (Anticipate, 2008). Aside from having released six studio albums and an equal amount of singles/EPs and splits/collaborations since 2003, Honig has also been producing sound for picture as well as being a constructive audio thinker.

Ezekiel has generously shared his latest release with me on a rainy Thursday afternoon of April. From the first seconds of this recording I immediately sensed that I am entering a very private territory.  It brought me to a place that was warm, organic, and, strangely enough, familiar. The sounds coming from Honig’s latest album blended exceptionally well with the moody cityscape outside my window as if they were the reflecting voices of the neighboring buildings or the sighs and the pulses of the passers-by. “Folding In On Itself” carries Honig’s signature sound but its textural palette tells a more personal story that ties the artist to the city he inhabits and the city respectively becomes the skin and bone of Honig’s aural canvas. A minor difference worth noting compared to his earlier offerings is that Folding In On Itself is released under the Type imprint, home to artists like Xela, Helios, Goldmund, Deaf Center, Mokira and Rene Hell among others.

Folding In On Itself Record Release Party is on May 12 at Littlefield. The bill also includes a DJ set by John Xela (founder of Type) as well as a set by Borne. More info about the event can be found here.

MP: Does “Folding In On Itself” summarize your personal soundprint within the collective memory of this city and its past?

Ezekiel Honig: Well, it’s a tiny sliver of that, an example of moving through cities.  I wouldn’t feel comfortable calling it a summary, but more a version of it.  Similarly, although New York City dominates the album, there are moments from Torun, Poland, and Milan, Italy as well.  In a way, any city serves the purpose and the symbolism, even though the heart of it and the majority of the outdoor sounds do originate in New York.  I recorded all the original sounds so it’s all remapping experience, wherever I was when the recordings happened.

MP: How long did it take you to make this album?

EH: Roughly two years.  That time is of course not full time, eight hours a day and not regimented in any way.  There were weeks where I didn’t get anything done and weeks that were extremely productive.

MP: A recurring pattern in your work which, I think, is responsible for the uniqueness of your sound, is its muted, slow paced meditative flow. Do you spend a lot of time with your materials until they get their final shape and sound?

EH: Making music is as much about meditation for me as anything else.  Each track gets finished slowly, editing and piecing things together until they feel correct.  Because the music comes out of the process itself, and is not incredibly preconceived, it needs to happen over a period of time, revealing itself to me though trial and observation, making sense as I delve further into it.

MP: How much space do you leave to intuition when you produce a track?

EH: Intuition is a big part of it.  That being said, let me be clear that the intuition is based on a range of experiences and sounds and built over time, a cumulative idea rather than a make it up as you go, free-for-all.  Intuition might be another way of saying internal logic, the system that a track or a series of tracks sets up for themselves, moving from one piece to another in a way that makes sense within the confines of the world it is existing in, the sounds it is using and the place I want it to go.

MP: What is your approach when it comes to field-recordings? Do you hunt the sounds that you have in your mind or do sounds reveal themselves to you after the recording process?

EH: Definitely the latter.  I never look for something specific when I record outside, though of course the sounds that happen are limited by where I go.  Besides choosing a location I’m more interested in finding things that just happen, searching for the sounds that occur within the recording and have potential for a track.  I often find a sound that leads to a track being built around it and I never could have planned that.

I’m more excited by the happenstance of what occurs at any given moment, the accidental nature of the process of recording a situation that you can’t control, and then the paradox is that you do in fact control the final output, manipulating that material to do what you want it to do.  It’s almost like digging for samples, but within a few spare moments of actual occurrence rather than records that exist.

MP: Do you have a favorite location in NY that you regard highly inspirational and sonically interesting?

EH: There are certain spaces that have a particularly interesting resonance to them (subways, museums, etc), but honestly, any second on any city street has a wealth of potential.  If you’re listening carefully, it is all interesting, but certain nuances need to be coaxed out.  Because it’s more about editing and processing any two minutes of recording can at least potentially yield something essential.  It makes you listen to the world more carefully, which changes one’s perspective, on life as much as music.

"People, Places & Things" (2004, Microcosm)

MP: I get the feeling that in this release the use of recorded environments/spaces contains at times a denser network of metadata and personal memory stamps. How does that relate to your concept of the loop as a tool?

EH: There are certain moments which feel like they can work as a loop, while others need to play out on their own a bit.  I don’t know how to explain this accurately because it is based on instinct (leading back to your previous question).  This instinct (or intuition) is based on all past experience and sound work, so it is incremental in a sense, and part of being myself.  Just as a loop is a tool to be used in the construction of a piece, any sound is a tool in the same vein.  That is, however, a simplification of something more emotionally complicated.

