Noé Cuéllar

It’s been my pleasure to be interviewed by Caroline Picard.  Read it at the Bad at Sports website.

Julia Miller performs “Harrow/Dormant”, a graphic score I wrote in 2010.  The score is based on the alternation of two drawings, and a third drawing contemplating the partition and commonality of introversion and surge, the subdued and the discernible, distance and intimacy, and the like. The performer is encouraged to consider the thresholds of their techniques/instruments, timbre variation, and personal implication. I am honored to have the piece premiered by Julia!

Live from Transistor, Chicago (February 2011), as part of Articular Facet 1 – visit dissectingadam.com to read more about the series.

Quiet Circle is a one-time-only group performance between 9 Chicago-based sound artists and experimental musicians performing across the gallery space, diffusing solo and variable interactions between performers and audience.

Saturday, October 23, 2010, 7 PM
Green Lantern Gallery (New Location! 2542 W. Chicago Ave; Chicago, IL)

Performers (as a group): Todd Carter (TV Pow), Noé Cuéllar (Coppice), Andrew Furse (Tiny Music), Joseph Kramer (Coppice, Favors, Duplicates), Joseph Clayton Mills (Haptic, Apiary), Greg O’Drobinak (Chicago Phonography), Andy Ortmann (Panicsville, O/W, Fashion Dictator), Patrick Scott (Locks), and Alex Wing(Dadad).

“Quiet Circle: More improvisation, but rather than facing a screen, the musicians will be arranged throughout the gallery–the better to make subtle noises that investigate spatiality and notions of collaboration at a distance, my dear. Everything I’ve ever seen curator Noé Cuéllar do is smart (pressed suit rather than SAT) and luscious (folds of thick corduroy rather than lip gloss): ten people playing politely in a circle isn’t just an idea he had, it’s his thing.”
–excerpt from The Green Lantern Press season preview

Read blog post on Quiet Circle by Caroline Picard here.

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Todd Carter

Where-Nobody-Talks, a country located within the sound of our voice, right next to the country Where-People-Do-Talk. Streets and sidewalks, rooftops and automobile windshields, are all covered with a thick, invisible snow which stifles everything.

The inhabitants are mute. But that does not mean that they do not understand the spoken word; on the contrary, they communicate better with each other than they could using words and sentences. They are like ants running along vines. They meet each other constantly, and tell each other things without ever being heard.

It is never cold in Where-Nobody Talks, and indeed everything is mild and peaceful. To reach Where-Nobody Talks, travelers must simply cross neighboring Where-People-Do-Talk. They will find themselves surrounded by reverberating sounds that are painful to hear: cars, radios, word-mills. Gradually, however, the sounds will start to fight each other, and finally they will cancel each other out.

–Jean-Marie-Gustave Le Clézio, Voyages de l’autre côte, Paris, 1975

Todd Carter has a striking presence in both foreground and background of a huge variety of projects including music production, sound installation, and sound engineering. He is part of the electro-acoustic free-improv group TV Pow, participates in live performance with the Chicago Phonographers, and recently presented a unique live multi-channel composition based on sounds taken from the Sun Ra / El Saturn Collection of the Creative Audio Archive at Experimental Sound Studio. He also operates his own studio, bel_Air, in Logan Square.

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Andrew Furse

“The noise from mechanical actions (in sticker or tracker actions) results when the key rises, and not so much when it falls. The greater part of this noise can be eliminated by careful playing.”

“As a rule, it is better to have a large pipe softly voiced than a small pipe loudly voiced.”

“The power of an organ is not proportionate to its size. Many organs of eight or ten stops exist which are more powerful than others of twenty or twenty-five stops. What, then, is power proportionate to? Power is directly proportionate to the pressure of wind.”

“Dissonance is virtually power, and an organ out of tune appears to be much more powerful than when in tune.”

“The organ in the chapel at King’s College, Cambridge–upon the screen dividing the nave from the choir–is in the best possible position, from a musical point of view. An organ may of course be divided, but it undoubtedly suffers in consequence.”

“Electric action is never necessary, except to enable one to pal an organ from a distance, which is sometimes a questionable advantage.”

