Chloe’s Work

Week 7

Proposal

Brainstorm

Project Description

Drawing on Janet Cardiff’s body of work in which she plays with the ability of sound to transport the listener to a different time, space, or experience, I plan on creating an audio work that translate the experience (or at least my personal experience) of a panic attack.

I feel really inspired by her piece, video walk, in which she creates a disorienting audio/visual guide through a train station. She narrates the audio, creating a guide for her listeners through an experience she created for them.

I would like to do something similar by ‘guiding’ the viewer through the experience of a panic attack.

I plan on using my voice, various noises, and layering of sounds to recreate the overwhelming and stressful feelings that encompass a panic attack.

Sounds to Use

Repeating negative affirmations – thought spiral. For example, “you aren’t good enough”, “you can’t do this”, “things will never get better”, “just give up”, etc. Start with one at a time, and then layer them so they become progressively more overwhelming.

Use static sounds to recreate the feelings of chaos and tension that comes with anxiety.

Use sounds of nails scratching to symbolize the feelings of wanting to escape.

End the piece with the sounds slowly fading out and transition to nature sounds, singling the end of the panic attack.

Last line of the audio clip: “you’re okay” accompanied by the sound of someone brushing hair – meant to feel comforting.

Audio Art Examples

John Cage

“When I hear music, it seems to me that someone is talking. When I hear the sound of traffic, I have the feeling that sound is acting.”

Cage focuses on sound for the sole purpose of it being a sound. He doesn’t ask it to be anything else.

Immanuel Kant said that there are two things that do not need to mean anything to give us deep pleasure:

• Sound
• Music

Emeka Ogboh

Sound as a way of transporting the listener.

Ogboh recorded a group of singers and had their voices playing through speakers mounted in a plain plywood room. Each speaker had the voice of the singer listed beneath it.

Ogboh is interested in sound and its ability to transport you to where you are not physically present.

• “the reaction goes right into your bones”

Ogboh is from Lagos, which he describes as a city that is never silent.

• The city transposes.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

LOST IN THE MEMORY PALACE

• Sense of memory is fundamental to her work.
• The memory palace is a series of exhibition in which the viewer moves from space to space – creating a sense of disorientation.
• Small rooms that contain whole worlds inside of them.
  • Looking, listening, and encountering things in the space.
    • Through this a story unfolds.
• I really liked their model of a theatre, which was in actuality a small model.
  • Through the use of binaural sounds and perspective, it creates the illusion that you are really in the theatre.

• Storm room was another part of the exhibition that really spoke to me. The outside looks like a stage set, but when you go inside you enter a completely different place.

• Through their work they tell stories of relationships, about the mysteries of life, things that anyone can find something to relate to. 

THE FORTY PART MOTET

• Audio installation that consists of 40 speakers.
  • 40 different harmonies – 8 different choirs.
• The sound is 3D, so it is like you are walking into a piece of music.
• She included a sort of intermission, where the choir members were talking to each other, clearing their throats, breathing, etc.
  • Brings the listener back to the reality that the piece is composed of real people.

ALTER BAHNHOF VIDEO WALK

• Viewers of the piece are given an iPod and headphones and follow along to a pre-recorded video through an old train station.
• Janet’s voice guides the viewer, narrating the experiencing
• The result is overlapping realities, creating a sense of confusion – reality mixes with the pre-recorded video.
• This piece is successful in my opinion, as it invites the viewer to look at the train station in a new way.

I really like Janet’s work, as it creates an experience for the viewer that is incredibly visceral and real. Her work deals with ideas of narrative, intimacy, and experience through the use of sculptural sound.

She exhibits sound as sculpture.

I love how she strives to create a moment for the viewer to get lost in. Especially now a days, everything is so fast and we are overloaded by information we can access at the touch of our finger. Thus, I think it is very powerful for an artist to create spaces for people to experience visceral moments of beauty and intimacy.

Christian Marclay

Marclay is interested in the sounds that people do not want.

He makes music using unintended sounds, such as a record squeak or scratching of a paintbrush.

He slices records and recombines them to create medleys of different songs, he places records off centre so that they wobble and thus create a strange noise. 

He says that punk rock music was liberating – allowing him to play music without studying it.

He plays with the unpredictability of sound.

He is interested in how sound is visualized. Video allows Marclay to comment on the relationship between the sound and the image.

THE CLOCK

• 24-hour video loop.
• No beginning nor end.
• It tracks time like a clock or a watch.
• The time on the screen is exactly the time it is that moment the viewer is looking at it.
• The clock is a memento mori.
• You are constantly reminded of how long you have spent in front of the piece, the idea of time running out is at the forefront. 

Marclay’s work is different from the other sound artists, in that he looks to take sounds that aren’t conventionally seen as anything of sustenance and turns them into pieces of art. He takes the mundane and perhaps ugly sounds and combines them into unique soundscapes and installations that creates a different kind of music.

Kelly Mark

I REALLY SHOULD

• Mark records herself reciting 1000 things she really should do over a 49 minute video.
• This video is so poignant because it is something that nearly everyone can relate to.
• The stream of consciousness of a mile long to do list and the overwhelming feelings that accompany it is no doubt something that most people will have a strong reaction to.

SOUND BITES

• The goal of this exhibition was to bring different environments of the Koffler centre together to form a more cohesive experience of the place.
• Mark uses the plethora of different sounds to create an audio space that embodied the centre.

HUM

• Mark recorded herself humming an annoying tune over and over again for about 30 minutes and then placed the recording in public spaces.
• The sound was played low in order to not be completely obvious.
• The purpose of the piece was to infect as many people as other so that they would carry the tune on and infect other people.

Lee Walton

• Lee Walton did a project where he compiles videos of many people’s piano’s playing the middle C note.
• I really love this piece, because although everyone is playing the exact same note, due to their different pianos they each create a unique sound.
• I think this is a very cool piece in that it examines the differences in sound experiences that accompany different spaces and individuals.
• It explores how something as simple as a single note can create such diverse outcomes.