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Introduction
Interviews with ...
Chris Mann
Jeph Jerman
Annea Lockwood
Alvin Lucier
Stephen Vitiello
NBA.
You are described in your press material as both musician and sound artist. Could you describe what you see as the distinction between music and Sound Art?
SV.
Some people resist labels or categories. I generally don't mind them. I just try to be as aware as possible of how that category has been defined historically. I have always thought about Sound Art as relating to space. In some cases, it is an exploration of the acoustic properties of an exhibition site or studio. In others, it has to do with the psychological or psychic presence that I perceive the space embodies. Within those frameworks, I like to record or amplify sounds that might otherwise go unnoticed. In the case of the World Trade Center Recordings, I was interested in the sounds that were outside the window, denied by the thick glass that allowed one to see outside but not hear what was going by. With my recent piece for the Cartier Foundation, it is the sound of light frequencies entering into the room and coming from the lighting grid, which reflect off the sculpture in the room that I am sharing. The concept of time in Sound Art is more open ended. I tend to think of the installation work that I do as Sound Art, while the concerts and CDs as music. These are not absolutes and many of the same interests cross over, but I feel that the point of an installation is to create an environment. A visitor might experience it for a few seconds, minutes or hours and hopefully come away with a memorable experience. The music I make for CDs tends to have more of a conscious structure: A beginning, middle and an end. I don't have any compositional background, so those points are more felt through experience, taste and through listening. I listen carefully and edit to the point that that 6 minutes is exactly what I want people to hear.
NBA.
So how an audience member encounters the work becomes a key determining factor in creating of the work itself. Can you describe how you approach structural differences between pieces aimed at more traditional modes of listening, like concerts and CDs, versus gallery or installation work like the piece just up at Engine 27?
SV.
It occurs to me that there is always a very private stage and then a public one. I tend to begin work alone: recording, mixing, waiting, refining (mixing or installation drawing). There is a next stage which is generally collaborative -- working with an engineer to master the recordings or build something that I cannot complete myself. Then there is some form of presentation which is very directly about communication with a larger number of people -- about sharing that private experience and looking to create a format that will be conducive to listening, to experiencing that which I experienced privately.
NBA.
Are you trying to conceptualize what the work does in this formative stage, or are you more having an exchange with the material? Meaning, I suppose, are you asking the material to do something, or is it asking you?
SV.
It isn't a conscious system, but I would say the latter. I am interested in listening to what is already there. How I might capture the essence of whatever that thing is. For me, it is interesting to look (listen) for what is there that might be brought out of the woodwork, the background, the so-called ambience. I was just thinking about filmmakers who slow down images to show the otherwise missed gesture, the potential beauty of what, without the camera, might go whizzing by. For me there is a similar interest in revealing what is there through some system of digging, scraping away, a personalized form of archeology, if that isn't sounding to self-serious.
I just returned from the Brazilian Amazon, where I captured field recordings for a forthcoming installation at the Cartier Foundation in Paris. I considered bringing a sound recordist who would have better equipment, more experience with microphones, but I realized that it was very important to be alone. Not to say that I was alone in the forest, I was with an anthropologist and 140 Yanomami Indians, but I wanted to be free of known connections. As I am going through the recordings, I hear things I wish I had done better, but I also hear a sense of discovery that may not have been there if I was working with someone else, trying to work out a schedule, justify why I wanted to record here or there, with this or that, etc. Now the task becomes creating a structure in which to present these sounds that may put the listener in touch in some way with the space. While time is a factor in the CDs and concerts, I really am after the same thing with the CDs and concerts as with the installations. I want to present an immersive experience of sound that somehow connects personal experience to a listener. While the concerts are more contained (timed) than the installations, I often aim to create a similar event which relates context and a spatial experience beyond a set of stereo speakers. Last week I performed at the Cartier Foundation. The concert was programmed as part of an exhibition curated by Paul Virilio. Paul asked that there be a 9-11 focus to my performance. Rather than play in the black box space on the lower level of the Museum, I asked that we (Scanner was my guest-duet) perform in the room with Nancy Rubins' installation -- numerous crushed and burned airplane parts suspended in a cluster from the ceiling. The audience stood and sat under Nancy's installation. Rather than use the recordings I had made of the WTC, I brought a recording of 9-11-02, when NYC and Washington DC observed a moment of silence. The recording has "silence" but also the anxious clicks of news cameras and the sound of wind whipping the audience and dust and dirt around them. We began with that recording and then began to manipulate the sound/silence in a very quiet concert with few peaks but a good deal of atmosphere. One of the advantages of performing in art spaces, rather than clubs is that you have this opportunity to work with and sometimes manipulate the performance space to create a deeper environment. This affects the mood of the audience as well as the sound which is improvised and becomes a response to, or dialogue with, the space and listeners.
