As an ongoing investigation into the function and the practice of publicness radioplateaux asked artists to respond to the concept of publicness as art practice. In a broad paper composed in 2006/7 radioplateaux artists describe the practice of publicnes as one that may be “a revolutionary everyday practice”. We claimed that publicness may open ones practice essentially to a multiple of public and private places and spaces. To a street, gallery, or to a region of being.
We wish to thank all the artists who responded to this call, and we will endeavor to post as many artworks as we can, so please check this page for updates.
This is the inaugral selection of artistic responses.
Please feel free to both communicate your response to the works to us here at radioplateaux : info@radioplateaux.org, and/or to the artists themselves via the email address on their page.
[comments in the shout box are also very welcome and encouraged]
The Sonic Arts BA & Masters courses at Middlesex University in London began in the mid 90’s amidst a flourish of anti-elitism, boundary breaking exploration and love of uncategorisable sonic experimentation through the dedication of a small group of educators and researchers that seemed to want to do something other than just provide another commercial platform disguised as ‘vocational education’. The establishment of the Sonic Arts program, within the realm of the Lansdown Center for Electronic Arts, rather than being swallowed within a traditional music department, enabled a broader, more open, even perhaps utopian approach to the often closed doors of music and technology educational institutions. The emphasis was on thinking beyond borders, it was actually considered more beneficial if no knowledge of traditional notation was held by prospective students, as their minds would not already be consigned to the strict halls of tonality. Even so, the learning curve was steep, but fully rewarding, not at all cynical, and opened worlds that have not been exhausted to this day as we, as lucky former students, continue on this journey, playing, making, listening, researching, working in and through sound. So it is with a sense of real unbelievability to hear that the whole Sonic Arts department at Middlesex University is to be closed down, no new places are being offered for either the BA or the MA. Continue Reading »
Feb 10, 2010 | By: Ennoia Neoptolemus | No Comments
I have never encountered a form of spirituality that did not involve the reification of individual and communal ignorance. Spirituality placates our incomprehension of the material with tales of forces possessing the knowledge we consider missing in ourselves, often personified as omnipotent beings. I pity the gods, born of shame over our collective stupidity, their powers enslaved to answering whatever inane questions we throw at the universe. Faith in the gods is inseparable from our fear of confusion, our simultaneous fear of noise and silence, our juvenile demand for order where there is none. Yet in all the gods’ supposed greatness, no “God’s Plan” has ever delivered more than a given culture’s status quo, with all of its miseries and inequities.
Red Snow, by Natasha Barrett, sounds an exploration of spatial musical structure through an impression of a Norwegian landscape. Apparently, red snow is a phenomenon of algae or diatoms growing in the snow.
Jonathan Harvey’s tape composition Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, was completed in 1980 and realized at IRCAM, Paris. Harvey uses the sounds of the Winchester Cathedral bell combined with the inscription of the bell,
“Horas volantes numero, mortuos plango: vivos ad preces voco”
(”I enumerate the fleeting hours, I mourn the dead, I call the living to prayer”),
sung by a boy soprano, through a montage in which individual spectral components of the sounds are delicately and slowly explored, inviting us to listen both referentially and reflectively.
Dec 16, 2009 | By: Ennoia Neoptolemus | No Comments
Until recently, I knew little of Marc Stevens. Matt introduced him as being a very interesting man and he’d like to interview Marc for the site. I previously read through some of Marc’s website and heard him on a radio programme Richy played before the interview. Until we all talked with Marc, I had little idea of how far this man has gone in challenging the USA Courts and awakening people. Alas, many of us seem to frequently let ourselves become so engulfed in information from friends’ links and info from networks such as Facebook, that websites like Marc’s can fall into the blackhole of the web. Luckily, there are dedicated people like you who are hungry to connect with others, which make our voice stronger through spreading new ideas such as Marc Stevens’s.
Pauline Oliveros’ Bye Bye Butterfly (1965) is a two-channel tape piece that uses two oscillators, two line amplifiers in cascade, two tape recorders in a delay set-up, and a turntable with a recording of Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Madama Butterfly(1904).
Time Perspectives was composed by Pauline Oliveros in 1959, at the time applying many innovative tape recorder techniques, one of which was Oliveros’ hand manipulation of recording speed, whilst avoiding cutting and splicing as much as possible. Time Perspectives was premiered at the San Francisco Conservatory on December 18, 1961. It has never been performed live again.
I imagined how an improvised passage recorded at high speed would sound
at low speed and vice versa. Thus my real-time improvisation added a new
layer that involved projecting future modification and manipulation of the
tape recorder as an instrument. Since I had no other electronic equipment
I recorded through cardboard tubes for filters, put the microphone in the
bathtub for reverberation and amplified small vibrating objects on an apple
box with a contact microphone.
Pauline Oliveros, 2004
Dec 05, 2009 | By: Ennoia Neoptolemus | No Comments
Tracklisting
