Category Archives: Sound Art

Guest Speaker: Akio Suzuki (鈴木昭男）

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Don’t forget that we’ll meet in Room 301 tomorrow. Akio Suzuki, a pioneer explorer of Sound Art, will be visiting. I have no idea what he will do which just makes his visit even more interesting.

Suzuki-san really keeps busy. Later this month he’ll be giving a workshop on sound art and performance at YCAM (山口情報芸術センター). You can find many videos of his performances on YouTube. Here’s a sample of a collaboration with Jim O’Rourke.

Soft Machine – French T.V. – 1967

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Just noticed this clip of  Soft Machine on French T.V. from the legendary early period. Pop music was really experimental in that era! Looks like they’re improvising. Check out the mic technique mid-video – could that be something they picked up from Stockhausen? Robert Wyatt’s shirt looks really Pop Art. I actually have a few memories of 1967: I was five years old.

What a great find! Just wish whoever digitized the video had known how to handle the interlace.

Kugelschwung – Pendulum-based Live Music Sampler

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Kugelschwung is the result of a second year Human Computer Interaction project by six Computer Science students at the University of Bristol. These students should be roughly the same age as students in our seminar. The interface is simple but works very well and the concept is brilliant. The work has been accepted for presentation at NIME-12.

Motor Vehicle Sundown – George Brecht (dedicated to John Cage)

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This is one of the events kicking off the annual NIME-12 conference, which will be held starting next weekend at the University of Michigan. Really looking forward to this and all the other exciting things that will be happening at NIME-12. Nice also that this performance is part of the centennial brithday celebrations for our patron saint, John Cage.

From the University of Michigan Museum of Art web site:

As the lights go down on UMMA’s exhibition Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life, please join us for a rare performance of Motor Vehicle Sundown, written by Fluxus artist George Brecht and dedicated to the American composer John Cage. This performance by students and faculty from the University of Michigan is presented in conjunction with the annual International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), and in celebration of John Cage’s 2012 centennial. Motor Vehicle Sundown is written for any number of motor vehicles arranged outdoors. In true Cagean fashion, 22 timed auditory and visual events and 22 pauses written on randomly shuffled instruction cards are performed on each vehicle.

The performance will take place in parking Lot C-2 on the south side of N. University at Thayer, next to Kraus Natural Science Building.

This program is co-sponsored by NIME, the UM School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, the UM College of Engineering and UMMA. Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and was generously supported by Constance and Walter Burke, Dartmouth College Class of 1944, the Marie-Louise and Samuel R. Rosenthal Fund, and the Ray Winfield Smith 1918 Fund. UMMA’s installation is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System, the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Arts at Michigan, and the CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund.


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