July 10, 2022
For long I have wanted to get aquinted with Dolby Atmos. Over the past week I have spent a few hours a day reading up, and I now have Reaper integrated with the Doly Atmos Renderer. The two above screenshots are initial tests listening back to some 3rd order ambisonic field recordings, decoded for and played back using Dolby Atmos. A next step will be to render to ADM files that I can load on my iPhone in order to see how they sound with head tracing.
Whle figuring out how to work with Dolby Atmos in Reaper, I found quite a few useful tips on the YouTube Channel of Immersive Audio Mixer, so a shout-out and thanks for that!
June 19, 2022
For the first time in quite a while, I have added a new field recording to the Suburb Sound site. Check it out here.
May 22, 2022
For the past fourteen years, this website has been running as a Ruby on Rails application at a Mac OSX Server hosted by BEK. For several years, BEK has warned me that the server will soon close down, but until now, I have never had the time to act on it, apart from backing up server content. It has made me hesitant to add new content to the website, with the result that there has been very little activity here in recent years.
I have ported the site from Ruby On Rails to Nanoc. Nanoc generates static web pages with security and speed benefits on the server-side. Creating new content is a little finicky, but it should still be OK. Hopefully, the transition will invite more activity here in the future.
For the time being, the website uses the same layout as when conceived initially back in 2003. However, I plan to update it later this year to make it responsive.
The above image has nothing to do with anything; it is just a sample image that, at some point, came bundled with OSX. I included it here to test that I have gotten the CSS right for images in new blog posts.
February 24, 2021
Maintenance work at my studio over the past few days:
- Substituted a cable from sound card to amplifier to have all 16 channels of the surround setup working again
- Calibrated all audio outlets so that all 16 channels work properly with consistent sound levels
- Got rear pair of a quad setup working (finally)
- Installed macOS Big Sur on a laptop
- Set the same laptop up to use a MOTU 1248 sound card over AVB
- Installed new 4K computer monitor (harsh reality check regarding the current level of photo skills)
- Tidied up and cleaned the studio
- Installed Ableton Live 11
- Got bass guitar properly working with DI box and connected to various VST bass amp simulators (fun)
I am my own studio tech assistant.
August 25, 2020
Coming Saturday, I take part in a conversation on the exhibitions and processes by Monica Winther, Katrine Køster Holst and Runhild Hundeide. They are all visiting artists at different locations in Innland county.
Conversations will reflect on how the exhibitions relate to where they take place and also traces ongoing research and explorations that will continue beyond the exhibition period. A first question is therefore whether these artistic practices can be communicated and considered as traditional exhibitions, or whether they bring with them a different type of awareness of the work’s creation that asks for alternative critical perspectives.
http://kunstopp.no/2020/08/20/diatribe-6-kritikersamtale-pa-ringebu-prestegard/
February 10, 2020
Coming weekend I give a seminar for PhD students at Fundacíòn Katarina Gurska outside Madrid.
http://katarinagurska.com/en/novedad-educativa/5o-encuentro-del-programa-dart-de-investigaciones-artisticas-curso-2019-2020/
How can artistic research be motivated, understood and developed from within artistic practice? The literature on artistic research (AR) often argues for AR from an institutional perspective. I want instead to reason from within and consider AR a meaningful and productive way to structure, develop and share the artistic practice as well as methods, insights, reflections and perspectives that emerge from within the practice and that might be of use to fellow artist and community at large.
I will give a self-presentation focusing on my own background, artistic practice and experience as a research fellow, cultural worker, as PhD supervisor and as former Head of Research at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. I come to all of these roles and functions from the position of an artist. Methodologically I position my approach according to the “Nordic” or “Norwegian” model, with a sui generis perspective that foregrounds research in and through artistic practice, as a thinking-doing and doing-thinking from within.
How can AR be understood and managed as it unfolds? AR is a twofold process: Research has to be carried out, and next, it needs to be disseminated. Dissemination is an editorial process where elements are selected, prepared and organised to communicate the research clearly and convincingly. There is a rhetoric element to this, as suggested by several of the terms used by Michael Schwab to describe sharing of artistic research; staging, performing, unfolding, exposing, exhibiting or curating.
