About this blog
As a young theorist of diverse poetic forms, I am interested in articulating the complex, dynamic sensuality that manifests in experimental sound. In 2007, I began formulating a preliminary philosophical position on this topic, working mostly from Deleuze, Derrida and Kristeva. I created this blog to track and share my spontaneous responses to performed experimental music and sound art, in order to (hopefully) complement my theoretical perspective on what happens when we feel, evoke, or represent using sound.
Nicole Bindler (movement and voice) and Michael Zerang (percussion and movement), Outer Space, Chicago, 8/8/09
The hoard
moves above her, swarming-- rhythmic. She moves, pointing through it, waving past it.
It moves, buzzing multiplicitous terror, alarming unity-- she pulls, pushing hole, resisting this force of the swarm. It insists, encircles, forms an insect-mirror for her; she moves past it, comes to haunt it with her soma.
She pushes it, angular, forward, forces fresh reciprocation, forming corporeal street signs that all come to meet it. She allows it to engulf her, insect-fan her into fevered slumber; drunken, she pushes walls aside-together, renders wings from nought but air, allows the swarm to form new wind-- wing at each heel, she breathes its rhythm, sings electric, pounds percussive pounds of flesh. Synchronic, pound for pulsion, she-it-they-her, he-we-him.
An ocean, wave by roiling wave she laps the final him of it, flesh-foam of movement, rubs us back to skin.
moves above her, swarming-- rhythmic. She moves, pointing through it, waving past it.
It moves, buzzing multiplicitous terror, alarming unity-- she pulls, pushing hole, resisting this force of the swarm. It insists, encircles, forms an insect-mirror for her; she moves past it, comes to haunt it with her soma.
She pushes it, angular, forward, forces fresh reciprocation, forming corporeal street signs that all come to meet it. She allows it to engulf her, insect-fan her into fevered slumber; drunken, she pushes walls aside-together, renders wings from nought but air, allows the swarm to form new wind-- wing at each heel, she breathes its rhythm, sings electric, pounds percussive pounds of flesh. Synchronic, pound for pulsion, she-it-they-her, he-we-him.
An ocean, wave by roiling wave she laps the final him of it, flesh-foam of movement, rubs us back to skin.
Asimina Chremos (movement and voice) and Carol Genetti (movement and voice), Outer Space, Chicago, 8/8/09
Feel the weight of this intricate, furred machinery: cogs and coils, belts and whistles, grind together, tense-intensing. One metal part follows another, snapping, squeaking, hurting, heaving-- a machinic Nutcracker nightmare unfolds in sneaky pairs, only to ebb as self-lingering tone.
One by one, parts mean themselves off into singularities, moaning against context until muscles scream-- render themselves hoarse-- breaking into stubborn idiosyncrasy.
In rending itself from the machine, a part stretches, lengthens, vibrates over, grows alone-ly into pattern. You can feel it when your finger runs across it: subtle scary ribbing multiplies itself out as it feels, extends its pattern through reflexive contact.
Folding back along its form, unknowing stretch of a de-structured mouse machine, it grates along across, back down its ribbing as it feels, taking quiet creaky care as it back-folds, building nests of breath and hair into each strip of involuted corner. Nesting leads to breeding, tiny Nutcracker exchanges, quickened amorous pliés of infestation take it, waking, into life.
One by one, parts mean themselves off into singularities, moaning against context until muscles scream-- render themselves hoarse-- breaking into stubborn idiosyncrasy.
In rending itself from the machine, a part stretches, lengthens, vibrates over, grows alone-ly into pattern. You can feel it when your finger runs across it: subtle scary ribbing multiplies itself out as it feels, extends its pattern through reflexive contact.
Folding back along its form, unknowing stretch of a de-structured mouse machine, it grates along across, back down its ribbing as it feels, taking quiet creaky care as it back-folds, building nests of breath and hair into each strip of involuted corner. Nesting leads to breeding, tiny Nutcracker exchanges, quickened amorous pliés of infestation take it, waking, into life.
Jenny Gräf Sheppard, Osmosymbiotic Echo (sound installation), Florasonic series, Lincoln Park Conservatory, Chicago, 12/07/08
Hum of substance; smell of earth. Entering through ears and nostrils, we are filter-filled with the terrifying beauty of persistence. An overlying softness of shrill, consistently haunting, nearly-pulsing. Our ears consume, cognize, adjust, are constituted in these acts of ingestive synthesis. Our nostrils breath an underlying roll of thick, the musty rich of life-giving, tragedy of organic breakdown. Depth and anticipation; death and nervous heaven-- we are filled and fraught between.
