Acoustic Horizons
Multimedia technologies and mobile computing devices have stretched the horizons of the sound arts. Stemming from the 1913 manifesto, The Art of Noises, by Italian Futurist Luigo Russolo, sound has captured the imagination of media artists through the blends of synthesizers, the noise of computer glitches, the din of everyday life, and the delights of aural walking tours. Goldsen’s holdings in Acoustic Horizons range from ephemera by artistic pioneers Nam June Paik, Merce Cunningham, and Gary Hill to collections of electronic music by experimenting women Pauline Oliveros and Laurie Anderson, African-American media and hip-hop artists Mendi & Keith Obadike and DJ Spooky, and Asian artists specializing in glitch and noise. In the vein of the fine arts, Goldsen’s holdings range from documentation of new media performances by influential artists Golan Levin, Mark Hansen, and Ben Rubin to the trendsetting experimentation of the pioneering radio and environmental sound artists Andrea Polli and Helen Thorington.
Gary Hill, Sound Construction: An Audio Synthesis Workshop, poster. Binghamton, New York, 1976. Experimental Television Center Collection.
Gary Hill, Proposal for the Audio Synthesis Workshop. 1976. Experimental Television Center Collection.
Golan Levin, Messa di Voce. Austria, 2003. Rockefeller New Media Fellowships Collection.
In this work, custom software involving cutting-edge computer vision and vocal recognition tools transforms the vocalizations of two performers into real-time, emergent animations that interact with the performers’ bodies and with each other. Pictured here are the movements “Pitchpaint,” “Ripple,” and “Insect Nature Show.” The Goldsen Archive includes more extensive documentation of this work, including video of its performance and installation versions.
b!as International Sound Art Exhibition. Taiwan, 2005.
Organized by the Taiwanese media art collective, ET@T, the b!as International Sound Art Exhibition ran biannually from 2003-2005 as a competition for the Yageo Sound Art Prize: http://www.etat.com/bias/. Gift of ET@T.
Julius Vitali, Music of the Avant-Disregard, audio cassette and score study. USA, 1989. Experimental Television Center Collection.
Vitali’s “Visual Music” combined musical notes in graphic patterns from an artistic vision stemming from surrealism, but which he called “awkwardology.”
Nam June Paik, Works 1958-1979 (Brussels: subrosa.net, 2004).
Compiled by Stephen Vitiello, this is a wide panorama of Nam June Paik’s work as musician. Hommage à John Cage (1958-1959), Étude for Pianoforte (1959-1960) and Simple (1961) are irreverent audio-collages exemplary of neodada music and de-structuration in the late 1950s. Prepared Piano for Merce Cunningham (1977) captures an improvised performance by Paik on a de-tuned piano.
Merce Cunningham, Application Cover Sheet to New York State Council of the Arts for Project with John Cage. New York, 1986. New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Electronic Media and Film Program Collection.
Museum of Contemporary Art of San Diego, catalog of Soundwaves: The Art of Sampling. San Diego: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007.
Helen Thorington, Calling to Mind. USA, 2005.
The Co-Director of Turbulence.org, Helen Thorington’s productions for National Public Radio were among the first radio art works broadcast nationally. Calling to Mind is comprised of “space-time communication,” in which the human voice can only just be heard, and briefly at that. Gift of the artist.
Andrea Polli, Atmospheric/Weather Works. USA, 2003.
A project that translates data collected from meteorological events into sound. It weaves information from a highly detailed meteorological model of Hurricane Bob, in August 1991, into a sound composition that illuminates the underlying rhythms of seemingly chaotic events.
Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, Listening Post. USA, 2002-2005. Permanent Collection, San Jose Museum of Art. Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowships Collection.
Winner of the Golden Nica at the 2004 Ars Electronica Festival in the category of Interactive Art, Listening Post is a lattice of 231 small LED screens, fed by computers that trawl public internet forums, such as chat rooms and message boards. Analyzing the text—typed just moments before—by tens of thousands of people in Internet chat rooms around the world, it presents them as six different “movements,” combining musical tones, sound effects, synthesized voice, and scrolling text.
Mendi and Keith Obadike, Phonotype: Audio Anthology. Mahwah, NJ: Ramapo College of New Jersey, 2012.
A collection of the artists’ writings on media art and a CD compilation of sound art recordings published by Ramapo College. Gift of the artist.
DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, Celestial Mechanix. Norwalk, Ct.: Thirsty Ear, 2004. Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowships Records.
Commemorating the thirtieth entry into the Thirsty Ear Blue Series catalog, DJ Spooky spread out the entire Blue Series and sorted, sifted, chopped and recombined this vast amount of music into a new work that teases out the lines between jazz and hip-hop, and then obliterates them.
Canadian Creative Music Collective (Paul Dutton, John Oswald and Michael Snow), CCMC & Christian Marclay. Toronto: No Music Festival Inc. & Art Metropole, 2002.
Michael Snow and Christian Marclay are also two of the most successful video and new media artists.
LTK Commune, Live: Spring Scream. Taiwan, 1997.
After the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan was finally ready for an original new music scene of its own. However, many live house pubs continued to feature mostly cover bands and radio waves were ruled by mandarin pop idols. The Taiwan band, LTK Commune, broke out in 1989 in reaction to the ineffectual switch from the authoritarian rule of martial law over to blind consumerism. LTK's sound is a frenetic take on nakasi, a rustic working class folk style of music, through the lens of the punk, new wave and alternative rock emerging out of the west.
New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, Women in Electronic Music, 1977. New York: New World Records, 2006.
Collection including recordings by Ithaca’s Megan Roberts, Johanna M. Beyer, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Spiegel, Ruth Anderson, and Laurie Anderson.