Successful expositions of AR are valuable, but they do not necessarily provide a chronological overview of how the research developed. In general, there is a potential danger if models for dissemination gets retrofitted into expectations for how research is to unfold. The research process is seldom as neat, tidy, structured and linear as the dissemination might suggest. I propose an alternative model for reflecting on the AR process as it unfolds. It combines six categories or perspectives. It considers (1) Research Question, (2) Context, (3) Methods and 4) Results. Results are often are temporary and site-specific, and hence (5) Documentation is essential. Finally, (6) Reflection is required. The proposed model emphasises how all six dimensions interrelate, inspired by a similar relational didactic model by Hiim and Hippe. The model invites reflection on the research process, emphasises relationships between categories, and acknowledges the research as a complex and dynamic process where none of the perspectives comes first. Instead, developing the AR implies that all six dimensions evolve.
During the seminar, there will be ample time for conversations and discussions. We might also head out for a listening session, to experience first-hand some of the approaches I have to my own artistic practice. The Sunday session is set aside for brief presentations by each of the students and subsequent discussions on how the perspectives offered in the seminar might relate and apply to their ongoing research.
February 7, 2020
https://www.en.visjournal.nu/call/
The call is open between 17 February and 1 June 2020.
THEME “ONE MORE TIME, LET’S DO IT AGAIN!”
Trond Lossius, Editor of VIS Issue 5
The OECD Frascati Manual defines five criteria that all research and development work must meet. The fifth of these is that the activity must be “transferable and/or reproducible” 1. Reproducibility has revealed itself to be thornier than previously perceived, and the last decade has seen something of a “reproducibility crisis” in several scientific disciplines 2. This crisis also extends to the humanities 3.
There are reasons to question whether it is legitimate to deploy such scientifically-oriented research concepts in artistic research 4. Taking the interpretation of classical music repertoire as an example, is it at all meaningful to consider this highly individualised activity in relation to scientific ideas of replication? Do not musical interpretations instead negotiate an artistic field of tensions and possibilities between remaining ‘true to tradition’ and ‘breaking new ground’, between respecting the intentions of past artists and craving space for interpretative freedom, always resulting in something new?
Rather than engaging with the question of reproducibility, VIS Issue #5 will reflect on what “doing it again” may lead to in artistic research. Doing something again is integral to many artistic practices. The performing arts require rehearsal (répétition in French). Once adequately rehearsed, performances are commonly given several times over 5. Other artists engage with a series of works, or revisit a motif, topic or question over and over again. Works of art may benefit from “a second chance”, not least in artistic research. Repetitions might be the result of deliberate choices or emerge as recurrences within the practice 6. Artists may “do again” within their own practice or engage with the work of others through reading, restaging, referencing, reproducing, appropriating, reusing, sampling, or re-enacting 7.
Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt suggest that “repetition is a form of change” 8. What insights may emerge by doing something again and again, repeatedly, over a long period? How may artistic research draw upon and benefit from such iterations? We invite expositions of artistic research where “doing it again” is of importance, and we invite contributors to expose the artistic research questions, contexts, practices and outcomes in which repetition manifests itself, reflecting upon how “doing it again” may contribute to practice, to research, insights and to knowledge production.
(The title for this call cites the lyrics from a song by Röyksopp and Robyn 9.)
1 OECD. (2015). Frascati Manual 2015. Guidelines for collecting and reporting data on research and experimental development. The measurement of scientific, technological and innovation activities. Paris: OECD Publishing, p. 45.
2 Baker, M. (2016). 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility. Nature, 533(7604), 452–454. https://doi.org/10.1038/533452a
3 Peels, R., & Bouter, L. (2018). The possibility and desirability of replication in the humanities. Palgrave Communications, 4(1), 95. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0149-x
4 Ruiten, S. van, Wilson, M., & Borgdorff, H. (Eds.). (2013). SHARE: Handbook for artistic research education (Amsterdam, ELIA), p. 25.
