Rebel Matters 239 – Série Pandémique – In the Belly of a Beast

Black Obsidian – Volcanic Glass

When Special K and I stepped into the AGO in Sep 2022,  the dulcet tones of Jónsi, the Icelandic artist and singer/guitarist for the band Sigur Rós, reverberated in the hall. Drawn onward by the music I listened and poked my head into the dark room. The exhibit is called Obsidian in English and Hrafntinna (Hrawftinna) in Icelandic. The piece I was about to see is inspired by a volcanic eruption in 2021.  The text panel says that Jónsi ’s, “…work in the visual arts draws on the genre-blurring atmospheric effects of his music.”   In this installation, Jónsi  “…imagines the sensation of being inside a volcano…”  Also on the panel is a description of the installation:  “A single circular light stands in for the summit of the volcano.  A sixteen-channel audio composition resonates through 195 speakers; a sweet and smoky scent fills the air…”  In bold, the panel warns the participant that it features low lighting [which did take a few minutes to adjust to], scents, sound reverberations and occasional flashing lights. Visitors should exercise caution.”  It’s described on another panel as a “…sound installation…” with “…chandelier, speakers, subwoofers, carpet, and fossilized amber scent.”  

I take issue with the term “visitor”.   It is too immersive an experience to not be a participant.  I’m hoping my audio keeps to the spirit of what my experience was.   Let me explain further.   There is a video on the Art Gallery of Ontario website about the exhibit.   The audio in that video is very different from what I actually recorded.  The promotional video no doubt used many mics and professional mixing to convey the aural message the artist wanted.  I love the sound on that video – of course-  it’s Jónsi , but I like the sound my Zoom audio recorder captured too.  I lay back on a carpeted circular platform that others were laying back on, listening, watching the light show, and smelling the smoky scent.  The only mics were on my two ears in a particular position in the room.    As a participant, I felt the reverberations directly.  I hope the audio I captured achieves something close to that same experience, if you listen to it in a relaxed quiet location with headphones. You might just feel the rumble and explosions of the volcano.    You will hear what I heard, from my vantage point, using binaural earbuds, albeit, rendered digital. 

If you live in Toronto, or even if you don’t, I recommend this installation.    I can only provide an audio interpretation of what I experienced, and sound is only one aspect of it.   Missing is the darkness that surrounds the participants, the amber scent that evokes ash and fire, the sensations of a moving earth, and the light above, sometimes dark, sometimes bright, sometimes flashing.  We were after all, supposed to be inside the belly of the volcano.   It’s not clear when the exhibition leaves the Art Gallery of Ontario.   You’ll have to check the AGO website for that. 

Here’s the audio (Hotfrm239 – 24m05 44MBs):

Effusive eruption of Fagradalsfjall in Glendingadalir, Iceland 2021, photo credit:Arnar Kristjansson

Full Album: Jonsi’s Obsidian on Youtube

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Rebel Notion No. 9 – 0032 – Série Pandémique – International Drumming Festival

Maracatu Mar Aberto at the International Drumming Festival at Wychwood Barns, Toronto, Oct 17, 2021

On October 17, 2021 an International Drumming Festival was held at the Wychwood Barns in heart of what we now call midtown Toronto. Mostly, a cool and windy day, later in the afternoon, it rained which ultimately drove Special K and I home. But before we left I captured soundscene audio of some of the performances, presented here for your enjoyment.

Here’s the festival’s website: https://www.rootsmusic.ca/2021/10/29/muhtadi-international-drumming-festival-oct-17-at-wychwood-barns-toronto/

Listen right here (17mb 7min9sec) :



T-Dot Batu at the International Drumming Festival Wychwood Barns, Toronto, Oct 17, 2021

Hardware and Software: Zoom H4 Recorder in 2 channel surround sound, Windows 11, Audacity 3.1.3, Hauwei P30 for photos. Best listened to on headphones.