Bird-cries oscillate, twitter, tear at ethereality; the verdancy of ferns unfurls itself, unfurls again. Gutteral machines emerge, drown the cries, ruffle the leaves, and disappear again into-beyond the overlying hum, into-within the earth that insists, hungry, indifferent, insisting hunger in its very indifference.
Light fades to purple; shadows move-- enduring alteration, we return, return again to hum and earth, our ears and nostrils quivering for that which cannot but endure. Birds near or far, insect variation, the darkened shades and hidden details; holes of blackness even, where twilight obscures. We are filled with earth; our bodies humming earth, as violent violet tumbles slowly into green.
Dedicated in memory of Peter Ginsberg, 1982-2008
Bird-cries oscillate, twitter, tear at ethereality; the verdancy of ferns unfurls itself, unfurls again. Gutteral machines emerge, drown the cries, ruffle the leaves, and disappear again into-beyond the overlying hum, into-within the earth that insists, hungry, indifferent, insisting hunger in its very indifference.
Light fades to purple; shadows move-- enduring alteration, we return, return again to hum and earth, our ears and nostrils quivering for that which cannot but endure. Birds near or far, insect variation, the darkened shades and hidden details; holes of blackness even, where twilight obscures. We are filled with earth; our bodies humming earth, as violent violet tumbles slowly into green.
Dedicated in memory of Peter Ginsberg, 1982-2008
Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello + objects), Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, 9/12/08
Can a swelling be beautiful? No metaphoric flesh-blossom here: our skin swells up and out, a continuum of mottled purple; out and out, a body rising uncomfortably thickened.
The swelling becomes breath: in out in out, undulations of variably filled flesh. The controlled breath-swell becomes frantic, multiplied, desperate, direction-full: it goes it goes it goes-- multiplicitous, anxiety of exhalation, we can barely breathe through what we (must) communicate.
Can an infection be beautiful? The purplish flesh, the skin filling with inflammatory matter; now emptying of inflammatory matter, pulled and pricked, rubbed and wronged now by anxious, clamoring bees. They crawl with itchy foot-pads, dragging their languorous bodies along the variable hills, sloped valleys filling with their pollen. These fluffy snowdrifts settle into the opposite of swelling, unevenly, as the bees descend and drag their bulky, waxy bodies across our flesh. Their itchy, sharp legs and feet wear tiny pinpricks in our infected flesh as they traverse terrain. Their needles transgress the space of our undulating breath-swell.
Crossing / recrossing their own paths, the bees begin to frustrate and confuse as they fall / fall again into their own foot-holes. Slow pus is pushed out from the increasingly worn pinpricks, coaxed by the weight of their insect bodies and the meddling of their sharp, scratchy legs.
Slowly, they begin to get stuck in their own pollen as the thick wet pus mixes with the yellow drifts which decorate the valleys of our infected flesh. The bees' flurried movements, at first an expression of carefree, mindless exploration, turn now to slow, desperate burrowing, ironically embodying a frantic, trapped freneticism of spirit.
Their burrowing, in turn, resolves itself into a quiet, gentle drowning, their bulky, pointy-tailed bodies sinking into the concavities filled by their pollen, fully thickened now by the pus of our corporeal landscape.
Their death-cries sound like slow elastic band-aid marathons, like muffled, candied fire alarms, like throaty swan-songs erupting into snow.
The swelling becomes breath: in out in out, undulations of variably filled flesh. The controlled breath-swell becomes frantic, multiplied, desperate, direction-full: it goes it goes it goes-- multiplicitous, anxiety of exhalation, we can barely breathe through what we (must) communicate.
Can an infection be beautiful? The purplish flesh, the skin filling with inflammatory matter; now emptying of inflammatory matter, pulled and pricked, rubbed and wronged now by anxious, clamoring bees. They crawl with itchy foot-pads, dragging their languorous bodies along the variable hills, sloped valleys filling with their pollen. These fluffy snowdrifts settle into the opposite of swelling, unevenly, as the bees descend and drag their bulky, waxy bodies across our flesh. Their itchy, sharp legs and feet wear tiny pinpricks in our infected flesh as they traverse terrain. Their needles transgress the space of our undulating breath-swell.
Crossing / recrossing their own paths, the bees begin to frustrate and confuse as they fall / fall again into their own foot-holes. Slow pus is pushed out from the increasingly worn pinpricks, coaxed by the weight of their insect bodies and the meddling of their sharp, scratchy legs.
Slowly, they begin to get stuck in their own pollen as the thick wet pus mixes with the yellow drifts which decorate the valleys of our infected flesh. The bees' flurried movements, at first an expression of carefree, mindless exploration, turn now to slow, desperate burrowing, ironically embodying a frantic, trapped freneticism of spirit.