“Pneumatic action–applied to large organs–is a necessity, unpleasant in some degree, as the pneumatic level is noisy, independently of the player–and tubular pneumatic tends to destroy the sense of attack and diminish the individuality of touch. Still, if the organ be very large, there is no alternative but to use pneumatics in some form.”

“All scale measurements are relative, and depend upon various contingencies. It is, indeed, in the selection and combination of various scales that the experienced organ-builder will ever hold an advantage completely beyond the grasp of the amateur, or even the average organ-workman.
It would therefore seem useless to give detailed measurements; but as pipes are sometimes made so small that they can never stand in tune, and that the least particle of dust throws them off in their speech, I here suggest a minimum scale in the case of the principal stops.”

“All kinds of pneumatic and electric systems are contrivances to overcome mechanical resistance where such legitimately and unavoidably compels their assistance.
Electric or pneumatic work in small organs–”Steam cranes to lift files.”
Some organist wrote (in the Musical News, if my memory serve me): “Playing on tubular or electric action is like ‘kissing by deputy’”–a very happy illustration.

–Various writers

In Andrew’s own words: “Directed in woodwork, graduate of applied trade problem solving; vocational touch and go. Piano tuner/ Reed organ repair/ Instrument builder in rubber, brass, cloth and wood. Experiments in natural mechanical sound mimicry/organic tone-noise/big-bang echo chamber-like; percussive table-tennis hegemony. No training for enthusiasm, well-practiced on the musical-saw.”

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Joseph Kramer

Joseph Kramer and I have been working together for over a year, and from the first time I got him involved in my work to date, we’ve bound a nexus of compositional work based on very limited sound resources that just don’t seem to stop flowing variety and complexity. In the process I have tendriled through his practice, which appears cryptic and abridged, devoid of out-wringed extraneous nonsense, force-bound, unraveled. As physical presences, however, they are frontal and factual; minimalist as quantitatively extrapolated. The spells are whispered, quiet implications; etymological complicity; the puzzles are secret, they come from the sun.

Learn more about our collaboration Coppice. Joseph also collaborates in performance with Ryan Dunn as Duplicates, Jenny Vallier as Favors, and many others.

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Joseph Clayton Mills

Yesterday evening something new happened to me.
I was in my bed, around 10:30 or 11. I needed to go down to the
cellar. and I made a few notes resonate. I knew which notes wanted to resonate.

Mat sounds wouldn’t resonate. So I didn’t make them resonate. Only a few notes.
7 or 8. No more.

Just like that, when they wanted. It was really suprising. It is
obvioulsy very different from a Beethoven symphony. Or other music.
Where people USE the sounds. We use the sounds too much. We rape them.
we rape them, from their silence.

A chord likes to remain silent. and sometimes, it likes hearing
itself, make itself heard. There are days when I would love to be an
instrument that no one would make resonate.

-

I have the idea to make a track… er…. (bis)
where there would only be tables and chairs, moving, quite fast, as if
everything that would want to sit would sit quickly, and then, gets up
fast. And sits down, and gets up (bis). and then nothing.
And then, a dozen of people who don’t know if they should applaud.
They applaud a little bit, they hesitate.
We are in 1977, at the very beginning, January 6, 77.

And then it happened again on February 20, 1984. I had a concert, and
I played this track, where a certain amount of people sit around a
table, then get up, then sit again, on and on, moving their chairs,
not talking.

But, people think it’s not so bad. there are about 45 persons I think.
They applaud, serious applauses. And then, the last time, was last year.
2032, July 5th. A full venue. I played the same track. The moving
chairs and table. It was 3 minuts long. People had understood it : the
last sound of the chair moving, and suddently everybody would
applaud. fantastic ! extraordinary ! just like at the end of
Beethoven’s 5th symphony, something exalting. People had understood.

But now that I’m dead, maybe it has even more success. I hope. I
suppose. I’m sure about it. one always magnifies other’s ego only when
they are dead.

–B.O.

Joseph Clayton Mills is a maker-of-all inter/multidisciplinary artist (painter, writer, filmmaker, photographer, installation/assemblage), object prober & collector, and an all-around destroyer of all as a virtuoso of the subtlemost (preposessing and often invisible) sound performances to be encountered. You can find out more about him by approaching his work with a magnifying glass or just through his website.