Rebel Matters 237– Série Pandémique – Do Androids Dream of Electric Love? Another Show with Madge of Yeast Radio.

Overnight Chia. Could be Tasty.

More depressing discussion about the end of the world. The beautiful people of Tik Tok. Boostagrams. Premptive Strikes. Abortion. Building love into robots. Deep talk about the consciousness of biological beings. Trying to simulate life on earth. The impossibility of humans to think in terms of deep time. Retirement. Overnight Chia.

Madge’s Overnight Chia

1/4 cup Chia seeds

1 cup of oat milk

Combine in a dessert glass bowl with

a sprinkle of cinnamon and

a dash of vanilla and maybe some pumpkin spice

Chill Overnight and

Enjoy

Next time on Madge and Ninja : The heat death of the universe.

Errata:
Covelli? I meant Rovelli. And he is not an astrophysicist. He is a theoretical physicist.

This interview was cross posted at Yeast Radio. You can listen here right now:

Hotfrm 237: Do Androids Dream of Electric Love? (177mb 1h17m)

Other Things We Discuss

• Ken Jenning’s Omnibus Project
• William S. Burroughs
• Carlo Rovelli
• Severance – just like work but worse
• Substack – a place to write or otherwise express yourself.
• NaNoWriMo – and write a book. We did.
• Narcissism
• Chemist Lee Cronin on Lex Fridman’s Podcast #269
  “Life on earth is merely an expression of the available chemistry set” – Lee Cronin
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Mmmmmax Headroom
• Euphoria
• Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy – Don’t Panic.

Sir Gawain, the Green Knight, and Queer Theory

Rebel Matters 236 – Série Pandémique – Respect the Fungus Featuring Madge Weinstein

Today I have another conversation with Madge Weinstein of Yeast Radio.   The conversation will be cross-posted there.   And will be slightly different so listen there too. 

Birds Nest Fungi in Our Rock Garden at Summer’s End

Things don’t start well for me.  I have numerous technical problems despite the fact that I tested my setup before the show was to begin.  The problems started when I noticed that the battery was drained on the crappy computer I was going to use. Actually the computer isn’t that crappy.   But the power cable is flaky.  The laptop rebooted when I reconnected the power, delaying me further.  I had to swap laptops and cables, and reset all my inputs, outputs and levels.   But that’s amateur podcasting for you.   Raw and real.  You know like Prince coughing in his Raspberry Beret video or Lucy misting up when Desi kisses her on air.  Even so, you might thank god for the fast forward button.  There are a few other minor glitches you’ll hear, but we soldier on.    

Also.   Trigger warning.  Our sometimes stream of consciousness conversation is guaranteed to offend everyone in some way.   We mispronounce some names and we swear.    I also get the bomb that is dropped on England, in the movie Threads wrong.   The bomb goes off 20 miles from Sheffield, not in the South China Sea.  The South China Sea one goes off in the TV series Years and Years. 

Madge asks me to explain Andrew Gallimore’s concept of the Hypergrid  which I fail at miserably.  I think I need to have Gallimore on the show so he can explain it himself.    Also we wonder how the plural of fungus is pronounced.   I love the English language.  Do you know it has the largest vocabulary of any language in the world.    Why?  I think because English speakers have absolutely no shame when it comes to just making up words as they go along. It’s a long tradition   You know like quark and smog and snog and laser and google and irregardless.  (Sorry about that last one. Speakers of a certain age will not accept irregardless as a word and will view you with much disdain if you use it around them). English speakers proudly steal from every other language, (French and German are favourites), and such words are promptly incorporated it into the lexicon.  Other words can crop up without warning ,and suddenly, crowdfunding,  deplatforming and whataboutism are things.   Don’t even get me started on English spelling.  

