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im in my final year of Ontario College or Art and Design and im doing a pretty intense project that involves taking sounds from works of "public art" and using them in a composition. im looking for people who have access to some type of field recording equipment (dat, mini disc) who live in a city or town with a Henry Moore outdoor bronze sculpture. i know there are definitely Moores in London, Chicago, Vancouver, Singapore and parts of Scotland. i need sounds of these sculptures being struck by mallets or other percussion tools. any help with this would be greatly appreciated, and i would like to find a way to somehow compensate people who can contribute.

 

if you want to learn more about the project, goto http://www.dcn.ryerson.ca/~sgoetz/digitalia , check out the "art" page and read about Involuntary Response.

 

thanks

 

diGitaLia

 

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-=| i.make..sound... |=-

-=| www.digitalianation.com |=-

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Somehow sounds cool, but also a bit Pythonesque...

 

(Brit accent) "Well, you can't just go about hitting statues with mallets then, can you? I mean, you hit Sophocles in the testicles...what sound did that produce?"

"Cisco Kid, was a friend of mine"
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I believe that would be "OH SHIT !!!" http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/eek.gif

No accent...

 

This message has been edited by Khan Noonian Singh on 01-20-2001 at 02:14 AM

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you is some funny guys...

 

ok here are some of the places in which these sculptures can be found:

 

Chicago - University of Chicago, Physics building "Nuclear Energy"

Vancouver - Queen Elizabeth Park "Knife Edge Two Piece" (also another version of this in the City of Westminster at the House of Lords - dont know if that's public property tho)

Guernica - Peace Park "Large Figure in Shelter"

Dallas - City Hall "Three Forms Vertebrea"

Singapore - Overseas Chinese Bank "Large Reclining Figure"

China - Imperial Gardens, 12 small pieces on display

 

so, if any of you live in these cities, or know where there's more, give me a shout at cutoff_freq@hotmail.com

 

thanks

-=| i.make..sound... |=-

-=| www.digitalianation.com |=-

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To further Ted's "Python" idea a little bit:

 

 

Interviewer (John Cleese):

 

And which statues do you enjoy hitting?

 

 

Man in the street (Eric Idle):

 

Well, I slapped Rodin's "The Thinker" once!

 

 

Pepperpot (Terry Jones):

 

I would rather beat Venus De Milo than the Winged Victory of Samothrace. But they are both equally armless.

 

 

Uppper class twit (Michael Palin):

 

My daddy bought me the Uffizi for my birthday.

 

 

Colonel (Graham Chapman):

 

Yes, we're all for hitting statues here in the British Army. Good for morale, don't you know!

 

 

Spindly Norman:

 

Dinsdale! Dinsdale!

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In Holy Grail dialogue...

 

"But how can you tell he's a statue?"

"'Coz he's got SHIT all over him!"

 

 

 

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Digitalia- does my head count as "other percussion tool?" How about...nah, wouldn't wan't to be arrested for putting a big dent in a famous sculpture. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif

 

Seriously, there is a big bronze Henry Moore beauty here in Vienna, and a number of others I haven't seen yet- trying to borrow a minidisk recorder as we speak.

 

Cool project.

 

Something you might want to consider- one reason why some cities like Vienna (and Singapore, from what I hear) are so clean, and it's relatively safe to walk the streets at night, is often attributed to having strict laws and lots of policing. Some kind of official (or official-looking) printed statement might help an artist making field recordings avoid hassles.

 

It's no big deal for me, been hassled so many times, but it may be a surprisingly big deal in some places for some people.

 

Just a thought, get back to you later, good luck on the project.

 

http://www.mp3.com/Kosmolith

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good point dadabobro

 

i dont want people risking or inconviencing themselves in anyway - im asking a huge favour here and am no position to make demands. but i've done recordings of "playing" these sculptures here in Toronto, and have only been asked what i was up to by a security guard once, he said "cool" and left me alone. i realize that not all rent-a-cops would be as easy going, but there is really no cause for alarm. if you guys have ever seen any of these sculptures, particularly the cast bronzes by Moore, you'd realize that they are virtually undentable. they're built to with stand the elements for a looooong time.

 

and the whole point of this project is that it's "public art" - so what do they have to do with the public? why CAN'T we play them as instruments? some of them sound really great, i'll have an example of this ready soon. plus there's lots of other artsy-fartsy musings about the "paradigms" and yadda yadda around this project, ones i wont bore you with (but i get to bore myself with when writing my final thesis paper - yay)

 

so, again, i ask that people not risk their safety if they wish to help me with this project. email me at cutoff_freq@hotmail.com if you want more info

 

thanks

-=| i.make..sound... |=-

-=| www.digitalianation.com |=-

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>>Tedster: do you live in Singapore? can you help me out?

ps: you guys arent half as amusing as the real Monty Python...

 

Nope, don't live there...I was just trying to make a "larch" joke.

 

I know we're not as amusing as the real Python. Us musicians are folks who've failed miserably as comedians...

