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I have embarked on a new project this past summer, a collaboration with Australian sound artist Majena Mafe on her burgeoning web project girrlsound archiving and calling attention to women working in the sonic arts. The particular piece I am starting with is an ongoing series of interviews beginning with female pioneers in the field of sound. I imagine later the interviews will branch out to other categories: sound sculptors, composers, improvisors, etc. but for the moment I am really enjoying conversing with these amazing and groundbreaking women. The basic format I am using is a standard set of 10 questions I ask each pioneer plus 2 individual questions specific to the individual artist’s practice.

You can see the first 2 interviews featuring Annea Lockwood and Pauline Oliveros up online.

Another promising work is Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s “Totem” (2010), a gypsum tower that records visitors’ conversations and spits them out in fragmented form over the course of the exhibition. Unfortunately, the fragments of speech returned by the sculpture feel so random — and are so hard to hear — that the piece fails to connect human speech, meaning and technology in a profound fashion.

Nonetheless I appreciate the mention and link to my website! I am afraid I can’t entirely disagree with their criticism. The location where Totem is installed is very echoey and it makes the speech very difficult to hear. A bit disappointing but a good reminder to be picky about where and how your work is installed and to try to visit before it is shipped. There are really so few spaces that are good for sound art… yet another reason to wish for/work towards a sound specific gallery here in New York!

Sept. 1st at noon I will be discussing my work at an art salon benefit for Grounds for Sculpture in NJ. The tickets are $60 and include a fancy lunch and glass of wine. Call (609) 586-0616 for tickets. This is also pretty much your last chance to see Totem (who has been evolving all summer) installed at Grounds for Sculpture as the exhibit comes down shortly after on 9/18.

I am also teaching a couple field recording workshops this September. One is at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn 9/19 and 9/21 5-8pm the other is 9/10 and 9/17 2-5pm at Snug Harbor in Staten Island by the ferry. Both are free but seats are limited. If you want to come learn a bit about sound and recording and contribute to the Ear to the Earth project of recording the sounds of the 5 boroughs of New York then please join me! RSVP to field.recording.workshops@gmail.com
and specify which workshop you are confirming for.
More info on the BK workshop at the public school
http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/class/3667

This week my collaborative Future Archaeology will be featured in the Index Festival.

First we will be participating in the Make Ready panel August 17th 7-8pm at Harvestworks.

Then we will be performing a new take on our piece Ohm at Millennium Film Workshop August 19th at 8pm as part of the [Mis] Adventures in Manipulation performance series. ($10)

Jaaga Dhvani from barret clemence on Vimeo.

Hoping to get more images and a documentary video from Jaaga soon…

Jaaga Dhvani is a new work of Sound Art by New York-based artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg.

Jaaga Dhvani is quite literally the voice of a space – a sonic representation of the Jaaga art center imagined as a living corporeal entity.

Jaaga Dhvani is also a voice from space – the space around us in both our immediate and vast conceptions of place; an exploration of Jaaga , Bangalore, and India more generally as a site of collision between the global and the local, the high and the low tech, the very old and the very new.

Technically, the voice of Jaaga is composed of recorded fragments of its inhabitants, its language is derived from the syntax and lexicon of the web, its body is crafted from found objects inspired by tribal forms.

Dewey-Hagborg began by stitching together recorded fragments from voices of the people that compose Jaaga to create a new, synthesized voice representing the individual as part of a whole.

She then created an algorithm that would give this voice a language, composing its words from a reservoir of knowledge scraped from the web and bringing the global brain into the Jaaga body.

Finally Dewey-Hagborg crafted a sculpture to give the voice a physical form and to further emphasize the hybridization between customs both ancient and modern. Electronics attach to steel as a complete organism, probing the tension between tradition and technology.

Photo Credit: Madhu Reddy

joyously the bridal garland
perish too thy hated name and
warlike steed and throw the dart
dear in joy and part in silence

and their faces ran with blood of
earth loving sons your virtues prove
arjun and on kuru’s king and
lost him to restore the kingdom

larger stouter is this kuru
bowing to her weeping sister
bright celestial cars in concourse
lightninglike it came on karna

render honour to thy king and
lost himself and all was still and
torn not the deep and deadly sound
heaving sobs convulsed her bosom