Episodes
Monday Feb 18, 2019
Bill Fontana: Sound & Space
Monday Feb 18, 2019
Monday Feb 18, 2019
Artist Bill Fontana has a long-time relationship with sound and space. He's known for relocating sounds to create site-specific installations around the world.
Fontana describes his practice as "composition by listening." In this episode, we talk about what has inspired and informed his public art projects through the decades—from his 1981 Landscape Sculpture with Foghorns in San Francisco, to his 2018 Sonic Dreamscapes in Miami Beach.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Bill Fontana
Related episodes: Inside Miami's Sound Chamber; Stephen Vitiello on Sound Art
Related links: Bill Fontana, City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places
Monday Nov 19, 2018
Inside Miami's Sound Chamber
Monday Nov 19, 2018
Monday Nov 19, 2018
Inside Miami's sound chamber, sound artist, designer and composer Gustavo Matamoros introduces to his latest creation: four audible experiences of sound moving through space. Legendary artists inspired Small Sounds Up the Wall (for Alison Knowles), Everglades (for Charles Recher), String Solo (for Vito Acconci) and Eighty-Five Audible Moments (for Pauline Oliveros). Venezuela born Matamoros made this sonic dive possible when he transformed Studio 201 at ArtCenter/South Florida into a 30-channel sound environment.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: John Cage interview; Alison Knowles, Paper Weather; Vito Acconci, American Gift, via UbuWeb; Pauline Oliveros, via UbuWeb; Russell Frehling, Mapping; Gustavo Matamoros, Small Sounds Up a Wall, Everglades, String Solo, Eighty-Five Audible Moments; Julio Roloff, Naturaleza Viva; Wolfgang Gil, Aural Fields Test; Rene Barge, Prism Break | Photographs courtesy Gustavo Matamoros, Subtropics
Related Episodes: Stephen Vitiello, Alba Triana, Magdi Mostafa, Dak'Art 2018, Staging Complex Art, Sounds of Summer in Miami
Related Links: Subtropics, Frozen Music, Canal, 2009
Monday Sep 10, 2018
Process, Experimentation and Action in Dak'Art 2018
Monday Sep 10, 2018
Monday Sep 10, 2018
In 2018, seventy-five artists from thirty-three countries came together for the contemporary African art biennial known as Dak’Art. The offsite program featured more than 200 autonomous artist-organized exhibitions and events across Dakar and on the island of Gorée.
The projects we share in this episode explore ideas of freedom and responsibility as they investigate colonial histories, politics, and the economy, migration and the environment. Often achieved collectively and always emphasizing process, experimentation and action, they animate the legacy of legendary Senegalese artist Joe Ouakam and Agit'Art, the revolutionary creative movement he co-founded in 1974.
Voices: Simon Njami, Glenda León, Guy Woueté, Marcos Lora Read, Magdi Mostafa, Tori Wraånes, Marisol Rodriguez, Moataz Nasreldin, Pascal Traoré, Michel Amadou Gué
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio
Related Episodes: Magdi Mostafa Turns Analog Tech into Sound Sculpture, LIVE from Dak'Art 2018, SITElines, Unsettled Landscapes 2014
Related Links: Dak'Art 2018, Simon Njami, Glenda León, Guy Woueté, Marcos Lora Read, Magdi Mostafa, Tori Wrånes, Marisol Rodriguez, ZAM ZAM, Moataz Nasreldin, DARB1718, Issa Samb, Agit'Art, Pascal Traoré, Island of Gorée
Monday Jul 30, 2018
Turning Analog Technology into Sound Sculpture
Monday Jul 30, 2018
Monday Jul 30, 2018
Egyptian artist Magdi Mostafa's interactive environment for the 2018 Dakar Biennial of Contemporary African Art turns the sounds of analog technology into a vibrating aesthetic force. Acting like tiny radio receivers, his handmade electronics make audible the otherwise silent electro-magnetic fields emanating from today’s myriad digital devices. He exposes the reverberations of energy emission and loss in our battery powered, wi-fi connected contemporary communications.
In “Transmission Loss,” electronic residue becomes the main signal—the core source of energy for an audio playscape. Mostafa invites us to turn a field of full frequency noise into a sonic composition. By tweaking the dials of tone generators and manipulating vibrating devices, we can alter sounds, discover patterns and explore the mysterious interactions of feedback and inter-device communication.
Sound Editor: Jonathan Pfeffer | Special Audio and Photos courtesy Magdi Mostafa
Related Episodes:
Samson Young Presents Hong Kong Mixtape
Related Links:
Monday Jul 23, 2018
Samson Young Presents Hong Kong Mixtape
Monday Jul 23, 2018
Monday Jul 23, 2018
Hong Kong Mixtape introduces our first guest producer: composer and artist Samson Young, and the sound art community of Southeastern China. Young orients us to a set of nine compositions with sonic program notes.
Hong Kong—a vibrant, densely populated urban center, a major port and a global financial hub—offers rich source material. Artist composers take us to the heart of student-led street protests during Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement*, invite us to feel the vibrations of traffic lights and trams, immerse us in a traditional funeral ceremony and share the sensation of abstract computer-generated hip-hop.
Samson Young’s personal field recordings capture site-specific sounds far from Hong Kong—the singsong of a North Carolina tobacco auctioneer and a peacock clock inside the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
The set of short compositions will be broadcast on radio stations in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., and released as a podcast episode on multiple internet platforms, including Fresh Art International.
