EARS HAVE EYES // Episode 28
Airing Wednesday, June 12, 2024 at 8 pm MST
on CJSW 90.9 FM & Golden Co-Op Radio
ARCHITEXTURE:
sounds of places, inside/out
ARTISTS:
Akari Komura
Burton Beerman
Noel Begin
nonnon (Dave Madden)
Tibor Donath
Hosted by Caitlind Brown & Wayne Garrett, produced and edited by Caitlind Brown, supported by Wayne Garrett, Kaamil Kareemi, CJSW 90.9 FM, Claire Dibble, and Golden Co-op Radio. This program is volunteer-run. Thank you to the artists for sharing their work with us!
Photo by Caitlind Brown
EARS HAVE EYES is a monthly sound art radio program airing on CJSW 90.9 FM in Calgary/Mohkinstsis, and Golden Co-op Radio in Golden, BC. You can listen to podcasts of previous episodes here.
This month’s program explores spatial sounds as they relate to domesticity, anthropocentric spaces, and the built environment – sometimes literally through the construction sounds of that environment being built. Our artists explore everything from the spiritual space of the synagogue, to the unromantic hum of air conditioning units, and everything in between.
Thanks to the participating artists and our friends at CJSW & Golden Co-op Radio!
akari komura
akari komura (she/her) is a sound/text/visual artist originally from Tokyo, Japan. She likes thinking, writing, and imagining about our sonic environment. She is interested in composing scores that are invitational, sensorial, and contemplative. She finds passion in inviting a community of performers and listeners into a collective experience of senses.
About back and forth, a trail of time:
“restoring force of time.
a squeaky swing set wrinkles the air,
back and forth,
kneading the clay of time.
pendulous branches sway in a field of avian calls, back and forth,
tailing after a trail of time, back and forth.”
Burton Beerman
Burton Beerman is a distinguished Artis Professor, clarinetist, composer, video artist, electroacoustic sound designer.
About Saving our Planet Earth; Kaddish for a Dying Planet:
“Intended as a fixed media audio piece or to accompany Video and or dance in concert. It features the Kaddish, recited in the synagogue by family to mourn the loss of our planet to climate change and man’s growing greedy ignorance. Elegy for what has been and is being done to Mother Earth; A crying out; A whimper to STOP and take pause to save Mother Earth; There has not been the dignity and the reverence that is a MUST to be ONE with Nature:
Elegy for what has been and is being done to Mother Earth; A crying out; A whimper to STOP and take pause to save Mother Earth; There has not been the dignity and the reverence that is a MUST to be ONE with Nature:
An echo of commitment to ACTION and for understanding that the earth/land is certainly loaned to us for only a short while, our challenge as well as a MUST is to protect these natural gifts for as long as we can and bequeath them to our children with uninhibited energy and excitement for the future.”
Noel Bégin
Noel Bégin is a practical observationalist within the field of contemporary art, working spatially with objects, all manner of projected media, and performance. Noel has exhibited and/or curated installation, performance, and media art with the 2013 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks, Particle + Wave Festival, Art Gallery of Calgary, the Glenbow Museum, Banff Centre, the Mountain Standard Time Performance Festival, the Art City Festival and Calgary area Artist-Run Centres including EMMEDIA. Noel has served on the board and committees of numerous artist-run centres in Calgary.
With Condensed Future Macro-harmonics 922, the artist used power saws and workshop sounds to create a construction composition – almost completely analog, except minimal audio altering and bass boost. The piece references a Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, a multimedia sculpture from the 1960s by American artist Robbert Morris. The sculpture was designed to look like a typical wooden box, with the distinct characteristic that it emanates the sound of its own making: sawing, hammering, sanding, and more.
nonnon (Dave Madden)
Dave Madden’s (BM, MM) earliest memories are Magical Mystery Tour and the guy who claimed to be the Lizard King. Madden uses percussion, found objects, turntables and synthesis to create new sonic environments based on foggy memories of warehouses, rituals, subterranean boogeymen, submarines and other heterotopia, melatonin dreams et al.; build it, and it really did happen. Madden’s current direction moves through Tudor’s rain forests with a backpack stocked with Hugh Davies’ contact mics, lost Stockhausen tape loops, Crank Sturgeon’s attitude, and three quarters of a Buchla that needs some repairs.