The fact that I recorded the sounds of these spaces inherently carries with it a memory association, but it also gets manipulated from a source of all memories.  It’s difficult to separate the event itself from all other events.  Sound is so powerful for memory.  While a photograph is missing what was out of frame, and one fills that in with what they think was there, sound is just as it is, if it hasn’t been manipulated of course.  It retains all things which were within earshot (microphone-shot, more specifically).  Listening to a recording of a space I am instantly transported there and begin remembering details about the moment, even if it was from years ago.  While I may remember some things incorrectly, the sound is what it is.  I may have forgotten that this car drove by, but I hear it very distinctly, so I know that it happened.

Editing those moments into something new, utilizing shards of them for a new purpose, is a layered process because depending on the processing and the arrangement it can either color the rest of the track with those memories or it can get lost in the new thing which it is now a part of.  It completely depends on the way it is used, how it is mixed, and how strong the associations are.  In many ways working with these materials can be flashback oriented, movements through personal stories, and sometimes they’re just sounds with potential, a tool to be harnessed like any other towards the desired goal.

"Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band" (2008, Anticipate)

MP: Recently I read a very interesting article about the state of music industry. The author made the remark that an artist who has developed a unique aural vocabulary can stand out and defy the challenges of the democratized and yet cluttered music community. Do you think that being “unique” is enough and if so how would you define this term?

EH: This is a question I think and talk about often.  There are so many interwoven layers to it, of art, business, social culture, technology. Unique as an idea is of course defined differently for everyone, based on their taste.  What is unique for one is boring for another.  It all depends on context, on cultural associations, so it’s an extremely “eye of the beholder” type of construct.  There is also the need for something to be unique and ‘good’, another word with a multitude of definitions.  My point is simply that uniqueness helps you stand out, but the work needs to also connect to something familiar enough that people will respond to it.  It’s an interesting balance.

To comment on the article you read more directly, being unique is necessary to stand out in the crowded marketplace, but it is far from being enough to make a difference, or to stand out to the extent that people will support the work (i.e. support the artist, support the label).  There is so much out there, that while some things rise to the top because they touch a specific emotional or cultural chord with audiences, much of the success of something still relies on how loud the shouting is (promotion, marketing) or the label that it is released on.  A small number of labels have an established enough brand for it to affect how a release does in the marketplace.  An overwhelming majority does not.

Similarly, the crowding of people’s time and mental space creates a situation where all of us miss out on material that we might love, but will never find out about, or have time for if we did.  Aggregation is consistently being given more attention because it can use filters for people, but the filters still leave something to be desired.

The thing which is both interesting and scary, exciting and challenging, about the current musical landscape (and all media for that matter) is the fragmentation that we are in the midst of.  While there used to be a set route of producing, releasing and promoting a work, there are now pretty much no rules and lots of options, both tested and still to be thought of.  It’s amazing, and also can be confusing.  It calls into question some basic tenets of distribution and finding an audience.  One can dream up a new approach and make it work, and there is no need to really follow the same path that has been used for the last bunch of decades.  This then calls into question the whole concept of course, and reminds us that what we take for granted as the manner in which music is released and received is an extremely new thing in history, and we are merely at the beginning of the next phase, and we don’t know how it will turn out and what the effects will be.  Because so many of the boundaries have been removed, there is less authority of taste in a sense, which is amazing, not just because it creates a situation which makes it easier for more creative ideas to break through, but because it requires the average listener to curate their own taste more concretely, to shape one’s listening habits rather than turning on the radio and accepting whatever the pop charts are.  I realize many people still do that, but a lower percentage than it was twenty years ago.

MP: How did your release with Type occur?

EH: I’ve known John Twells, the owner of Type, for a few years, through music industry circles.  He asked me about doing a record for the label after hearing my Surfaces of a Broken Marching Band album, which I released on my Anticipate label in 2008.  Thankfully the resulting record met his criteria for a release on his label.  It’s pretty amazing to be working through Type, with a label and a person that I respect creatively and organizationally, that I trust with my work.  Self-promotion has always been a necessary evil for me, rather than something which comes naturally, so having another company take care of that end of a release is pretty rad.

MP: Do you have any other creative activities currently going on apart from your latest release?

EH: I took a bit of time after finishing the album to clear my head creatively, but am back in full swing now, working on a couple collaborative audiovisual projects which are in a different direction, am in the early stages of a collaboration with Mark Templeton, and beginning to work on music for a couple of short films and possibly a documentary later in the year.

