This Is A Good Box
FRAGMENTS, IMAGES, PROJECTS, INSPIRATIONS, SOUNDS, IN-PROGRESS: ALL TOWARDS A BETTER TOMORROW.
Ask me anything
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Sauna on the Åland Islands by Denizen Works.
Built from local materials, the sauna was designed with sleigh runners, so that in winter it can be towed out onto the ice to provide immediate access to a frigid plunge.
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hello year of the dragon.
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2012 is soon.
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yes
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I’m in week 2 of my EFA Project Space residency. The time, space, and feedback have been motivating and induced a level of productivity that I haven’t had in a while. I began with the idea of building a sound piece from the screams of Goldie Hawn in the 1990 drama-romance-comedy “Bird On A Wire”. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to take it, but the kernel of something kind of great was there. Since then, I’ve been having a blast doing Goldie screech research, all with an eye towards building a box installation, a GoldieBox if you will, that would house the sounds, requiring the listener to put their head in the box to hear the piece. The composition is currently very much feeling like it can be a stand-alone piece as well, and I’ve been trying to work out how to present it for a small private open studios we’re holding in the shared studio space on W39th this Friday night.
There is no way I will have the box prepared by then and I’ve just been trying to figure out how to show the work. I think I’ve decided on simply having the speakers on a small plinth, with small information cards next to them. I’m debating whether to have a picture of Goldie pinned to the wall as well. Jesus, how do visual artists deal with this shit?
The piece is so far about 4 minutes long, that’s including a 10 second rather quiet/glitchy period to re-orient the listener before it starts again, just running on a loop. I think the visceral nature of the yelps and screeches, slowly becoming deformed as the piece progresses, are enough to fill the space.
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I’m so slow.
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Francois Berthoud, Le Vernis Mirobolant (Amica Italia)
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
I’m building a composition for sound installation from the yelps, squeals, sighs, screams, huffs, and other non-verbal eruptions from Goldie Hawn in 1990’s “Bird On A Wire”. So far, I’ve sampled 62 of them, and this is merely representative, not comprehensive. I’ve been listening to the whole movie (without video), pulling them out, since early this morning and there’s one example I feel may be the most captivating Hollywood scream ever, included in this post. It’s almost as though Hans Zimmer, the German film composer who also scored “Days of Thunder” in the same year and “Gladiator” some years later, was building his music around Goldie’s vocal emissions. He does this throughout the movie, her screams creating a leitmotif that anchors the sonic world, he is only buoying it and creating occasional counterpoint with his driving synth strings and drum machine.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
From preliminary audio sample research of “Bird on a Wire”. This is first satisfactory keyboard tapping drama moment from 1990’s premiere action-romantic-comedy. (best in headphones or played LOUD).
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The neighborhood around the Elizabeth Foundation, where I’m doing a two week residency, is wildly different than my usual orbit within the confines of Chelsea, Greenpoint, downtown Manhattan. (clik for hi-rez).