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Introduction
Interviews with ...
Chris Mann
Jeph Jerman
Alvin Lucier
Stephen Vitiello
Annea Lockwood
AL.
Sound Art. I find it a useful term, but why? I apply it to the pieces I make using electroacoustic resources, and which I intend to be presented in galleries, museums, other places in which sound is, increasingly, conceived of as a medium per se, like video, lasers, but not as performance. For example, I'm currently working on a large audio installation, a Sound Map of the Danube, which I think of as Sound Art. I also recently finished a commission for the All-Stars band, which it wouldn't cross my mind to call
'sound art'. That's the big difference for me, between music and Sound Art. There's some distinction to do with the conceptual, also. I think maybe what's termed 'sound art' doesn't intend connection to the linguistic. Eventually, all styles of performance music become languages, even Cage's anti-linguistic works, as people become more and more familiar with his intentions and sound worlds. Nevertheless, perhaps the term was pragmatically conjured up for/by museum
curators to account for sound's acceptance into their world.
NBA.
Could you describe your use of "linguistic" here? Is the language the musical structures that we have created and now use to describe 'musical' ideas (ie, scales, interrelated rhythmic patterns, large-scale forms, etc.)?
AL.
I think of music as built like a language because it is often structured to carry a flow of interrelated 'ideas' (rhythmic motifs, chord progressions, timbral ideas, etc.) which tend to create an audio narrative - often at the emotional level as well as perceptible structural levels. Feldman, in particular, is an exception to this, at least for me.
NBA.
Is Cage's work anti-linguistic in the sense that it purposefully sets out to select material and organize it in a new way?
AL.
Cage intended, as I 'read' him, to disrupt that narrative flow, letting 'sounds be sounds'. But it's hard not to hear/create connections when listening to a piece of his, simply because we're wired to look for them.
NBA.
In the soundmapping work you do (I should probably say in the pieces made from sound recordings in general), is there a sense that the audio material itself sets the work apart from music?
AL.
I can see that my electroacoustic pieces separate into two rough categories: Those in which I am assembling sounds in order to convey a concept; e.g. Ground of Being (2000) in which a great variety of sounds initially emerge from a particular central 'ground' sound, then that takes on characteristics of those emergent sounds, suggesting that all phenomena spring from the same source and are not separate from it. Done for Engine 27, as an audio installation, i.e. expecting that people could walk into and
out of it at any time, in a non-traditional space. Those in which I am listening to what is there, without manipulating it beyond the act of recording, then editing into a continuum; e.g. the Hudson River Sound Map and the one I'm working on now, a Sound Map of the Danube River. I think of it as paying very close attention to the river, in an attempt to sense its nature. Manipulation would obscure what the river is, of course. However, nothing's actually completely discrete, no? With the Danube, my recordings will eventually become a multi-channel mix, with one site coming from one part of the space, and another, simultaneously coming from another area, so some degree of acoustic blending will result. Still, the structure will be that the work moves downstream - i.e. given by the river and this does set it apart from music, to my mind.
NBA.
Is intuition a key factor in choosing and molding the material?
AL.
No, intuition is not involved here. One aspect which often guides my choices is commonalities of acoustic properties between two sounds, enabling very smooth transitions between them; but as often, I like sharp juxtaposition.
NBA.
The idea that the connections created by the listener construct the narrative is very interesting to me. Perhaps even the idea that the Hudson or the Danube create their own narrative flow (pun intended) as they travel from source to final outlet. Do you consider the (unintentional) narrative a river might offer as you select and order the recorded fragments?
AL.
Not really. Listeners' narratives, I've learned, are very varied. Highly personal. I make selections from my takes based on sonic qualities, contrast between takes and, more intangibly, the degree to which a take has vividness, captures the river's energy for me. I choose how long to let a particular segment/sound run; I base that on how complex its texture is and a rough estimate of how long a listener is likely to remain engaged by it. It's important to me that a listener be able to become absorbed by a sound, to really 'enter' it, which takes time.
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