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Greg O'Drobinak

An x-ray cartoon sketch of Greg O’Drobinak: wearing a backpack including microphones, audio recorders, headphones, a jar of bees, a trapper-keeper with Google maps and e-mails, with a side pocket filled with different sized pebbles, marbles, weights, rocks, and two travel-size gongs; a fannypack with extension cords, adapters, sunscreen, bug spray, a tiny packet of rice and 2 different candy wrappers; a shirt-pocketful of mallets and chop/drumsticks sticking out; jean pocket holding a collapsable cup to be filled with viscoelastic, fizzy, and more fluid liquids; tendril shoelaces; a microphone-equipped ball cap or a resonant-bell-nightcap with a microphone tip and head lantern, at least.

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Andy Ortmann

galvanizer
1a : one who subjects to the action of an electric current especially for the purpose of stimulating physiologically <galvanize a muscle>
b : one who stimulates or excites as if by an electric shock
2a : one who coats (iron or steel) with zinc; especially : immerse in molten zinc to produce a coating of zinc-iron alloy
b : one who reacts as if stimulated by an electric shock

Also see: love monster, entertainer.

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Patrick Scott

The Love Power Church doors’ hinges began to rattle so fast they made a very high pitch as something somewhere was clearly ready to explode. Then the door quietly opened and in comes Patrick Scott!

The first time I heard Patrick perform was with Carol Genetti at Brown Rice (also my first time hearing her live) in the middle of Chicago winter 2008. They played very a minimal set of live and recorded voice on tapes, electronics and processed autoharp. Knowing the wide range of music he engages in as a maker or engineer, I am reminded that quiet isn’t always about dynamics or isolation, and that stillness can happen within an active, clean-cut anxiety. He is very much a minimalist, and I very much admire his way of inverting the “under” and the “tow” in his range of projects: minimal delineations of energy and energetic suggestions of minimalism, and so on.

If you live in Chicago (and well beyond) you’ve most likely heard Patrick on stage or by a mixing board. He has recenly performed under his incognito name So/On. Here’s a video of the song The Sergeant’s Daughter by Locks, his duo-band with the Katsaounis.

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Alex Wing

Speculations about the future of free improvisation – its possible popularity or extinction – seem to me totally to misunderstand the function of the activity. Rather like presuming that the course of the sun is affected by the popularity of sun-bathing. It is basically a method of working. As long as the performing musician wants to be creative there is likely to be free improvisation. And it won’t necessarily indicate a particular style, or even presuppose an artistic attitude. As a way of music making it can serve many ends.

[…] In all its roles and appearances, improvisation can be considered as the celebration of the moment. And in this the nature of improvisation exactly resembles the nature of music. Essentially, music is fleeting; its reality is the moment of performance. There might be documents that relate to the moment – score, recording, echo, memory – but only to anticipate it or recall it.

Improvisation, unconcerned with any preparatory or residual document, is completely at one with the non-documentary nature of musical performance and their shared ephemerality gives them a unique compatibility. […] improvisation has no need of argument and justification. It exists because it meets the creative appetite that is a natural part of being a performing musician and because it invites complete involvement, to a degree otherwise unobtainable.

–Derek Bailey

Alex Wing is a multi-instrumentalist musician with an eclectic set of influences ranging from Jazz and Middle Eastern to Classical and Rock. He often performs on guitar, bass, oud, and percussion. Apart from teaching music in Chicago and Brooklyn, he plays in David Boykin Expanse, Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, Alex Wing Group, Dadad, Microcosmic Sound Orchestra, Jeff Marx Trio, The University of Chicago’s Middle East Music Ensemble, and many others. I will meet Alex in person for the first time at Quiet Circle.

Read my interview with Dan Godston at Experimental Arts Examiner.

Last week I visited Nathan Keay‘s short-running, site-specific, 100-channel sound installation titled -1, the inaugural exhibition of Third Floor Gallery, a Chicago -based “itinerant curatorial project”. Despite it’s short notice announcement (at least for me), it wasn’t at all an impromptu project.  The hundred speakers have been gathered over the past year, and the hundred one-minute recordings have been recorded at Nathan’s home (also the site of the installation), and other locations where he and Stephanie Morris, his now deceased wife once spent time in.