Artist Links:

http://www.ezekielhonig.com/

http://www.anticipaterecordings.com/

http://www.microcosm-music.com/

Deaf Center (Image: John Twells)

Behind the alias of Deaf Center are Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland, too pals from Norway. They are equally fascinated and inspired by the lights of the cities, an atmospheric walk in the empty forests of Norway, the dark yet disarming emotional contour of the movies of David Lynch or Kubrick. Erik has recently moved to Berlin where Deaf Center recorded, within three days, their latest album Owl Splinters, in Nils Frahm’s studio. He also runs Miasmah one of the most distinguished labels of experimental music and has being releasing solo work under a variety of monikers, the most prominent Svarte Greiner (Black Leaves in English). Otto has also been actively producing work for Nest, among others, as well as taking care of his home in Norway. I first encountered their music when exposed to the beautiful sincerity of Pale Ravine (Type Records, 2005). I was impressed by the density of their modern classical-ambient soundscapes, knowing that both considered themselves classically untrained or to be more specific self-taught musicians.

I had the chance to see them perform live here in New York as part of this year’s Unsound Festival’s Beyond the Dark – a tribute event for the music of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki at Judson Church in Manhattan. Erik has also performed as Svarte Greiner with Polish-German percussionist Paul Wirkus on the live soundtrack for Murnau’s German Expressionist classic “Nosferatu”.

In the following questions I try to focus on Deaf Center’s creative process, their thoughts about computer sequencing as opposed to live instrumental performances, and the power of words in their music-making.

Deaf Center's "Owl Splinters" (2011, Type Records)

Erik: Thank you. I think they definitely have something in common, though the way their made is so different and there was no intention to try follow up Pale Ravine sound wise. I think its best if peoples take on Owl Splinters as a self-expanding universe, rather than having to compare it to PR.

Otto: The process of making Owl Splinters was very different from Pale Ravine – texturally, I would consider Owl Splinter much richer. Emotionally, I would say Owl Splinters is darker.

MP: During your set at Judson Church I was engaged by its meditative flow. Was it all improvised?

Erik: Yes in the way that we have very small things set like maybe a certain key we’re working around, and Otto plays one piece in the end which is from the record. We did however pick out certain sounds from the album that we play underneath some parts of the performance to make it slightly recognizable for the audience.

Deaf Center "Pale Ravine" (2006, Type)

MP: Do you think that playing live and improvising has opened up your working/creative process and the way you compose your albums?

Erik: Yes, most definitely. The way I/we make music now is totally different from back when we made PR. None of us had any idea on how to perform things when we did our first live shows, but over the years things become more and more live – which I think is think is much more fun to perform. This has been the case on Owl Splinters and some of my own albums under “Svarte Greiner” also, meaning the way the album is made in a much more live improvised way rather than composing it traditionally.

Otto: Yes, having a set this improvised makes it a little unpredictable – even for us. We heavily depend on improvisations when we make new material also.

Deaf Center performing at Judson Memorial Church for Unsound Festival NY 2011 (Image: Stephen Cardinale)

MP: Both of you have been producers (either in your collab in Deaf Center or in your solo works) and know both sides of the story. What would you define as the pros of computer sequencing, as opposed to the physicality and intuition of live instrumental improvisations?

Erik: Pros. For the computer sequencing, you have much more control over all aspects of the sound and the way it’s presented. Though I think a good combination of the two approaches is the best way to work. It’s all a big experimentation progress in different ways of making music. Making Pale Ravine, Knive, Kappe, Flare & Owl Splinters have all been very different processes, and hopefully this will continue to change.

Otto: With sequencing you get the time to work with details – It’s easy to go back and add or change something. But when I just use computer sequencers, I tend to end up with a result that feels more clinical. The best way to go is a combination of both.

MP: Your choice of words for album and song titles is triggered by atmospheric and emotional gravity. How does that have impact on the mood and the sound palette you end up using?

Erik: Album titles and track names were all invented after the music was made. Which has been the case on pretty much all releases. I find it much more fun finding track names after the music is done, impacting the mood and how people would listen to the track by playing with words.

MP:  Erik, I have read from your previous interviews that you are a big cinema buff and that walking in a city or a forest can inspire you. With your music, do you intend perhaps to guide your listener through what you see or feel in a similar way that a movie director does?

Erik: In a way, I guess so – though in the end the music i/we produce is a product of whom we are as persons, rather than trying to put too much intellect or depth in everything I/we do, it’s more up to each and every person that listens to it, to come up with their own interpretation, which I think is a good way to listen to things. In my perspective, listening to music is all about mood and making your own little universe out of it.

MP: Are you working on any new solo or Deaf Center releases?

Erik: Nope.

Otto: I’m working on some new Nest material for a 10” Serein release.

