New issue of Hz, #15, September 2010

Contents

“Towards a Soundly Ecstatic Electronica” by Joseph Nechvatal
Artist/art theoretician Joseph Nechvatal’s text deals with a phantasmagorical theorization of electronic-based sound art that places sound art in the context of the abstract unlimited-field of representation made possible by electronic communications.

“Of Ultrasound, Art and Science” by Michael Dotolo
Multimedia artist/musician Michael Dotolo discusses sound art in the context of art-science relating to ultrasound. “My intent in studying the invisible sonic spectrum is to understand the importance that these frequencies bare on the complex communicative fabric of the natural and technological aspects of our lives.”

“Acoustics, Not Theatre” by Adrian Knight
Composer Adrian Knight: “Sound, time and space are our way of dividing a multidimensional reality into manageable subunits. Sound in time and space constitute what we call music….[O]f these three subunits, space is the most complex, and also most dependent on social and architectural necessity and availability”

“Iannis Xenakis: Form and Transformation” by JD Pirtle
“Avant-garde composer, architect and music theorist Iannis Xenakis consistently pushed the boundaries of music, mathematics, architecture and science in his work.” Artist JD Pirtle examines Xenakis’ hybridised and interdisciplinary practice in which Xenakis was able to “augment, transform, invert or rotate” the many ways architecture and music are related.

“James Turrell’s Mendota Stoppages and Roden Crater: When the Studio and the Art Become One” by JD Pirtle
Artist JD Pirtle reviews the relation between the space and the art in the practice of James Turrell, whose early departure from the white cube tradition manifests break-down of the division “studio, non-studio, anti-studio.” Two of Turrell’s pieces, Mendota Stoppages and Roden Crater are revisited.

“Teorema Ritournelle” by Chritina McPhee
Chritina McPhee: “This text came into being as I struggled to explain to myself why the idea of a witness, or wit(h)nessing could apply to the status of an object like a drawing. Teorema Ritournelle turns on some observations and flights around Pasolini’s film TEOREMA, and applies them to the transposition of drawings into presences of an inordinate kind.”

Author: Pär Johansson

Composer, music librarian