Their burrowing, in turn, resolves itself into a quiet, gentle drowning, their bulky, pointy-tailed bodies sinking into the concavities filled by their pollen, fully thickened now by the pus of our corporeal landscape.
Their death-cries sound like slow elastic band-aid marathons, like muffled, candied fire alarms, like throaty swan-songs erupting into snow.
Magda Mayas, Michael Zerang, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Tony Buck and Jaimie Branch, Heaven Gallery, Chicago, 9/6/08
Set #3
We are in a pipe, caught, feelers hitting the grime, the built-up walls of this cylindrical drop-space. Water streams from above, gets in our eyes, we blink and struggle, try to shake liquid from our insect eyelashes, from our segmented thought-crevices. We re-steady ourselves, steel ourselves for the next rain, our tiny foot-pads slipping on the newly moistened grime, underwater sounds echoing in drips and slides as the reverberation of our legs push sounds strugglingly through our body.
Starting with our antennae, we attempt to advance upward, toward the flash of sky above, despite the onslaught of sewage water, despite the narrowness of our confines, despite the wildcats that growl and hiss on the other side of the walls. Rising, extending bit by bit, we expand with the variability of the arcs our feelers can form. The need to sense -- the physical function of tasting space, feeling time-- requires our wire-thin, millipede-leg-like, guitar-string-like, human-hair-like extenders to: extend. We draw ourselves out, draw ourselves further, in order to experience experience-- in order to sense sense. We struggle against the vise of our consciousness in order to embody our surroundings.
Utilizing every insect muscle, strained past the point of reality, we cry; we listen to the falling pipe-water droplets echo as we cry; we cry so that grime-water will echo. Each droplet sounds until it hits our tiny body with a sensitive PANG-- each one sounds a second time as we shake it from ourselves, continuing its journey downward. The wildcats growl at us from just beyond these grimy walls, as we slowly scrape our way up the sides of the pipe. Menacing, taunting, they growl low and tumble, a rising chorus of annoyed adversariality, of denigration in the face of our attempt at ascension.
Less than an inch have we advanced toward the top of the enclosure. Foreign abstract water-bugs buzz in our exhausted ears as we swell our red insect cheeks, puff the breath required for movement, required even for maintaining this current position.
A moment of quiet as we relax our body, save for the legs: taught, holding us; we are a web of entemological perseverance; the wildcats have gone to the waterhole and cease, temporarily, to taunt us; we replace their antics, terrified, hopeful, with the internal shuddering of physical advancement, the unlikely expression of actual movement.
We are in a pipe, caught, feelers hitting the grime, the built-up walls of this cylindrical drop-space. Water streams from above, gets in our eyes, we blink and struggle, try to shake liquid from our insect eyelashes, from our segmented thought-crevices. We re-steady ourselves, steel ourselves for the next rain, our tiny foot-pads slipping on the newly moistened grime, underwater sounds echoing in drips and slides as the reverberation of our legs push sounds strugglingly through our body.
Starting with our antennae, we attempt to advance upward, toward the flash of sky above, despite the onslaught of sewage water, despite the narrowness of our confines, despite the wildcats that growl and hiss on the other side of the walls. Rising, extending bit by bit, we expand with the variability of the arcs our feelers can form. The need to sense -- the physical function of tasting space, feeling time-- requires our wire-thin, millipede-leg-like, guitar-string-like, human-hair-like extenders to: extend. We draw ourselves out, draw ourselves further, in order to experience experience-- in order to sense sense. We struggle against the vise of our consciousness in order to embody our surroundings.
Utilizing every insect muscle, strained past the point of reality, we cry; we listen to the falling pipe-water droplets echo as we cry; we cry so that grime-water will echo. Each droplet sounds until it hits our tiny body with a sensitive PANG-- each one sounds a second time as we shake it from ourselves, continuing its journey downward. The wildcats growl at us from just beyond these grimy walls, as we slowly scrape our way up the sides of the pipe. Menacing, taunting, they growl low and tumble, a rising chorus of annoyed adversariality, of denigration in the face of our attempt at ascension.
Less than an inch have we advanced toward the top of the enclosure. Foreign abstract water-bugs buzz in our exhausted ears as we swell our red insect cheeks, puff the breath required for movement, required even for maintaining this current position.
A moment of quiet as we relax our body, save for the legs: taught, holding us; we are a web of entemological perseverance; the wildcats have gone to the waterhole and cease, temporarily, to taunt us; we replace their antics, terrified, hopeful, with the internal shuddering of physical advancement, the unlikely expression of actual movement.
Haptic, Elastic Arts, Chicago, 8/22/08
As though lying on our backs, we submit to an urge to turn over. The journey to the halfway point: groggy fluttering. Gritted teeth. Mounting tension. Our muscles sing; they sing on a throbbing platform of motor attempts.