About And I’m Working on a Magnet That Attracts Wood (for Steve Albini):
“In 2020, I answered a “send us your music” ad on the Adult Swim streaming program, The Perfect Women. Weeks later, I was astounded to see my Bandcamp page displayed with Steve Albini critiquing some of my music. Albini mentions Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting In a Room, which further pushed this bizarre scenario due to me recently attempting such a work, but with a 20-story building. Here, I musically strap my master class to my back and head for an unreachable basement.”
Dr. Tibor Donath
Dr. don Ath is a Hungarian sonicinstaller, sound artist, lawyer and journalist, founder of SynthXLoop Audio Arts. Since 2020, his sonic installations can be heard mainly in art exhibitions. He regularly works on request with experimental visual artists, advises as a lawyer on copyright law and is legal advisor to several art societies.
In March 2024, Tibor released a new album called Sonic of Objects, in which he was mainly working on bringing to life the sounds of objects in the home and kitchen, from coffee grinders to air conditioners. Both compositions on this month’s program are from this album.
About Air Conditioners:
“Do you ever feel the devil’s cool breath on the back of your neck? You’re sitting in a stuffy room, it’s hot summer outside. You long for a chill. You press the on button and the red little eyes light up, the devil wakes from his slumber, sticks out his lumpy tongue at you and starts a slow dance. He breathes the hot air from outside into his lungs and holds it in for a long time. On the way to the devil’s lungs, the warmth begins to resonate in his windpipe, making strange little rumbling sounds, then clicks in his bronchi. The devil’s lungs are not protected by mucous membranes, and are unharmed by pathogens and dirt. When you hear tiny crackles, you hear the sound of steel air bladders at work as the air slowly begins to cool. The air freezes to death. Then suddenly the devil’s nose opens wide and he starts to blow the ice-cold air without stopping. If you’re afraid of the devil, just press the off button, after a little grunt he falls back to sleep.”
About Wall Clocks:
“Clocks are always in a hurry or delayed, but they rarely show the correct time. Of course, in the physical sense, there is not much sense in exact time, since time is relative. The ticking of the wall clocks is the most definitive way of interacting with the outside world. Often the only enemy of silence is the wall clock, which keeps you awake at night in a strange place. The loudness of a wall clock is a good indication of the state of mind of the person listening to it. Some people are annoyed by the slightest ticking, but are really stressed by their financial problems. The most glaring case is the cuckoo clock, which lets everyone know the time at dawn. Wall clocks have always been mainly decorative, decorating homes instead of paintings or photographs, so they were not much concerned with the often loud and annoying ticking sounds, and especially not with showing the exact time. Today, many wall clock manufacturers consider the silence and lack of ticking to be a virtue of their products. But let’s face it, a wall clock without audible ticking is not a wall clock.”
More about Sonic of Objects album:
“Every object that surrounds us wants to speak to us. Every object has a sound when it comes into contact with the air. Some sounds do not even require human intervention, but most of the sounds we force out of objects are our own. We press the on button, or simply drop the objects, or touch them to each other, or clean them with a cloth. They don’t always make a sound that is familiar, because objects can be in different states, just like people, sometimes sick, sometimes happy. Of course, objects are not sick, at most they are in a bad state, and they are not happy, at most they are in perfect factory condition. I have tried to collect the sounds of many common household objects, the sounds that are not common, but in a blind test many people will probably fail and not recognise the object by its sound. Each sonic installation is accompanied by a story from the imaginary world of the objects, so that we can understand the soul of the object, what it says to the people who have accumulated it.
This album was made over a year without me having to leave the house, all the objects were at hand with a few exceptions. The problem was mainly caused by the many different sounds of identical objects and the accumulation of many identical objects in the apartment. The idea for the album was inspired by a painter who wanted to paint objects of daily use on canvas, in his own style, and simply to paint the object without the people as they are found in the lonely everyday life. The plan was to create an exhibition of the paintings, for which visitors could listen to the accompanying sonic installations through headphones.”
Thank you to the artists & listeners!
Special thanks to CJSW.
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THE HIBERNATION PROJECT 