Christof Migone is an artist, curator and writer. His work and research delve into language, voice, bodies, performance, intimacy, complicity and endurance. He obtained an MFA from NSCAD in 1996 and a PhD from the Department of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University in 2007. He has been the recipient of commissions from the Tate Modern, Dazibao, Kunstradio, Centre for Art Tapes, New Adventures in Sound Art, Radio Canada, New American Radio. He is a founding member of Avatar (Québec City).

CRACKERS PROJECT

Interval (2005 – ongoing)

Representatives of every age between 10 and 60 are asked to repeat their age at the rhythm they choose for the equivalent of their age in minutes (eg. a 38-year old person repeats 38 for 38 minutes). Sound.

Interval sounds the space between moments, times, spaces, lives. It poses oddly phrased questions: How many times old are you? How divided is your time? How old is your rhythm? How does your age rhythm space? Interval depicts the space in between us, as a rhythm, as a timeline, a pastime, a divided place.The numbers punctuate the space, they constantly reiterate the person’s presence in the here and now, a sort of counting in place. At a standstill, not 1,2,3, … but x, x, x, …. What interests me here is how each participant, given this mundane task, adopts a unique rhythm —some are constant, others erratic; some have a rapid-fire anxious delivery, others have a slow and relaxed output. Each person’s presence permeates the repetitive act, they temporarily become the number—hence the peculiar phrasing of the epigraph: “Every creature is a specific rhythm”. Augustine viewed the alternation of sound and silence in music as a manifestation of the alternation of nonbeing and coming into being.

Microfall (2006)

A microphone is dropped repeatedly from the ceiling until the microphone no longer works. Number of falls until destruction of microphone: 87.

Publick (2013)

Two old style phones without dials, installed side by side on a wall, left-right phones, stereophones. They ring intermittently, but the visitor can pick up either phone at any time. On one all you hear is the sound of licking, close and intimate, for salivaphiles. On the other you hear a voice telling you that the sound you hear on the other phone is the sound of the artist thoroughly licking the phone, it is left ambiguous as to which of the two phones has been licked (in fact, both have).

4 feet and 33 inches (2009)

John Cage has referred to his famed 1952 composition 4’33” as a work that could be pronounced either ‘four minutes, thirty-three seconds’ or ‘four feet, thirty-three inches’.

In this performance I attempt to pronounce 4’33” both ways simultaneously by sawing a piece of 4″x4″x8′ cedar into 4 feet and 33 inches where the sawing of one end marks the beginning of the count towards 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Once the time set by the composition has ended the sawing of the other end begins. The three movements within the piece (0’33”, 2’40”, 1’20”) are marked by nicks of the saw in the wood. For the Cage conference in Toronto, the fourth iteration of the piece, a solid piece of metal was used.

The video and still are from the first performance of the piece in Montreal. Towards the end of the performance you will notice my impromptu attempts to bypass my poor sawing skills and the fact that I had the wrong-sized saw.

Sourced from Christof Migone’s Website

Marla Hlady is a celebrated sound artist and kinetic sculptor. Her pieces deal with the nature of sound, often materializing it for viewers and reorienting their connection to everyday auditory experiences. Hlady received a BFA from the University of Victoria and an MFA from York University. She began showing in the early 1990s, eventually being included in several national and international group shows, such as 1996’s “Blink” at Toronto’s Power Plant. (In 2001, the same gallery hosted a solo show of her work.) Hlady’s practice developed in scope and ambition through the 2000s; 2008’s Playing Piano was a player piano from the 1920s intricately modified with contemporary machinery. In 2012, Hlady did a number of site-specific projects for her solo show at Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York, and for a residency in Norway. Hlady was nominated for the 2002 Sobey Art Award and her work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.

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Playing Piano, 2008

(video at links)

Playing Piano is a partially deconstructed upright player piano prepared in the spirit of John Cage. This fully mechanized 1920’s player piano is animated by a motor and pneumatics (as opposed to being played by a person). A perforated paper roll, the physical translation of the musical score, controls the mechanized elements. The preparations to Playing Piano include various machines which strum and press a pie plate against the strings, whistle using the air of the pneumatics and amplify various parts of the piano’s mechanics. An array of sensors placed on the strings in conjunction with a computer and a series of microprocessors, enables the player piano to control these preparations.

A Case for Sound, 2009 (Ongoing)

A Case for Sound is a sound object made to look somewhere between a suitcase/carrying case, record album box, instrument and portable record player. The object is constructed with wood and finished to a high gloss, holes are cut in each side for the speakers. Inside an MP3 player loops an audio segment. Each sound work composed for the cases is made up of as many as 8 segments–each case plays one looping segment. A motion switch interrupts the audio when the object is tilted. If repeatedly tilted, the interrupted audio can sound similar to a skipping record.