NBA.
The expectations of what goes on in the art space can be quite different than of that which goes on in a club. I suspect there is an opportunity in the art space to de-emphasize the pure entertainment factor.
SV.
I really love the social environment that forms in sound art/experimental music events. I just find people losing a certain amount of posturing, in order to close their eyes and listen. Clubs offer a lot for one sort of working, performing, socializing, but they are also static. There is very little manipulation that you can do with a club-gig. With museum and alternate space gigs, you may have the chance to put the speakers on the ceiling and the audience on the floor. Placement of stage, volume settings. There is just that much more which is malleable.
NBA.
Could you tell me about the Yanomami piece in a little greater detail? Who commissioned the project? What are the specific inquiries or goals of the piece at large?
SV.
The piece was commissioned by the Cartier Foundation, Paris. I am currently in an exhibition there, Ce Qui Arrive/Unknown Quantity, curated by Paul Virilio. When I came to install this piece I had lunch with the director of the Cartier Foundation, HervŽ Chandes. HervŽ said that he had just about finished selecting artists for an upcoming exhibition on and with the Yanomami. He said that based on his experience, and the recommendation of the anthropologist Bruce Albert, who had initiated the exhibition, that they should take special note of sound. He asked me if I would make a piece, and if I could go within the next month. This was late November. Other artists in the exhibition include video artists Tony Oursler and Gary Hill, as well as a Brazilian painter and a French filmmaker. It took two and a half days to get there. Once in the village, Demini, I had 6 days to record, or until my batteries ran out. I recorded about 16 hours of tape, using stereo microphones and binaural mics. The eldest shaman, Lorival Yanomami, spent a lot of time telling me about the sound of the forest. Bruce Albert translated from Yanomami to English. At the moment, I am editing a series of binaural recordings for a headphone piece and, if someone will publish it, a CD. Once that is finished, I will work on a multi-channel piece, possibly 5.1 on DVD Audio. The binaural recordings are fairly ambient -- walks through the forest, with Yanomami children, sitting by a lake. The multi-channel piece will incorporate recordings of Lorival. As he tells me stories, he speaks the sounds of the animals. He will be the center piece around which more environmental recordings spin. I want to communicate something about the richness of sound there without being literal. The voice will just be one element that emerges from the forest's network of sound.
NBA.
The microphone, as you were saying earlier, becomes a real part of the creative process. Its presence, via technique perhaps, is irreconcilably embedded in the final product. The technology is a participant, just as in your light readings.
SV.
Definitely. It becomes the instrument, just as the photocell has become an instrument, not just a receiver. I feel like I am learning a great deal with each opportunity, how to use these instruments. In some cases the recordings have not worked out well at all, but I have learned something about the process, or maybe even captured enough in a photo documenting the attempt. With the binaural microphones in particular, I am very aware of my movement, direction, speed. With a stereo microphone I tend to set it up somewhere and let it be, but it is still a choice of microphone, position, duration. I constantly think of dialogue formats -- with other artists, media, technologies, tools. It is what happens with these meetings that is often most enjoyable and intriguing.
NBA.
Could you describe the difference between binaural miking and stereo miking and how the difference effects the work?
SV.
Binaural recordings are either done with a dummy head: a microphone in each ear of the head, or with small mics on or near one's ears. It is really a recording method designed for playing back on headphones, rather than speakers. Listening this way is much more 3-dimensional. You feel insects buzzing around you, children running by. As someone explained it to me, recording this way is much closer to the way our ears hear as opposed to a stereo or mono recording which is designed for traditional playback, with speakers in front of you not to the side. In the case of this trip, the binaural recordings were much more free-form. I have a pair of mics that I wear on the edge of my glasses, just by my ears (this is an impure binaural by some standards). I would put the mics on and just walk around for 20 or 30 minutes. Maybe starting in the village, walking out to the forest and through a field of insects, back to a small lake, rain starting and stopping somewhere along the way. The stereo recordings were more formal and straight forward. I would set up a good quality microphone on a stand, connected to pre-amp and DAT recorder, aimed towards a fixed target, letting tape run for an hour. With the binaural system I was more open to chance. The recordings are tiny journeys. With the straighter stereo recordings, you have a portrait of a place at a moment in time. The real drawback with the binaural recordings is that you should listen on headphones which is not an attractive exhibition format. You lose the physicality of sound hear when it is being broadcast straight to your ear, bypassing all of the other parts of the body. On the other hand, there is a psychological space that is created that can be quite interesting.