5 Crispin, Darla, Hultqvist, Anders and Lagerström, Cecilia (Eds). (2016). Repetitions and Reneges, PARSE Journal, 3, 7-11 (Gothenburg, University of Gothenburg). https://parsejournal.com/article/introduction-to-repetitions-and-reneges/
6 Bandlien, B. Å. (2019). PhD-project: Recurrences – a method and practice within dance and choreography (2016-). Retrieved 15 December 2019, from PhD-project: Recurrences a method and practice within dance and choreography (2016) website: https://khioda.khio.no/khio-xmlui/handle/11250/2425899
7 Refer to the topic of VIS Issue #3 History Now.
8 Eno, B., & Schmidt, P. (2001). Oblique Strategies. Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas (5th ed.) [Deck of cards].
9 Berge, S., Brundtland, T., & Robyn. (2014). Do it again. Arts & Crafts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btBSxtKzF6Q
February 6, 2020
https://dxarts.washington.edu/events/2020-02-25/music-today-dxarts-winter-listening
I have a piece featured in an upcoming concert at Meany Hall—Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater in Seattle. The concert is programmed by DXARTS The Department of Digital Art and Experimental Media and the School of Music at the University of Washington.
Music of Today / DXARTS: Winter Listening
Tuesday, February 25, 2020 – 7:30pm
Meany Hall—Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater
The Department of Digital Art and Experimental Media and the School of Music are pleased to present a program of holographic sound works. Jonathan Harvey’s seminal Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, a virtuosic triumph of sound de/re-composition and spatial sound synthesis, is presented along with recent works from composers deploying the latest technical and aesthetic advances in Ambisonic sound holography.
Program:
Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) – Jonathan Harvey
Listening understood as inhabiting (2015) – Trond Lossius
Urban Melt in Park Palais Meran (2017) – Natasha Barrett
Flupresje (2019) – Marcin Pączkowski
Vanishing Portals (2019/20) – Daniel Peterson
February 4, 2020
http://sounds.trondlossius.no/posts/2019-11-28-fyllingsdalen-exterior-interior/
I have uploaded a new field recording, from Fyllingsdalen in November last year.
Reading Ondine Park I contemplate the exteriors and interiors of suburbia, the porous boundaries between the two, and the challenges this pose when field recording. Recording at times navigates the borders between public and private in ways that hint at how this technology and recording practice may come close to surveillance or stalking.
January 23, 2020
Next weekend an exhibition by Gunhild Mathea Olaussen opens at Galleri F15. The three works in the exhibition are the outcomes of her artistic research fellowship at the Norwegian Theatre Academy. I have had the great pleasure of following her work over several years os one of three superviosrs, alongside Karen Kipphoff and Christian Blom.
Galleri F 15
1. Feb – 15.Mar
The Sounding Matter exhibition comprises three sculptural sound installations which approach the subject of ‘us and our surroundings’ in various ways. The title refers to sounds that occur in encounters between rooms and materials, as well as to the viewer’s active search and ability to listen using the body. Listening is key to Olaussen’s artistic exploration, and in this exhibition, she works with the staging of rooms through sound, minimalist sculpture and dramaturgical structures. Sounding Matter is an extensive exhibition filling both floors of the gallery and forms part of Gunhild Mathea Olaussen’s PhD project at the Norwegian Theatre Academy. She will be defending her doctoral dissertation in March 2020.
The exhibition is supported by Arts Council Norway, the Audio-Visual Fund of Norway and NBK – Norwegian Visual Artists.
Curator: Maria C. Havstam
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Gunhild Mathea Olaussen (b.1983) works with installation, composition and performance. She explores soundscapes where space, materials, the body and time are treated as equal components. She is driven by an interest for the tactile, sensual perception and social dramaturgy. Olaussen is currently an artistic research fellow at the Norwegian Theatre Academy.
EXHIBITION CONCERTS
Saturday, 14 March
at 12 noon and 3 pm
Interference, a musical work by Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen, will be performed within the exhibition.
Sunday, 15 March
at 12.30-12.50 pm, 1.30-1.50 pm, 2.30-2.50 pm and 3.30-3.50 pm
Musicians Bernt Isak Wærstad, Kristine Tjøgersen, Jan Martin Smørdal and dancer Magnus Myhr will be performing within the work called Resonance. Visitors can come and go as they please.
For older blog posts, please refer to the monthly archives.
