[microsound] Exit Through the Gift Shop (Disneyland)

David Powers cyborgk at gmail.com
Thu Feb 17 11:58:17 EST 2011


On a side note, I would say that street art, in general, has a lot to
do with property and territory. Sound actually passes property
barriers quite easily--which makes it fundamentally different than
spray paint. I think one really needs to factor that in when you look
for an analogy between street art and some type of sonic work.
However, street musicians definitely seem to me to be no different
than street artists, the only difference might lie in whether they are
allowed to work in public space. I would say that in Chicago, we do
have a lot of street musicians; they are accepted by the city within
some limits (one does need a license).

Actually, I think it would be absolutely amazing to hire a
professional string quartet, for instance, to play music in the
subway, perhaps playing some original music or Beethoven quartets
(though the logic would be severely disrupted, obviously)... letting
people hear music in an unusual place and be surprised.

Now per your comments about the symphony, I used to think that a
symphony hall was stuffy too, but honestly, I recently went to see
Mozart piano concertos (Uchida + CSO), and I saw a lot of people who
were clearly there for the music, not for a social event. I was also
surprised that the environment of the concert hall DID, in fact, allow
me to really focus on the music and have an experience moving and
rather different than just listening at home. Not only that, but those
of us who love music but are not wealthy have to part with a pretty
big amount of money for tickets.

Okay, do I think the music should be more accessible to the public,
sure, but think carefully about the implications of what you are
doing. It's not classical music is doing really well right now and I
think the situation is different in the past; in my opinion the
musical landscape has so changed that we could face a situation where
live classical music could entirely die out in the future, and I don't
think that's a positive development.

Now if you want to stick a sonic installation into a Mrs. Gag show, on
the other hand... be my guest. I don't think it would be hard to use a
little social engineering to make friends with someone that works at a
concert venue, just give them money and/or drugs you'll be all set...
;-)

~David


On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 10:33 AM, Steven Ricks
<stevericksmusic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>from Boris:
>>Is it the same thing to tag over someone's wall piece as hiding a speaker
>> on stage before a performance and using it to interrupt the flow of the
>> concert once it has begun?
>
> To me this connects with the segment of the movie where Banksy plants the
> guantanamo bay dummy in Disneyland--the idea of infiltrating a very
> protected space/environment and adding something to it which stands out,
> makes a statement, whatever.  I could see this being very
> interesting/provocative happening in a symphony concert in a sort of stuffy
> concert hall, or also at a rock concert--seems that a planted speaker could
> be easy to hide somewhere in the large stacks at a rock venue, though access
> would be the issue.  At the symphony, ????
>
> On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Boris Klompus <boris.klompus at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> What separates the work of a street artist/graffiti writer from other
>> visual artists? Is it the placement, the risk in doing it, the message?
>> Speaking of which, what is the message -- is it disruption, thus vandalism,
>> is it just for fun or notoriety? Is it just a matter of breaking out of the
>> schmoozy art world, and letting one's art out there for others to see, or
>> ignore, or etc, rather than proving your worth with grants, CV's and etc in
>> order to get a chance to hang some art up on the walls of a predescribed
>> gallery? The audio equivalent to acting out based on such questions, would
>> depend on how one answers them.
>>
>> Is it the same thing to tag over someone's wall piece as hiding a speaker
>> on stage before a performance and using it to interrupt the flow of the
>> concert once it has begun?
>>
>> And what are you going for, startling people, and with it seeing their
>> reactions, making people think about things in a different way, taking what
>> is normally a mundane moment (potentially) in someone's day and pulling them
>> out briefly?
>>
>> There are plenty of things that make noise already, for instance the
>> pre-recorded lady voice telling my to watch my step on the escalator.
>> Changing the recording that gets played back through those speakers, that
>> one is so desensitized to hearing, could be much more startling than placing
>> a new sound making source in the environment and adding an extra level of
>> sound. It's like the taxis in Mumbai that Hans mentioned.
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 6:38 PM, hans w. koch <kochhw at netcologne.de>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> actually, you are of course right, about noise pollution in cities.
>>> thats why i choose a spot for the installation, which was not easily
>>> accessible.
>>> mostly people from the neighbouring residential area would use the
>>> traffic island for a stop while crossing the road to the opposite park, when
>>> going to walk their dogs.
>>> i even bought the trashscan to mount it there myself.
>>> (and it wasn´t playing continously, only when somebody threw something
>>> in)
>>>
>>> but i would also consider, that there are different types of noise
>>> pollution. i was in mumbai 2 years ago, where basically everybody is driving
>>> by ear, constantly honking.
>>> it is loud, but after a couple of days, it fades into background, except
>>> of the modern cars, which have a horns especially developped to surpass the
>>> prevalent horns of the old taxis.
>>> high pitched, ultraloud, absolutely killing. it happended to me a couple
>>> of times sitting in a moto-rickshaw, that suddenly a new car would pull up
>>> on my side and i didn´t cover my ears fast enough and was suffering long
>>> after.
>>> the old horns on the other hand, i learned to hear as a kind of spacial
>>> composition, made of hundreds of grains of honking.
>>>
>>> hans
>>> www.hans-w-koch.net
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Am 16.02.2011 um 18:31 schrieb microsound-request at or8.net:
>>>
>>> > Message: 4
>>> > Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:07:12 -0600
>>> > From: David Powers <cyborgk at gmail.com>
>>> > To: microsound at microsound.org
>>> > Subject: Re: [microsound] Exit Through the Gift Shop
>>> > Message-ID:
>>> >       <AANLkTin_iuD0o3jfhyskrGgJTiVcOsnF=PkJCsftxZYM at mail.gmail.com>
>>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>>> >
>>> > A little food for thought:
>>> >
>>> > Do we not suffer from too much noise in our cities already? At least
>>> > in Chicago, I am subjected to large amounts of unwanted noise, whether
>>> > it is the dangerously loud sound of elevated trains, or the unwanted
>>> > (and almosty always terrible) background music that plays incessantly
>>> > indoors everywhere one goes.
>>> >
>>> > So I suggest that the ultimate sonic intervention would not create
>>> > noise, but SUBTRACT noise--creating an unexpected pocket of silence in
>>> > the midst of the city would be fantastic, in my opinion.
>>> >
>>> > ~David
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> microsound mailing list
>>> microsound at microsound.org
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>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Steven Ricks
> Composer
> Associate Professor, BYU School of Music
> (801) 422-6115
> www.stevericks.com
> CD's
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