Madge and I cover a lot of ground.   Listen to the show right here:

Other Subjects Discussed: 

• Bitcoin and replacing the banking system
• Cluster Headaches
• Fungus and Mold
• Mushrooms:  the fruit of the Fungus and Mycelium
• Vatican Pedophiles
• The stoned ape hypothesis
• Female Values – Sharing and Empathy
• The use of religion  
• Deep tech talk about ground loops

Famous old people mentioned:

• Mary Steenburgen
• Robert Duvall
• Wagner

TV shows mentioned:

• Squid Game
• Succession
• Mini series about some of  Michael Jackson’s victims – Leaving Neverland

Films mentioned:

• Dancer in the Dark – Lars Von Trier
• Requiem for a Dream – Darren Aronofsky
• Eraserhead – David Lynch
• Threads – Mick Jackson
• Even Dwarves Started Small – Werner Herzog

Books Mentioned:

• Immortality Key – Brian C. Muraresku
• The Entangled Life – Merlin Sheldrake
• True Hallucinations – Terrence McKenna
• The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss – Dennis McKenna
• Alien Information Theory – Dr. Andrew Gallimore 
• On Fire – Naomi Klein and The Green New Deal
• A Hundred and Fifty Years of Gynarchy – Viola Voltairine

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 210 – The Pink and The Purple

Pink and Purple with Hector Centeno

From her website we read that:

Alexandra Gelis is a Colombian-Venezuelan visual artist based in Toronto, Canada. She holds an MFA degree from York University, Toronto, Canada.  Her work incorporates photography, video, electronics and digital processes…Gelis’ work addresses the use of image relation to topics of displacement, landscape, and politics. One of the prevalent concerns in her work is to unveil the relationship between landscape, history, people, geopolitics and the diverse techniques for achieving subjugation of bodies and population… As an educator/facilitator in video and photography she has led workshops with youth in disadvantaged communities in Canada, Colombia, and Panama. Her work has been shown internationally in several venues and galleries in Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Argentina and the United States. She has developed curatorial projects, video screenings, and programs for festivals in Latin America and Canada.

On August 15, this summer, Alexandra unveiled her installation called Raspao/Snow Cones. This installation in her own words is

…a moving sound sculpture vehicle that makes Snow Cones to sell them. It is also equipped with electronic components that capture, reproduce, mix and record sounds and video in real time. Customers and bystanders create sound compositions by mixing sounds in real time from the surrounding environment and the sound made by the internal components of the cart.  The Snow Cone vehicle is a food cart, a hybrid vehicle, a mixture of a Raspao cart used in Colombia to sell snow cones and the food carts that Portuguese and Greek Canadians use for selling roasted nuts and other sweet goods in Toronto. Snow Cones is also a sound piece that aims to open a space for social interaction, a place of meeting and conversation.

Of her relationship with the experience of snow cone machines she writes:

When it was very hot in Cartagena, Colombia, as a child I will buy an ice cone and I will eat it lying down on the beautiful decorated and cold tile floor in my house. The installation is a product of a private performance in the back of my house in Toronto, dealing with childhood memories. I paint on the snow using fuchsia ink (reminiscences of Ice Cone or “Raspaos”) tiles with arabesques as in the floor in my house in Cartagena. At the end I laid down naked on the snow trying to recuperate these impossible memories. Hot – Cold, Fuchsia – Childhood – Moments.

Raspao/Snow Cone Machine by Alexandra Gelis

In my third episode of four shows featuring artists at the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium, 2012 join me now during the opening of this installation and interview with the artist:

or Download HotFRM 210 (45mb 24m11s)

Equipment used:  Apex 415 for intro.  Zoom H2 and Roland – CS-10EM – Binaural Microphones/Earphones for soundscape and interview.