Success: balancing now, we hold ourselves on our side, every inch and angle burning, cerebral cortex straining, holding the body's variable x note.
We death-flirt at the threshold past which gravity would embrace our burning noise. Hips to the floor, side-leg smashed flat, we turn our eyes toward this imminent descent. Yet suddenly our desire to flip/to fall is overcome by a terror of propulsion-rushing change. Our ears fill with saw blades, our nostrils with phosphorus. Our tongue swells, we are astronauts flabbergasted by self-induced, unruly fate-- too late, we pray-fall into the deadly cradle of rollercoaster departure, singed hair flies away as we involuntarily embark. Falling into the noise our pancake body is scheduled to produce on impact, we drop toward the ground and
sliver, mid-air, into pieces, small bits of our matter following the example of those fleeing-fried follicles. Pieces grate off our being, we are a solid metal train slowly elapsing, our anticipated fate of slam-dunk, hard-screech impact noise is displaced by a rain of incensed slow-motion hardware sparks, shimmering into no-way danger zones, testing the limits of temporality as they crescendo into stuttered transcendence-in-becoming.
A brake gets pulled, strained, not enough to stop us but only to squeal sustained shattering, a process of fragmentation that moves simultaneously with the pieced-off, fly-away, singed-hair-following substance of our metal flesh, and against it, both enabling our flight-descent and refuting it. Wavy, transformative path, we regenerate our shattered motor-innards like a lizard grows a second tail, fucking over space and time, making violent waves in these pools of ether, shifting machinic organs to withstand gravity's night-shivered, corset-gloved touch.
Holes gape open now within us, outside airplane noise penetrating our 90-proof walls. We yawn, hard air consuming our screams, night-violence-spotted creature that we've become, we begin to merge with the air that drown-surrounds us. The atmosphere spots us; we spot back; diving abyssal interpolation of creative pain.
Our sound-flame drowned by air-like bass, we cut our own liquor, diet our figure, flood our own flow with atmosphere. We dilate our pupils, stretch past our nylons, flicker our light source: dialectic self-interference patterns render us violent-violated-ephemeral.
One last clutch of self claws through us, echoing out and down as we become atmosphere. We "arrive," to find that we now reside only in this empty force of air as it kisses the anticipated impact-surface, restlessly searching our matter for bodies to crash, finding only a certain melancholic solace in the evocation that absence performs.
Success: balancing now, we hold ourselves on our side, every inch and angle burning, cerebral cortex straining, holding the body's variable x note.
We death-flirt at the threshold past which gravity would embrace our burning noise. Hips to the floor, side-leg smashed flat, we turn our eyes toward this imminent descent. Yet suddenly our desire to flip/to fall is overcome by a terror of propulsion-rushing change. Our ears fill with saw blades, our nostrils with phosphorus. Our tongue swells, we are astronauts flabbergasted by self-induced, unruly fate-- too late, we pray-fall into the deadly cradle of rollercoaster departure, singed hair flies away as we involuntarily embark. Falling into the noise our pancake body is scheduled to produce on impact, we drop toward the ground and
sliver, mid-air, into pieces, small bits of our matter following the example of those fleeing-fried follicles. Pieces grate off our being, we are a solid metal train slowly elapsing, our anticipated fate of slam-dunk, hard-screech impact noise is displaced by a rain of incensed slow-motion hardware sparks, shimmering into no-way danger zones, testing the limits of temporality as they crescendo into stuttered transcendence-in-becoming.
A brake gets pulled, strained, not enough to stop us but only to squeal sustained shattering, a process of fragmentation that moves simultaneously with the pieced-off, fly-away, singed-hair-following substance of our metal flesh, and against it, both enabling our flight-descent and refuting it. Wavy, transformative path, we regenerate our shattered motor-innards like a lizard grows a second tail, fucking over space and time, making violent waves in these pools of ether, shifting machinic organs to withstand gravity's night-shivered, corset-gloved touch.
Holes gape open now within us, outside airplane noise penetrating our 90-proof walls. We yawn, hard air consuming our screams, night-violence-spotted creature that we've become, we begin to merge with the air that drown-surrounds us. The atmosphere spots us; we spot back; diving abyssal interpolation of creative pain.
Our sound-flame drowned by air-like bass, we cut our own liquor, diet our figure, flood our own flow with atmosphere. We dilate our pupils, stretch past our nylons, flicker our light source: dialectic self-interference patterns render us violent-violated-ephemeral.
One last clutch of self claws through us, echoing out and down as we become atmosphere. We "arrive," to find that we now reside only in this empty force of air as it kisses the anticipated impact-surface, restlessly searching our matter for bodies to crash, finding only a certain melancholic solace in the evocation that absence performs.
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