From: James Phelps (jimphelps_niucms@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Feb 18 2011 - 16:13:31 EST
With regards your paragraph concerning young children's art expressions, I too have enjoyed this. My initial intrigue came from a gig I had while I was a "starving student" working with VERY young people in a private arts school in Dallas. I wasn't so thrilled with the job, before I actually took it.
For me, it's quite sad to know of their wonderful creative musings at very young ages while also experiencing what often happens to that creativity after several years of "music education." That's where they often learn that what they WERE doing was somehow "wrong" and .... THIS is how it SHOULD be done "right."
The "refinement" you mention is, IMHO, very often "destruction." I'm afraid some of it is irrevocable.
-Jim
--- On Fri, 2/18/11, Kevin Austin <kevin.austin@videotron.ca> wrote:
From: Kevin Austin <kevin.austin@videotron.ca>
Subject: Re: "sound artist"?
To: cec-conference@concordia.ca
Date: Friday, February 18, 2011, 2:59 PM
From my limited experiences with psychoacoustics, I would imagine that the issue progressively divides the further towards the auditory cortex that one gets. Music appears to have many different levels of perceptual distinction. The trained singer / pianist / conductor has sets of music[al] skills that can be applied to 'sound arts'.
I am reminded of an example of a sound artist who created a 40-channel version of a rather famous choral piece. The concept of this was [of course] interesting; the realization from an artistic, aesthetic and technical level left "much to be desired", for those who listened with developed music or technical skills.
The realization I heard demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of the musical aspects involved (in both the performance of a work of this complexity, and the necessity of fulfilling the objectives of the plan); the technical aspects (significant leakage between mics, corrected by the use of ducking!); and the relationship(s) of acoustics in both the recording and the presentation space.
The basic training of the musician involves aspects of temporal division (finding / keeping the beat), pitch perception (differentiation and pitch matching), numerical division of time (counting the beats and being aware of cycles of beats), holding onto verbal aspects (being able to sing words, and simultaneously listen to others singing words, the control of the hands and or voice [often involving the feet]. The development of high level musico-linguistic skills for the representation / categorization / prioritization and hierarchical development (over long periods of time). These are some of the reasons why the study of music is a life-long activity, the basics taking up to a decade to become firmly implanted in most cases.
Personally, I have a great deal of time for sound art and sound artists, in much the way that I have a great deal of time for the painting and visual arts of children. In their work, I am able to hear (or see in the case of the children) "what and how they hear", and are able to do with the tools at their disposal. In children's painting / drawings, I see what the child sees as 'important' and like to watch how, over time, the technical skills develop for the child to be able to become more individually and personally selective in their approach to the materials, and more refined in the selection and presentation of their ideas.
As many others on this list, I have created works that I consider "sound art", for example 15 hours of sound produced in a period of six weeks, but also can work assiduously on composition, 19 minutes in about 800 hours of studio time.
And it's more than that, but maybe on some other occasion.
Kevin
On 2011, Feb 18, at 10:55 AM, ianjarvais@yahoo.com wrote:
> Does anyone know of studies of the difference/ similarities between the effects of (obvious) music and (obvious) sound art on the brain or in human experience?
>
> Ian
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 2011-02-18, at 10:39 AM, Larry Austin <larryaustin@grandecom.net> wrote:
>
>> Kevin:
>>
>> But "sound artist" is not on your list below.
>>
>> Larry
>>
>> On Feb 17, 2011, at 11:09 PM, Kevin Austin wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> In relation to the last point, I would [and have] propose[d] something like,:
>>>
>>> chef cook
>>> carpenter woodworker
>>> tailor seamstress
>>> composer music writer [or song writer]
>>> writer wordsmith
>>>
>>> Kevin
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Le 17/02/2011 17:16, Larry Austin a écrit :
>>>>
>>>> Dear colleagues:
>>>>
>>>> Am I a "sound artist", because I incorporate recordings of nature's and man's sounds into some of my pieces? I have always considered such pieces as "compositions" created by me, a "composer". And do we consider "sound artists" as "composers" or even as "musicians"?
>>>>
>>>> Just wondering.
>>>>
>>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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