WORK: Box Brown Movie

Last Thursday, January 3rd, I worked as boom operator on what is probably the final shoot of the forthcoming film from Raleigh based director Rob Underhill. This was my second shoot on this project.

Here's an IndieWire article about the project from back in March: http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/henry-box-brown-virginia-slave-who-escaped-to-freedom-in-a-box-film-biopic-currently-in-the-works

Check out these exclusive photos hot from the set at UNC's historic Playmakers Theater in Chapel Hill.

Rhizome announces Megapolis 2013 Call For Submissions

We’re looking for performances, presentations, and workshops featuring audio of all kinds to fill our weekend-long festival in New York City, April 19-21, 2013, with our headquarters at the New School. Circuit bending / noisemaker constructions, slumber parties, free-form audio editing sessions, interactive demonstrations, experimental musical practice and theory, film with a heavy audio component, musical performances, subversive audio tours, (un-boring) lectures, and whatever else your brain births.

Firstly, think about this year’s theme: TOURISM.

Like everyone else with some smarts, the New School celebrated the centennial of John Cage’s birth in 2012 (Cage was on the faculty of the New School). In the spirit of this centennial, we mark 2013 as an opportunity to dwell on one of JC’s musings:

“What I’m proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude – that you act as though you’ve never been there before. So that you’re not supposed to know anything about it.”

SUBMIT!

THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION IS 11:59PM, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2013


http://rhizome.org/announce/jobs/opportunities/59188/

Third Sight, Sixth Sib - Rebroadcast of my work!

My collaboration with Myroslaw Bytz, Third Sight: Gowanus, will be transmitted as part of a Sib Radio Gowanus rebroadcast. Sib Radio Gowanus is a 4 part narrowcast audio exhibit that ran in conjunction with the exhibition "Postcards from Gowanus" which was on display at Cabinet Magazine's gallery in Gowanus between 17th-19th of March 2010. The program hosted a series of sonic artworks ranging from field recordings, drones, micro-sound to ambient and electro-acoustic compositions by US and International artists. Sib Radio Gowanus was curated by Maria Papadomanolaki and was sponsored by free103point9. The entire narrowcast recording will be rebroadcast on Resonance FM in London every Tuesday, 21:30 – 22:30 pm (London Time), starting tomorrow Tuesday the 8th of January. Third Sight: Gowanus is a phonographic document of the areas surrounding the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Video was gathered and sonified using sensory substitution technology developed for the visually impaired. The resulting sequences of tones were manipulated to create soundscapes. These ambient drones represent, sonically, the environmental state of the canal whose oxygenation levels are a disturbingly low 1.5 parts per million, far lower than the 4 parts per million necessary to sustain life.

LISTEN: Gregory Whitehead's "Pressures of the Unspeakable"

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Gregory Whitehead's "Pressures of the Unspeakable" circa 1992.
RIGHT CLICK TO DOWNLOAD
> GW speaks on the "Pressures".
http://gregorywhitehead.net/2012/10/29/pressures-of-the-unspeakable/

ARTICLE: Michel Chion

from Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen

Chapter 4: The Audiovisual Scene

Chion makes, at the beginning, a very interesting observation regarding sound. He posits that sound has no "container" like the image does (contained within the frame) and that subsequently sound must be treated differently. The combination of sound and the image, as in cinema, result in what Chion calls a "spatial magnetization" of sound by the image. That is, when sound that corresponds to the image exists in synchrony the image becomes the perceived source of the sound, even in cases where this is illusion is physically more difficult to create aurally, as is the case with mono sound.

Borrowing from Pierre Schaeffer, Chion utilizes the Greek word "acousmatic" to describe "sounds one hears without seeing their originating cause". This holds a particular critical value in the consideration of film sound when compared with what Chion calls "visualized sound" - sounds taking place onscreen and off. Chion also identifies a third category of sound which he calls nondiegetic. Nondiegetic sounds do not have an originating source present in the visual image and exist external to the world of the story (i.e. a laser sound in a Civil War story).

ARTICLE: Rudolf Arnheim: In Praise of Blindness

"The wireless artist must develop a mastery of the limitations of the aural. The test of his talent is whether he can produce a perfect effect with aural things, not whether his broadcast is capable of inspiring his listeners to supplement the missing visual image as realistically and vividly as he can."
                                                                      —Rudolf Arnheim, "In Praise of Blindness," 1936

Arnheim discusses the use of the radio as a means of transmitting art. He describes the radio (or “wireless” in his dated parlance) as something incomplete in real experience but not lacking, if successful, because it creates a whole experience for the listener.

In order to succeed in this form the broadcaster must “develop a mastery of the limitations of the aural”. Arnheim is of the opinion that aural performances that inspire the listener to imagine the work visually have failed to provide the necessary components of experience to the audience.

Arnheim makes the distinction between two types of broadcast: the radio play and the relay. A radio play (take for example Radio Tales of the Strange and Fantastic) “is self-sufficient, completes itself in the aural” whereas a relay simply rips the audio wholesale from an event very much rooted in the real world and reliant on other sense (a live theatrical production or a sporting event, for example).

Arnheim describes silence, what he calls “the acoustic void”, as having a necessary and complementary role in the radio play, much like an empty stage. For the relay, however, silence suggests to the listener that there is much that they are missing and destroys any illusion of unity in the work."

SOURCE:

Arnheim, Rudolf. 1936. “In Praise of Blindness; Emancipation from the Body,”
               in Radio (trans. Margaret Ludwig). London: Faber and Faber, pp. 133-
               203.



"In Praise of Blindness" and many other readings can be found in the excellent Radio Text PDF from Self Learn Los Angeles [PDF LINK DEAD] http://www.selflearnla.org/2011/05/25/radiotexte-pdf/

ARTICLE: Errol Morris: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?

An entry from Errol Morris' blog for The New York Times.
Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg?


Errol Morris presents us with a discussion of the way in which a meeting between academia and photography has captured an obscure moment from the Crimean war and in doing so preserved (or created) the extra-photographic narrative of Roger Fenton and his assistant: daring wartime photographers or cowards; master craftsmen or disingenuous cheats.

This piece not only demonstrates Mr. Morris' abilities as a documentary researcher but it also goes beyond the extant work on the topic; extending this discourse with the article. His researcher's journey is prompted by only two sentences from Sontag's On Photography. Through his attention to these sentences Morris uncovers a controversy in academia and extends the debate regarding the propriety of Fenton's photographs of “The Valley of the Shadow of Death”. By proposing a contest to the readers of the New York Times, Morris further extends the discourse initially represented by a mere two sentences and a few footnotes. This discussion raises important questions regarding authorial intentionality and critical interpretation.

Morris' focused inquiry reveals a criticism of Sontag's assumed authority within On Photography that is made clear by Morris' careful wording and footnoted critique of Sontag's unwillingness to include the photographs in her work. His blog assumes the voice of a video documentary complete with transcriptions of interviews and sometimes abrupt transitions suggestive of film editing techniques. Within this form is encoded Morris' critique of Sontag's authorial voice and polarization of an unclear discussion regarding not only the circumstances of two dated wartime photographs but also of a very dead man's bravery and character. Morris likens the cultural function of photographs to Ruskin's pathetic fallacy, a comparison that I agree with as both are results of technology's influence on 19th century thought.