"Cisco Kid, was a friend of mine"
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I agree with you, digitalia- and Ive got a hard-rubber-headed mallet, its not like Im going to be banging out a fatback riddim with a couple of monkey wrenches on a world famous piece of art.
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at this point i would like to thank Kosmolith for gathering sounds from the Moore sculpture in Vienna for me - you rule man!!!

 

for those that thought this was a joke, the works will be appearing eventually at http://www.mp3.com/pseudosonix

the page should be active in a few days, the first work "rhythm chair 1" is roughly the same idea, check it out...

 

peace

diGitaLia

-=| i.make..sound... |=-

-=| www.digitalianation.com |=-

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No, I never thought it was a joke. I'm familiar with other conceptual musical forms such as this. I just got this mental picture of someone banging a classical Greek statue in the gonads with a hammer, and thought, "how very Python!"...
"Cisco Kid, was a friend of mine"
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http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/vmoore/vmoore.html

 

 

Here is a link to the scupture I recorded for digital- hope the recordings are useful. Nothing eventful except for getting propositoned in the park by some middle-aged guy in a suit- must be my boyish good looks.

 

No prob, digitalia- a guy could get used to whacking things in the park. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif

 

http://www.mp3.com/Kosmolith

 

 

 

This message has been edited by dadabobro@yahoo.com on 01-30-2001 at 02:51 AM

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for those of you who thought i was kidding about the sculpture wacking thing...

 

http://www.mp3.com/pseudosonix

 

the second piece on the page, called "rhythm chair", is made of sounds from a public sculpture in the TD centre court yard in downtown Toronto.

 

im pleased to say that i have so far recieved sounds from a Moore piece in Vienna, i hope to use it in a composition with sounds from other works by the artist hear in Toronto. but im still looking for more Moore sounds. so again, if anyone could help, it would be greatly appreciated...

 

diGitaLia

-=| i.make..sound... |=-

-=| www.digitalianation.com |=-

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Is there something special (sonically, that is) about Henry Moore? How about hitting Calder mobiles with pencil erasers? How about hitting De Koonings with cream pies? How about hitting Bufanos with salamis? The possibilities are endless!

 

Interviewer (Graham Chapman, smoking pipe):

 

And can you explain to us, Mrs. Umbilliwuddy, why it was that you were slapping Michelangelo's David with a sopping wet tea towel?

 

John Cleese (in drag, clutching purse, looking outraged):

 

I wasn't!

 

etc.....

 

--Jim Aikin

 

This message has been edited by Jim Aikin on 02-06-2001 at 05:27 PM

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Originally posted by Jim Aikin:

Is there something special (sonically, that is) about Henry Moore?

 

 

Depends on how hard you hit him, and where! http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif

 

Well I don't know about any other HM sculptures, but the one I struck surprised me by the beauty of the tones but was a bit disappointing as far as sheer volume- I was expecting more sheer volume and less "tuned" sound. Now that I think about it, that would have been more in keeping with sheet-iron sculpture.

 

The flowing form and continuous surface area are obviously important factors- your typical bronze saint and kaiser around here just has way too many complex surfaces to really ring out with light knock. It's probably not very good luck to go around thumping saints, bronze or no, anyway.

 

 

If you listen all the way through to the piece digitalia posted, in which he "plays" the chair, you'll find that he's fully aware of both the serious and the humorous side of what he's doing. The whole project reflects that attitude for which there is no word- where you are deadly serious, but laughing your ass off at the same time.

 

It's a handy attitude to master for that moment in a romantic encounter with a beautiful stranger when you are struggling to put on the greasy economy-sized purple condom you got from a vending machine in the men's room.

 

:o

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Originally posted by dadabobro@yahoo.com:

It's a handy attitude to master for that moment in a romantic encounter with a beautiful stranger when you are struggling to put on the greasy economy-sized purple condom you got from a vending machine in the men's room.

 

If you say so. I'm wondering, though ... is an "economy-sized" condom small (on the theory that the manufacturer makes more money by using less latex), or is it (on the one-size-fits-all theory) way too large?

 

--Jim A.

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Originally posted by Jim Aikin:

If you say so. I'm wondering, though ... is an "economy-sized" condom small (on the theory that the manufacturer makes more money by using less latex), or is it (on the one-size-fits-all theory) way too large?

 

Hehe, good joke. "Struggling" indicates the first theory. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif This forum is a great way to take a break from Cubase.

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Jim: there are a few reasons for using Moores. the main one is, as dadabobro put it, the unique tones. another aspect i am concentrating on for this project, which my instructor particularly liked, is the idea of bringing sounds from stationary objects that are scattered all over the world into a collection of compositions. Henry Moore just happens to have tonnes of sculptures in public space all over the world.

 

..and it's not like im actually mocking him or anything - the other pieces are more about questioning the notion of "public" art. i personally enjoy Moore's works for their formal aspects, and after all the post-modern rhetoric about this project is thrown around, i ultimately hope to end up with works that are pleasing to the ear, as opposed to some audio art which sounds better "in theory" rather than in practice...

 

and thanks again, dada, both for contributing and for making comments on the piece i've done so far. your help will not be forgotten!

 

peace

diGitaLia

http://www.mp3.com/pseudosonix

-=| i.make..sound... |=-

-=| www.digitalianation.com |=-

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