Schneemann Sounding: Embodied Sonic Systems

This essay examines the central position the medium of sound played in the work of the artist Carolee Schneemann (US, 1939–2019). By exploring a few key early works such as Glass Environment for Sound and Motion (1962), Chromelodeon (1963), and Noise Bodies (1965), it traces how her exposure to emergent forms in experimental music informed important translations she made of complex sonic structures into expanded, layered, constantly evolving visual systems. The essay argues that Schneemann transformed the body into a soft recording system that broadcast sonic testimonies of everyday encounters with the excesses of conspicuous consumption, the inequalities of gendered relations, and the disturbing encounters with state-mandated violence against other cultures, in particular the US invasion of Vietnam.

Pro(Found) listening: Suggesting compassion through listening

This article is about a sonic piece suggesting a way of compassion towards the female, the Other, learnt through listening to noisy sonic structures. With honest, active listening, we find ourselves in a compassionate state of mind towards our environment. We ourselves define these relationships with our surroundings and, as such, define the ways in which we perform or act in such a relation. If we acknowledge and support each other, we can go forward with personal and artistic integrity and attain even more agency through the method of honest listening. I suggest first listening to the sound piece.

Origin and evolution of sound production in Serrasalmidae

Among piranhas, sound production is known in carnivorous species, whereas herbivorous species were thought to be mute. Given that these carnivorous sonic species have a complex sonic apparatus, we hypothesize that intermediate forms could be found in other serrasalmid species. The results highlight the evolutionary transition from a simple sound-producing mechanism without specialized sonic structures to a sonic mechanism involving large, fast-contracting sonic muscles. Hypaxial muscles in basal herbivores primarily serve locomotion, but some fibres cause sound production during swimming accelerations, meaning that these muscles have gained a dual function. Sound production therefore seems to have been acquired through exaptation, i.e. the development of a new function (sound production) in existing structures initially shaped for a different purpose (locomotion). In more derived species (Catoprion and Pygopristis), some fibres are distinguishable from typical hypaxial muscles and insert directly on the swimbladder. At this stage, the primary function (locomotion) is lost in favour of the secondary function (sound production). In the last stage, the muscles and insertion sites are larger and the innervation involves more spinal nerves, improving calling abilities. In serrasalmids, the evolution of acoustic communication is characterized initially by exaptation followed by adaptive evolution.

The Sounded Poetics of the Black Southern Pacific

Chapter 1 examines how the poetics of sound construct, mediate, and enact the black southern Pacific world. The palpable proximity of the divine and the supernatural is a central organizing principle of this world, as well as the role of music-making within it. By the same token, deeply felt epistemologies, affectivities, and forms of sociality that characterize this world structure the ways that sound is understood and used. The discussion presents an introduction to how the black communities that live on the riverbanks of Colombia’s southern Pacific coast use musical practice to mediate and model this complex soundworld. These sonic structures of feeling are a constant reference, and a lived reality, in the periods covered by the other chapters in this book as well.

Deep in Poetry: Visualizing Texts’ Sonic Depths in 3D

Poemage is a visualization system designed to support close reading of poems via revelation and exploration of their complex sonic structures. The authors improvised adaptations of this software into 3D interactive environments, experimenting with several ways to visualize “sonic depth” in poetic texts. Not only did this process lead to intensified cross-modal literary experiences, it challenged the authors’ thinking about commonly held values pertaining to poetry, text analysis and information visualization, prompting them to experiment with new practices in each field.

Improvisation as an Evolutionary Force in Laptop Orchestra Culture

Improvisation has always been at the heart of the laptop ensemble and it constitutes a core force in the evolution of individual laptop orchestras and the art form at large. A drive to innovate artistically, technologically, and collaboratively opens the way for many new modes of improvisation that are unique to the laptop-orchestra (or LOrk) setting, such as improvising with collective instruments, gestural controllers, and live coding. Navigating these novel logistical settings, collaborative forms, technologies, and sonic structures demands rapid, creative responses to emergent possibilities and challenges. Due to their tradition-defying, multidimensional, and hybridic nature at cultural, stylistic, geographical, personal, social, and technological levels, laptop orchestras may be viewed as a matrix of related behaviours and beliefs rather than a definite genre. In this essay I focus on how non-idiomatic improvisation serves as a crucial local and global evolutionary force within LOrk culture by breaking with old patterns to discover new sui generis expressive possibilities and by developing skills that radically expand improvisatory strategies. I also provide a snapshot of current improvisatory practices that are unique or have special implications for laptop orchestras (based on extensive contact and email interviews with laptop orchestra directors and members across various geographical and cultural contexts). Additionally, I offer my own experiences as founder and director of the Concordia Laptop Orchestra (CLOrk).

Sonic Movements – Spatial Reflexivity

This article aims to investigate the creation of space and sound in artistic and architectural fields, with particular emphasis on the notions of interval and duration in the production and experience of soundscapes. The discussion arises out of an ongoing research project concerning sonic structures in public places, in which Japanese uguisubari ([Formula: see text]) – ‘nightingale flooring’, an alarm system from the Edo period) plays a key role in developing new kinds of site-specific and location-responsive sonic architectural structures for urban and rural environments. This paper takes uguisubari as its frame for investigating and evaluating how sounds create a space (however temporary), and how that sound in turn is created through movement. It thus seeks to unpick aspects of the reciprocal and performative act in which participant and the space engage through movement, whilst creating a sonic environment that permeates, defines and composes the boundaries of this space. The article will develop a framework for these kinds of works through a discussion on walking, movement, soundscape and somatechnical aspects of our experience of the world, drawing upon the work of Merleau-Ponty, Bergson and the Japanese concept of Ma (space-time).

Objects of contemplation and artifice of design: Sonic structures in the music of George Benjamin

The icicle clearly delineated by the opening gesture of the upper strings in George Benjamin's A Mind of Winter is an original notational conceit, achieved by staggering the entries of the first and second violins so that a kind of stalactite is readily discernible on the page. It is the spacing of this cluster of minor seconds inside a defined timbral field and the precision with which the composer accords these, the smallest intervals within chromatic space, a rigorous series of durations, their hard edges rendered diffuse by almost inconsequential glissandi, that allows what might become academicism in the hands of a lesser craftsman to take on such a vibrant sonority. That this symbol of the coldest season is preceded by a percussionist's practically imperceptible roll with soft sticks on a suspended cymbal shows a composer deliberately relying on onomatopoeic devices to conjure up a soundscape percolated by such wintry gusts, themselves ushered in by a brief but telling period of silence that ‘fills’ the first, empty bar.