The Chicago Reader’s 100 Minutes of Silence article emphasized the silent aspect of these recordings, which set up an expectation of an experimental installation.  Rather more, it struck me as a display of personal interrogation. The cacophony of sound played back from the speakers was heard from the first floor of the building (made me think I was at the wrong address for a moment) – not necessarily silent (or quiet), but reflective of Morris’ absence.

“Silence is not always what we think it is. Silence can be the absence of sound; an accustomed sound gone or the loss of a voice. Absolute silence is hard to come by. These sounds are what are left.”
–Nathan Keay

The hundred speakers were distributed throughout the apartment in pairs, stacked on window sills, the floor, by an undone bed, bathroom racks, night stands, kitchen counter, and office space. Neither peaceful not chaotic, the continuous minutes of absence collided with Morris’ presence in photographs, stirring contemplation and anxiety, as the apartment at times seemed to rumble. The installation as a memorial agitated the significances of presence and absence, silence, and private space.

I am very excited about this particular presentation of sound work, in which the recorded and looped bespeaks its essence-ephemerality.  For me, the content of the recordings became shadows of much larger evocative moments we ponder and try to root down.  That transitory feeling was held there.  The silence was inside the visitors of the exhibition.

Being aware of the tricky and confusing legal issues of apartment galleries in Chicago, I am affirmed that an exhibition like this communicates something that a designed environment conveys differently.  I hope that work like this inspires others to create it and support it – to underline and transform existing spaces, and to transmit the personal into a shared experience.

My photography takes part of the Summer 2009 issue of The New Yinzer along with many other photography, poetry and texts. This issue was edited by Claire Donato.  Browse it here.

Editor’s Note

Three years ago, I lived and studied in Pittsburgh, PA, where I worked alongside TNY Managing Editor Kristofer Collins at Caliban Used & Rare Bookshop slash Desolation Row Records. Summer 2006 marked a period of creative revival for TNY. At the time, Kris, Scott Silsbe, and Ellie Gumlock were busy reinventing the then-defunct Pittsburgh literary organization, taking do-it-yourself cues along the way from revered indie publications and non-profits such as Kitchen Sink, Punk Planet, and The Believer.  By uploading TNY to the web, re-staffing the editorial board with stir-crazy University of Pittsburgh undergrads eager to find loopholes in their school’s experiential learning program—three credits for free beer, books, and indie rock? Yes, please!—and planning multidisciplinary events such as September 2006’s The Return of The New Yinzer, Kris, Scott, and Ellie planned to leave a footprint for Pittsburgh’s younger community of artists to step along, against, across, between, beyond, and—perhaps most importantly—into.

My favorite kind of artist is a catalyst: a collaborator, strong in his or her own creative convictions, whose work, presence, and enthusiasm forms a chemical reaction, precipitates change. Artwork that moves me the most does so because it bangs and rattles around on the page, refusing stasis.

This issue of The New Yinzer compiles a diverse, international selection of work from younger artists whose work is alive and kicking in a lattice of interconnectivity. These artists find the delicate balance in their subject matter’s expansion and contraction. Their fine distinctions and sudden webbing inspired me to theme the summer 2009 TNY the “small” issue.   I hope you discover transformative rearrangement in the wee things found here, things that pay attention to, directly address, or represent the not fully formed, the seemingly insignificant or unimportant, the little, compact, short, bijou, tiny, miniature, microscopic, cramped, elfin, etc.  Artwork that zooms in and out, looks up at tall buildings, addresses issues of agency: writing that expands in its own thinginess.

The New Yinzer played an integral role in shaping my experience as a young writer creating art in Pittsburgh.  It is an honor to return this way to Pittsburgh, to take a walk around in Kris’s editorial shoes, and to so closely focus on this particular assortment of work, now fully formed.

—Claire Donato
Brooklyn, NY & Providence, RI

My harpsichord impromptu Undefiant is part of Village Nomade Radios’ November 2008 Daypieces.

Visit their website to listen.