Second Floor Window Fill, 2011

Second Floor Window Fill was part of the solo exhibition Rooms at Oakville Galleries Gairloch Gardens exhibition space, a site-related collection of works.
The average square footage of the rooms on the second floor is calculated. This square footage is then reduced to a shape that fits the gallery window; the ratio is 1:4.5. Second Floor Window Fill consists of all of the rooms’ volumes on the second floor added together then reduced using the 1:4.5 ratio (1 inch = 4½ inches).
All of the sounds of the rooms on the second floor are edited to a proportion that relates to the size of the room they were recorded in. These sound clips are then strung together consecutively; the clips fade in and out of each other.

Walls was produced as part of Hallwalls’ Artist in Residency Program (HARP)
Two of Hallwalls’ moveable walls have been reduced to approximately 1:5 scale and then re-imagined as machines. In the scale model version, one wall now turns a full 360 degrees and plays a hip-hop record backwards. Both the record and the machine’s platform are amplified and heard through two speakers placed in proximity to the machine. The other wall, now paper, rolls back and forth via a lever-like movement. As the wall dips down, it at times bangs and at other times brushes amplified strings. The sound from this machine is heard from 2 other speakers, also placed proximally.

Soundball (Dancehauling), 2013

Soundball (Dancehauling) is an instrument/sculpture that viewers can manipulate as a way to play with sound compositions. The sounds, developed in collaboration with musician Eric Chenaux, deconstruct the rhythm and melody relationship of traditional dance music (jigs, reels, slipjigs or hornpipes to use examples from Irish, Scottish and English traditional music) wherein the musician uses his/her beating foot to ground the often sinuous or meandering melody as a rhythmic aid for the dancer. Here the performance/recording of both the foot beat (Hlady) and the bowed guitar (Chenaux) have been made independently. Each sound is now in its own ball ready to be played, separately or in unison. Previous iterations of this sculpture include a smaller version produced as an artist multiple (Soundball 4) and a percussion instrument used for music performances (Marla Hlady and The Tristanos)

Starting from the late 70s, Hsieh made five One Year Performances and a thirteen year plan, inside and outside his studio in New York City. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, Hsieh achieved one of the most radical approaches in contemporary art. The first four One Year Performances made Hsieh a regular name in the art scene in New York; the last two pieces, intentionally retreating from the art world, set a tone of sustained invisibility. Since the Millenium, released from the restriction of not showing his works during a thirteen year period, Hsieh has exhibited work in North and South America, Asia and Europe.

One Year Performance, 1978-1979

One Year Performance 1980-1981

(Video in link, first 1min 30 seconds gives a succinct explanation of the piece)

Art / Life One Year Performance 1983 – 1984

Tehching Hsieh 1986-1999

Sourced from Teching Hsieh’s Website

Christian Marclay was born in California in 1955, raised in Switzerland and now lives in London. Over the past 30 years, Christian Marclay has explored the fusion of fine art and audio cultures, transforming sounds and music into a visible, physical form through performance, collage, sculpture, installation, photography and video. Marclay began his exploration into sound and art through performances with turntables in 1979, while he was still a student. Early work includes a series of ‘Recycled Records’ (1980-86), fragmented and reassembled vinyl records that became hybrid objects that could be played, replete with abrupt leaps in tone and sound.

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Surround Sounds, 2014-15
Video installation
Four silent synchronised projected animations
Duration: 13 minutes and 40 seconds, looped
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The Clock, 2010

Christian Marclay’s The Clock is a cinematic tour de force that unfolds on the screen in real time through thousands of film excerpts that form a 24-hour montage. Appropriated from the last 100 years of cinema’s rich history, the film clips chronicle the hours and minutes of the 24-hour period, often by displaying a watch or clock. The Clock incorporates scenes of everything from car chases and board rooms to emergency wards, bank heists, trysts, and high-noon shootouts.

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Crossfire, 2007

4 channel video projection

Telephones, 1995
Duration: 7 minutes 30 seconds
Video

Christian Marclay’s “Telephones” (1995), a 7 1/2-minute compilation of brief Hollywood film clips that creates a narrative of its own. These linked-together snippets of scenes involve innumerable well-known actors such as Cary Grant, Tippi Hedren, Ray Milland, Humphrey Bogart and Meg Ryan, who dial, pick up the receiver, converse, react, say good-bye and hang up. In doing so, they express a multitude of emotions–surprise, desire, anger, disbelief, excitement, boredom–ultimately leaving the impression that they are all part of one big conversation. The piece moves easily back and forth in time, as well as between color and black-and-white, aided by Marclay’s whimsical notions of continuity.