You can find the links to Alexandra Gelis’ sites @

http://www.alexandragelis.com/i_raspao.php

http://www.alexandragelis.com/i_tosuperpose.php

http://raspao.net/

The Audio Processor Up Close

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 209 – Ghost Haunting, Brown Notes, and Vibrations Cubed

PluseCubes by Ryo Ikeshiro

In this second of a four part series of soundscapes and interviews I did at the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium this August, I share two sound exhibits.   PluseCubes by Ryo Ikeshiro.   From the program:   “is an interactive sound where visitors are invited to become part of an implicit feedback loop whose other components include a set of small cubes on a flat surface, computer vision and digital signal processing.  The cubes are tracked by a web camera positioned overhead and processed by a programming environment known as Max/MSP/Jitter.  The audience interaction is created through the placement and movements of these cubes acting as  a control device which in turn results in the production of audio and physical vibrations.    Ryo is a London, England  based electronics and acoustic musician working in the fields of audiovisual composition, improvisation, interactive installations, soundtrack and therapy.   He is currently studying for a PhD in studio composition.”   The next  exhibit I explore is Ghostwood a/v by Michael Trommer who did the audios, and Brent Bostwick who did the visual part of the exhibit.   From the same program:  “It is an audio-visual installation which investigates the psycho-geography of Ontario’s northern wilderness.  It is primarily focused on the use of infrasound provided by specially constructed tactile transducers and is supported by a video component of the Georgian Bay landscape.  The project title is is a reference to those suburban neighbourhoods in which the sole memory of what has been displaced or eradicated as a result of their construction survives in the now prosaic  street names (‘Valleyview’, ‘Forest Hill’, etc).”

In our discussion of infrasound, Michael mentions a phenomenon called the brown note and wonders if it is a myth.  As it turns out, it is a myth, according to my sources.  But you’ll hear more about that during the interview.

For more information on Ryo visit http://www.ryoikeshiro.com/.    For more information on Michael Trommer visit http://michaeltrommer.blogspot.ca/ and Brent Bostwick at http://vimeo.com/user5083021.

Enjoy the show.

Or right click to Download:  HotFRM 209 (63mb 33m39s)

Ghostwood a/v with speakers and transducers by Michael Trommer and Brent Bostwick

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 205 – RadioActivity

Artscape at Wychwood Barns Where NAISA’s home is

Listen to the show:

 

205HotFRM (60Mb)

For the last eleven years New Adventures in Sound Art has conducted what has been known as a Radio Without Boundaries art symposium.   This year the name was advertised as the Trans X Transmission Art Symposium.  This symposium was part of the Deep Wireless festival of radio and transmission art that was held throughout May this year.   I have for the last several years wanted to attend and this year I was able to.  I wasn’t sure what to expect – but I found that it increased my interest and appetite for sound experimentation.

From the program here is the abstract from Darren Copeland’s opening remarks:

“Rooted in the earliest experiments with radio, Transmission Art has continued to flourish with experiments with wireless communications technology over the past 100 years. The 21^st Century is not excluded from this experimentation as artists have ventured into exploring a variety of mobile based platforms and more lesser known forms of transmission such as VLF (very low frequency transmitters). The terrain of transmission art is dynamic and fluid, always open to redefinition.   With NAISA being a sound art organization, we ask the question: What new sound art experiences are possible in the transmission and mobile media platforms?“

Darren Copeland is the founding Artistic Director of New Adventures in Sound Art and a Canadian sound artist.

For today’s show I recorded one of the last sessions of the weekend, this one led by Victoria Fenner.  It was  broadcast live during the symposium, but this is my version of it from my Zoom H2 and binaural mics tightly secured in my ears;  complete with rustling, coughs,  laughter, and one or two minor factual errors – and by that I mean to let you know up front that It wasn’t Hector that screamed twice during his performance,  it was  James just in case that’s not clear.   So here is  what ended up being the spur of the moment panel discussion led by Victoria, with the ad-hoc studio shared with Ninja, Galen, Jim, Tom and Hethre.  Also mentioned:  Twitter, Soundcloud, iTunes, FM, Community Radio, Citizen Journalism – Other Links:

http://www.naisa.ca/deepwireless/

http://free103point9.org/about

http://nplusonemag.com/

http://islandsofresistance.ca/

Listen to the show:

