Scanner

My initial reaction was needing to hear some of his stuff in order to have any opinion. The article was a bit trippy in its wordings, but I guess that's the way musicians can be. Anyway, I think his music is interesting, definitely valid and able to be used for pieces and inspiration, but it's not something I'd sit and listen to. I do think it's very cool to use found sounds to create a piece though, and something we should do more of while keeping melody in mind.

Tempophone home

The tempophone is a device that varies pitch or tempo but not at the same time.  It involves multiple playback heads mounted on a rotating cylinder.  (All descriptions come from Handbook on Acoustic Ecology).  The machine, essentially, was to create new sounds that are "normally impossible."  The "time stretching" of the tempophone is similar to digital techniques like granulation.  

What I find interesting about this are two things- one much of what we think is new is just a variation on a theme.  And two, what comes before shapes what comes after and how it is used.

Scanning Scanner

Due to a very bad case of cantankerousness, I found myself annoyed with Scanner's article.  I would have preferred five pages spent discussing a couple of projects in depth versus a series of brief glosses that do not give a good picture of what these projects did and why they were done.  For example, he tells us that performance is limited for electronic music, but not how it is limited.  I wanted to hear more about why he choose to have multiple people perform as Scanner on the same night and what it means that people believed it was him.  Why did he do it?  What did it tell him?  What does he think it tells us about the limitations of performance.

Despite this, I found his projects interesting.  My favorite piece is the Sound Polaroids.  Without romanticizing the possibilities of public participation, I enjoy projects that involve the public affecting the outcome of the project, besides it sounds (hardy har har) like a lot of fun to read teh questionnaires people filled out and then go find those sounds and record them.  I wanted to know more about how synethesia came to play in the work and why it was important.  

As for his idea that buildings store memories or more accurately, that lost memories are to be found in buildings, I find, despite a somewhat appealing poetic line like "archeology of loss," that his emphasis on "pathos" and "missed connections" frustrating.  Yes, any "archeology" digs into something that has been lost, but is it pathetic?  Could it perhaps be joyful discovery?  Perhaps it could be that we need to lose things because we cannot hold onto to everything?  And finding bits and pieces of our histories- far or recent past- give us new insights into our present moment.  

Reaction

--scanner--
I found the article very interesting. particularly the section on how Scanner was able to use the city announcement system to broadcast one of his performances. I found the willingness of the city and the scale of the project to be quite amazing. One specific example is the On Broad Way another performance where soundtracks and other familiar media played around a gallery and each viewer's experience changed depending on walking speed and style.

--SCHIZOPHONIC--
This is a splitting of noise between original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction. it has to do with Original sounds being tied to the mechanisms which produce them. ties to fidelity, tape recorders, and sound pollution. The examples are all lo-fi noise filled recordings. Interesting as an intentional process.

scanner

after reading the article, i feel like i have similar interests of sound exploration with scanner. a lot of what he discussed followed the associative links people develop, which i find myself wondering about all the time. i especially love that he gathered and communicated the sound/place associations of hundreds of people. a collaborative synesthesia.

The Mel Scale

Sheila uploaded the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology for me, so I was able to read about (among other things) the Mel Scale.

Mel Scale - Descending

Instead of being derived from a mathematical series of "steps," the Mel Scale is psychological and perceptual. It is based on steps that SOUND like they are equally spaced, even if they aren't.

I really like the way it sounds. It's kind of playful, and reminds me of the music in the old SNES game Bubsy and other games from the same time period.

Scanner

Overall, I liked this article, but it was a really quick gloss over his work and was missing a crucial component, for the most part - links to video documentation and/or sound. It's very difficult to imagine what a soundscape is like without being immersed in it.

The concept of reality was interesting - what makes a sound "real"? It isn't based entirely in clarity, although clarity is a very important component. Likewise, what dates a sound, makes it sound old or fake? Scanner's concept of a "Sound Polaroid" seemed like an accurate way to describe it, although the temporality and "real"-ness of the sound can be shaped or faked. A modern recording can SOUND like it's from the 60s. But what's interesting is how our minds associate certain elements of a sound with certain time periods and locations.

I like how Scanner started his recordings in the early 90s by the way he lived his life - he had a ham radio and would hear transmissions over the music he was already listening to. I like that he was able to take that and transform it into music/manipulated sound. I also found one of the last pieces he talked about, his "Promotional Show" to be pretty interesting, in that, "one show was reviewed favorably in Germany without the realization that [he] was not in fact present." In this age of digital transmission and storage, the presence of the artist is becoming less and less crucial, but also it seems there is a trend toward ways of performing digital processes live, ways that entertain an audience rather than bore them.