Sound artist composers and their works, in order of appearance:
Joyce Tang: Gloucester Road; Larry Shuen, Gynopedi No 1 Remix; Austin Yip, Philosophy One–Microsecond; Edwin Lo, Rabbit Travelogue: Central Region (Excerpt); Lee Cheng, Tram Ride on Sunday Afternoon; Alex Yiu, Alter ego (stereo mix); Samson Young, Tobacco Song and Peacock Clock; Fiona Lee, Tide
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio Sources noted above | Images courtesy Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong
Related Episodes: Samson Young on Songs for Disaster Relief; Every Time A Ear Di Soun; Stephen Vitiello on Sound Art
Related Links: Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong, Samson Young, Umbrella Movement
*More on Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement of 2014, rephrased from The Guardian : Hong Kong's so-called “umbrella revolution” turned the city’s gleaming central business district into a virtual conflict zone, replete with shouting mobs, police in riot gear, and clouds of tear gas. Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents – young and old, rich and poor – peacefully occupied major thoroughfares across the city, shuttering businesses and bringing traffic to a halt. They claimed that Beijing reneged on an agreement to grant them open elections by 2017, and demand “true universal suffrage.”
In October 2017, CNN reported the Umbrella Movement's return: Almost three years to the day after the 2014 Umbrella Movement shut down parts of Hong Kong, thousands of people once again took to the streets. As the city's government marked the 68th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, protesters wearing black braved stifling heat and pouring rain to call for the release of "political prisoners" jailed last month, including Umbrella leaders Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow. Those arrests marked a turnaround from 2014, when the trio helped bring out hundreds of thousands of people to the streets to call for a more direct form of democracy in the former British colony.
Monday Jul 09, 2018
Art of the Everyday
Monday Jul 09, 2018
Monday Jul 09, 2018
What happens outside the art scene inspires many of today’s curators, filmmakers and artists. They mine the conceptual depth of personal and communal rituals and routines. Community gardens, shared ride systems, public processionals, weathervanes, home improvement projects, live streaming radio and selfies on the internet are just a few of the subjects and sites of their research, commentary and engagement. Projects that elevate our view of the everyday reveal life as an art form—translating the mundane into the extraordinary.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio: Camionnette Chérie, original sound by Claudette et Ti Pièrre; TET CHAJE, mix by Michelange Quay; David Walters, Mesi Bondye; Yosvany Terry, Conga Reversible
Related Episodes:
Marcus Gammel (2107), Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Sounds of Miami Art Week (2016), New Performance Art (2016), Cesar Cornejo (2015), Jllian Mayer (2014)
Related Links:
Monday Mar 26, 2018
How Jason Moran Amplifies Art and Jazz
Monday Mar 26, 2018
Monday Mar 26, 2018
American virtuoso Jason Moran is a genius jazz pianist known for performing experimental compositions in collaborative projects with visual artists—among them, Joan Jonas, Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon and Adrian Piper. For the 56th Venice Art Biennale, artistic director Okui Enwezor invited Jason to stage and animate two sound environments. The multi-faceted artist brings the full range of his creative practice into play for his first museum show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis this year. In our conversation, Jason Moran shares the discoveries he made while realizing recent collaborations with artists Julie Mehretu and Kara Walker.
Sound Editor: Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio courtesy Jason Moran: Summon, Katastrof Karavan, Three Deuces, He Puts on His Coat and Leaves
Thursday Mar 01, 2018
Curating Art in a Time of Global Change: IKT Norway
Thursday Mar 01, 2018
Thursday Mar 01, 2018
What does it mean to be a contemporary art curator in the 21st century? Perhaps subconsciously, it's about living up to the legacy of Harald Szeemann, a legendary art historian—acting on the impulse to experiment and introduce new ways of engaging with art. Follow us to Norway, where you'll meet a few of the curators gathering for the 2017 Congress of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art, also known as IKT (Szeemann was a founding member in 1973). In conversations on how the environment, design technology, consumer culture and geopolitical histories inspire art, they reveal a shared interest in exposing artists’ site specific perspectives through collective exhibitions and publications.
Thale Fastvold and Tanja Thorjussen, the two Norwegian artist curators of Locus Publishing in Oslo tell us about a collective artist book project that investigates how we relate to nature. They introduce their newest venture: “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” Freek Lomme, director of Onomatopee Projects explains why he stages public interventions in the shopping district of Eindhoven, in The Netherlands. The sonic thread that connects these voices is the sound art of Norwegian artist Margrethe Pettersen.
Sound Editing: Anamnesis | Special Audio: Margrethe Pettersen, Living Land—Below as Above
Wednesday Nov 22, 2017
Alba Triana on Experimenting with Sound and Light
Wednesday Nov 22, 2017
Wednesday Nov 22, 2017
Alba Triana, a Colombian-born composer and sound artist based in Miami, Florida, introduces three of her exquisite sound and light installations: Music on a Bound String questions whether or not the act of listening is indispensable to the musical experience. Microcosmos animates a cymbal to create an immersive vibrational experience. The interactive Electronic Gamelan invites visitors to perform one of the artist's compositions. Listen to discover her trans-disciplinary approach to the ever-evolving field of sound art.
Thursday Sep 14, 2017
ORLAN on Art Tech
Thursday Sep 14, 2017
Thursday Sep 14, 2017
Today, we take you to Paris for a studio visit with French artist ORLAN. Surrounded by her books, sculptures, paintings and photographs, we talk about her evolving relationship with technology.
Sound Editor: Alyssa Moxley | Voice Over Translation: Emilia Garth | Special Audio Track: ORLAN