205HotFRM (60Mb)

Victoria Fenner at Work

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 200 – A Trip to the Museum of Gender Archaeology

Listen to the show:

• HotFRM 200 (28mb)

Every year, Toronto participates in an all night festival of art known as Nuit Blanche, so named because it colloquilally means “all-nighter” in French,  but literally means “white night”. It’s a sunset to sunrise event on the first Saturday of October. There is so much to see all over the city, and it is by design impossible to see everything. The most popular events seem to be the ones that use lots of light shows and sound. For example, many exhibits feature projections against walls and buildings. One exhibit that was a hit was the tennis point played over and over all night long called The Tie-break. It was a re-enactment of the legendary fourth set tie-break from the 1980 Wimbledon Gentlemen’s Singles Finals between Björn Borg and John McEnroe. That would have been something to watch. But we limited ourselves to one area of only a few of many possible events that night.

First we dropped by the Museum of Gender Archaeology that eventually led us into the GendRPhone booths. I’ll admit, apart from the gender changer, commonly used for electronic connections, and the display of so-called ancient bathroom signs for male and female, most of the meaning of the items in the small collection were lost on me. And Ninja is all about exploring the nuances of gender. I get that it was meant to represent a future bygone world of gender dualilty and it was a great start, but it simply wasn’t enough for me. I love shock factor in art (I just revelled in the outrage caused by the kissing of the pope and the imam), and I wasn’t shocked, merely amused. If that is what the artist was after, then it that sense, it did succeed. The installation invites us however to re-imagine our gender. On the gendRphone, you can select the sex and gender of a potential lover and hear their words of love. In the words of Marshall McLuhan, “When you are on the phone, you have no body”.  Just a disembodied voice. I love that concept. It’s full of possibility. Not sure that the installation piqued my imagination though. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

My favourite installation was the sound and poetry presented by a local group called New Adventures in Sound Art.  Go figure. I loved the beat and words that went with it. You’ll hear some of that. The last two installations we went to were light and sound shows. The first was called Night Light Travels and the second was another installation by the NAISA (New Adventures in Sound Art), called Sonic Spaces (The Kinetics of Sound). Both used feedback mechanisms and other triggers to change sound and in some cases light in real time. A Markov chain is a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another, between a finite or countable number of possible states. The next state depends only on the current state and not on the sequence of events that preceded it. This kind of “memorylessness” is called the Markov property. Markov chains have many applications as statistical models of real-world processes and Shawn Pinchbeck uses them to evolve the sound in Sonic Spaces. He also used Vocoder (Voice encoder) technology and theory to change what we hear in the installation.

Have a listen and see if any of this art is your cup of tea.   

Listen to the show:

• HotFRM 200 (28mb)

Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 177 – Nuit Blanche 2009

During Nuit Blanche this year the highlights for me were three sound events.  The first you’ll hear is Sound(e)scape curated by Darren Copeland at New Adventures in Sound Art in Toronto’s Wychwood Barns Artscape venue.  The next is a segment from the storytelling event at the Barns. Finally I share an event called In Search of a Wife in Search of a Husband. First is the memoirs of the wife of the Crown Prince of Korea, and her “experiences before and after her father-in-law, King Yongjo, forced her husband, his 25 year old son, to climb into a rice chest.   The chest was then sealed and her husband died in the chest eight days later.”  Later, the letters between Hester Lynch Thrale and Dr. Samuel Johnson are read.  The exchange is from 16 days between June and July 1784.  Thrale communicates her in intent at 43 years old to remarry and Johnson reacts strongly to the threat of the end of their twenty year association.

Links:   http://www.angelusnovus.net/events.html, Hector Centeno, Andrew Stewart , Nuit Blanche Toronto 2009

Listen

Right click to download at :

• HotFRM 177 (31MB)