Artist Links:

Deaf Center

Miasmah Recordings

Courtesy of the artist

I came across the name of Maria Chavez for the first time last July when going through the program of the Christian Marclay Festival (Whitney  Museum of American Art,  July 1- September 26 2010).  It was only a matter of time to see Maria perform live in one of the many events happening in town. Her intuitive, interactive, reactive way of treating her materials, vinyl records and needles for that matter, impressed me. She is also one of the few female artists, if not the only one, in town who manages to bend the turntablist rules effortlessly and create immersive sonic atmospheres made of sparse samples, clicks and scratches. And these are only a few of the reasons that motivated me to do this interview with her. Maria was born in Peru, lived in Houston and is now based in Brooklyn. She is currently curating  a series of shows entitled Dead Of Winter Works at the Splatterpool Gallery showcasing new work by Richard Garet, Shelley Burgon, David Linton, Byron Westbrook, Future Archaeology and Sarah Lipstate. I have asked her a few things about her relationship to vinyl, her working process, about the NY scene and about fashion.

You do an extensive use of record needles, or pencils of sound as you call them, to draw abstract improvised sonic patterns over vinyl records. How did you end up working/experimenting with vinyl?

I started as a house music DJ. Mainly focusing on French Disco House. The process of converting vinyl into a more dissected sound opportunity happened by chance.  I was required to attend an improvisation music class in order to get credits for my Audio Engineering degree.  The teacher of the class, David Dove, an abstract trombonist, who later became my first mentor, asked me to bring one turntable. Just to see what would happen.  Once I heard the first fragmented sound, I knew that my primary focus was to create and utilize a vocabulary derived from that moment.
Do you feel like a collector when it comes to your relationship with vinyl?

I don’t think I am the regular definition of a collector mainly because I do not go out in search of records very often. In a lot of cases, the records find me. Like when you brought me these Greek spoken word and traditional songs records. That’s how most of my collection has been built. I, also, don’t have sleeves for my vinyl. They all go through a regular change, TOGETHER, in my backpack. The constant change of my regular vocabulary, the vinyl rubbing against each other in the backpack, is important for me.  It helps remind me of present moment during performance.

There are some sound sources, nonetheless, that I do treasure, like a collector, that stay in their sleeves until I feel that they are ready to be amongst my vocabulary. When that happens, I can’t answer, because it’s always so different. I want to make sure that my relationship with chance has a process that all of my materials go through.

Which of the following better describes your creative process: composing or performing?

I feel that these two actions have similar definitions in my work.  So to pick one isn’t possible. So here are my definitions of both:

Composing- In the present tense of composing.  Allowing accidents to compose the present moment, rather than my own ideas. I feel my ideas have more room to grow amongst accidents.

Performing- the actions taken during a live performance can create accidental situations that I must always be alert for.  Therefore, my original ideas at the beginning of a piece will always be allowed to become something else completely different.

Christian Marclay is one of my favorite artists and one of the first who liberated the vinyl record from its singular use as a music entertainment medium. Last year you were invited to perform his piece entitled SCREENPLAY at the Christian Marclay Festival, along with Marina Rosenfeld and Tristan Sheperd. Did you find it challenging to follow the onscreen musical score?

It was definitely a different approach, as far as responding to visual cues.  But I feel as if working on SCREENPLAY for the amount of times that I performed it (14 in all!!!) helped me to cultivate this other area of my work.

You have shared the stage with some of the most prominent figures of the experimental scene such as Pauline Oliveros and Thurston Moore. Could you please tell us a few words about how these collaborations occurred?

I worked as an Audio engineering intern for the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, which had a branch in Houston. That’s also where she is from. My very first, live, improvised music performance was in her mother’s piano studio. Pauline has become an incredibly influential woman in my life. She has shown me how much the world can give you if you give yourself to the world.

Thurston and I met on my very first East Coast tour with Christina Carter. It was my first time in NYC and we got to the venue late (driving in from Montreal). I barely remember performing with him. It happened so fast. It was all a bit too much. But he was a professional and very sweet. I hold him in the highest esteem.

Dead of Winter #5 FUTURE ARCHAEOLOGY (courtesy of Splatterpool Gallery)

What’s your view on NYC’s current experimental art scene? Do you feel that it is open enough to accept artists from any ethnic background, gender etc?

I see a lot more people involved that are really young and that’s exciting.   And a lot of my peers are starting to receive more access to create larger projects.   Some places are Closed, some people move, grants get created and deleted. But somehow the experimental scene in NYC is vibrant in diversity, gender and ideas for the 21st Century.

What is your relationship to fashion?

I used to own a men’s vintage clothing store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  It was sort of like a vintage gallery. Now I collect vintage for myself.  It’s an interesting and new way to think about myself rather than the demographic my store was geared towards.  But I feel that everything that I am interested in is approached in a similar manner. Fashion to me, is another outlet for me to express myself.

Do you have any favorite clothing shops in NY and “local” fashion blogs, magazines?

Alter, Jumelle, Malin Landaeus Vintage, Electric Feather, Bona Drag, Fluke Vintage

Artist Website: mariachavez.org