NBA.
Would you mind talking a bit about the evolution of your aesthetic choices, perhaps quickly tracing the journey from guitarist to an artist who uses field recordings and transposed light information?
SV.
A large part of it all is using what is at hand. Guitar was a natural choice as a teenager listening to rock and roll and punk rock in the mid-to-late 70s. When I started to meet visual artists in the late 80s I was exposed to other ways of working, other ways of thinking. I started to think about using space, thinking more conceptually, non-narratively. As I followed the lines of prepared guitar, I started to find objects that I could amplify through the guitar's pick-ups (fans, vibrators). I bought a sampler and started to sample those isolated sounds, manipulating them, focusing in closer and closer to small details which could be kept afloat through additional electronics (delays, loops). The next step was to get a computer and learn about software from fellow sound friends (John Hudak, Scanner, Tetsu Inoue each taught me a great deal). I've never liked to use the computer solely. I prefer analog processors and find that I understand them and can "perform" with them much better than programming-based software but these take up more space and aren't always easily set-up as quickly as the laptop. In each case, it is a combination of searching for something but also making use of what is at hand. At the moment, I am going through a real aversion to processing. There are a handful of people who I find interesting but I just feel like I've heard enough. Perhaps it is also because I have had an opportunity to do field recordings in some very interesting places this past year. I am really enjoying listening to the pure qualities of natural spaces without any contrived add-ons.
NBA.
So is that taking you to a new sense of how to construct a work? It would seem the archeology of this process would be more one of observation and non-intervention than a processing-to-discover method.
SV.
I agree, it seems to be a process of observation, of listening, and then looking for a way to present some sort of relevant auditory experience and environment. There were several things that struck me with this trip to the Amazon. The Yanomami have such an extraordinary connection to sound. The sound is beautiful but more importantly it is rich. Sounds hold a multitude of meaning. The sound of the forest is not simply an idyllic backdrop, it is a presence that tells them a great deal. Generally, I go some place and take something of the sound and then twist it. Here, I don't want to do that with an obvious sort of processing. More, use the potential of speakers and space to create a place that listeners can fall into. The point I have to keep in mind is to try to mirror the intensity and not just the beauty.
NBA.
You mentioned your interaction with the Visual Arts community at one point triggered new directions for you. What kind of attitude, meaning direction or position, was made available to you by the visual artist's perspective? Particularly in contrast to a musician's perspective?
SV.
A part of what I have learned from visual artists is through collaboration, another is from observation. In 1994, Nam June Paik had me video document a month of Fluxus performances at Anthology Film Archive. I learned so much about performance, spontaneity, finding more playful ways of being on stage. It made me think a lot about how you bring the audience into what you do. I don't know if I've succeeded in any of this, but it has allowed me to think more openly. In addition to Fluxus, I generally turn to Bruce Nauman's work when I am stuck for motivation. I find the intensity and relative simplicity of form really inspiring. Through collaboration with artists, I learned to focus first on concept and context, and on technique second. This worked out well since I was never able to master much technique over instruments (guitar, bass) no matter how much I practiced!
NBA.
This seems in many ways to mirror the path of the arts since the mid-1960's, with collusion between disciplines centered around a conceptual concern being a primary impetus for creating new work. Treating sound the way you would light, treating light the way you would a plastic material, treating a plastic material the way you would sound. Does this coincide with your experience? The notion in the arts that the medium-specific Master Craftsman has in many ways given way to the conceptual practitioner utilizing multiple resources?
SV.
Yes, for me sound has become a material to work with. In some cases, it is a matter of locating/identifying a sound. In others, it is about creating it. From there, the form of manipulation is to be determined. There is still craft involved but it is different than the concept of craft that I started with studying guitar, for example. There is a depth and a presence that comes through in good works. It may be hard to put your finger on what it is that makes it so, but you know it is there. This is beyond the strength of machines. I feel more and more connected to classical models of the artist as observer and interpreter, which has changed my own self-image and thoughts of being a musician. As an observer (I should say listener) I try to be aware of my place relative to what I am recording or what I am hearing and take responsibility in how it goes back into the ears or thoughts of others.
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