Monthly Archives: September 2008

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Show 183: fantasia en echo | they also serve who only stand and wait by Gina Mattiello und Pia Palme

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“fantasia en echo | they also serve who only stand and wait”
contributed by Gina Mattiello und Pia Palme
based on a performance at
ViennArt, 11-12 Oct, MUSEUM AUF ABRUF (MUSA)
/Pia Palme – Feedbacktubes, electronics, Yoshie Maruoka – Performance, Gina Mattiello – Voice./

“fantasia en echo | they also serve who only stand and wait”
Homage to Jacob van Eyck (ca. 1589 – 1657)

Jacob van Eyck was a remarkable composer of the florishing early baroque period in the Netherlands: born blind, of noble family, educated in music, he turned into a renowned organist, recorder-player, composer and carilloneur. He was famous for his ability to tune bells and carillons. Pia Palme, composing and playing modern recorders, uses contemporary means for her homage to her famous predecessor. A subbass-recorder without its headpiece is used to create sound by means of finely balanced inner microfones and feedback-techniques; sounds which remind of bells, including very deep basses. For the composition Palme plays and processes themes from Eyck’s recorder-pieces by means of electronics.

Texts by John Milton ((1608 – 1674), who turned blind in the course of his life, add another dimension. The title is a quotation from Milton’s poem: “On his Blindness”, describing the author’s willingness to just stand and wait instead of acting.
Palme has studied music and mathematics in Vienna and improvisation at the Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. As a composer/interpreter she combines subbassrecorders (newly developed by the Swiss manufacturer Kueng) and electronics in a unique way, performing solo as well as in various ensembles, such as the trio “Subitized”.

http://www.piapalme.at
http://www.myspace.com/ginamattiellovoice
http://www.eop.at
http://www.musa.at

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Show 182: Rumors of the green room staircase by Vincent Matyn-Wallecan

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Rumors of the green room staircase: a musical ready-made.

There is a house in Schaerbeek, Brussels. There was the possibility to produce a sound install. In the house is a grand piano. I recorded each single note of the piano, each note separately, holding my finger on the key until the note truly died. Stereo microphones were placed inside the body of the grand piano, and as the notes died out they captured also the growing sounds all around: city life, people working upstairs and myself moving around.
Each note and its subsequent sound environnement became a file, each note/file was distributed along six tracks,and so their order was decided by this limitation and the particular lenght of each note. The composition was made by itself, some kind of musical ready made. There are no effects, the only manipulations made are the removal of the attack of each note, and some reorganisation of the distribution of the notes.
The composition is at times blissfull and at other times it’s gloomy, but I didn’t decide that.

—
vincent Matyn-Wallecan

For Radia members, this program is available on the radiozero ftp (radia folder)

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Show 181: State Of Radio by Jan De Pauw

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‘State Of Radio’ in Belgium (by Jan De Pauw) and several audio works and
soundscapes by RITS audiovisual arts/radio students.

On the first of March 2008, the Radio Department of RITS (an audiovisual arts college in Brussels) existed 10 years and this was celebrated with a weekend filled with lectures, radio performances, listening moments,…
Central guest was Gregory Whitehead, radio guru and all-round audio artist. Jan De Pauw (Brussels based culturual philosopher) wrote a ‘State Of Radio’ for this 10th anniversary.
In this Radia show, you can listen to this ‘State Of Radio’ in Belgium, as well as some audio works and soundscapes first grade students made at the Radio Department of RITS.

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Show 180: Imagination Unlimited – The Leicester Tape Recording Club by Mark Vernon

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The past is often said to be a foreign country. This programme features audio postcards from some of the inhabitants. The Leicester Tape Recording Club was a club for tape recording enthusiasts active in the sixties and seventies. Like a latter day Mass Observation, amateur radio producers and documentary makers sometimes unintentionally captured the minutiae of a now surreal suburbia. A forgotten world of bri-nylon, briar pipes and tank-tops met an arcane society who spoke of tape-speeds and soldering irons. ‘Imagination Unlimited’ takes a nostalgic and humorous look at the club and its members. Ex-members memories wow and flutter like their disintegrating reel-to-reel recordings. This is a story not just of a club but a community, a community of hobbyists, amateurs and charming personalities who captured otherwise long extinct phenomena like ‘The Golden Wonder Boy’. Memories are made of hiss…

Produced by Mark Vernon for meagre resource productions.

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Show 179: Orange = happiness, enthusiasm, dignity, prosperity

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Orange = happiness, enthusiasm, dignity, prosperity. This is the colour that radiates optimism, stimulates activity, appetite, and encourages socialization. In the search of other symbolic meanings of the orange colour , I realised that the black box is in fact orange. Hence, this concept is directly taken from the aeronautical use of the device that commonly is known as a black box, which records the audio environment within the flight deck of an aircraft and it is only used for the purpose of investigating an airplane accident. Here the black box replica has the same purpose, only it is used in a different context. Positioned in jardinière in the city square Macedonia, it recorded the sounds from its immediate vicinity. Noise, rustle, sounds of footsteps, words, conversations, thoughts… Those are the sounds that should be read as signs when posing the questions and giving the answers regarding the “fall” of a society and its lost values, as well as perceiving the human role in that process. This piece does not play on the presumption that this society has already fallen, but uses its means for observation of the society in order to detect its state.

NOVEMBER 8TH 2007
SKOPJE, REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
CITY SQUARE MACEDONIA
The black box was positioned and initialized on November 1st 2007 at 13:44:25h. On November 8th at 16:35:16 it was switched off. This transcript represents the last 31 minutes before its switching off.