Comments on: Avant-Garde Sound Poet Henri Chopin Has Died, But Give Him a Listen

By: seth cluett

seth cluett — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:33:04 +0000

listen to some of the audio, not just the video performances, it’s not just ‘fart sounds’.

sorry to be a little late chiming in, but the relationship between the avant garde and pop-music could elucidate the urgency of this issue more clearly. stockhausen’s work with 4 track tape and cage’s indeterminate practices in part made sgt. pepper’s possible (they are both on the cover in the collage). the theremin in the beach boys, paul lansky in radiohead, and more. chopin’s iconoclastic experimentation still leaves a jaw-dropped wonder in my mind, thinking, he only had a mono tape deck, a four-track deck, and a microphone, and he was able to create that complex a soundworld, those subtle shifts in timbre, that rhythmic variation. matmos springs to mind. sometimes it take someone putting technological development on pause, staying with what they know in order for real progress to be made with technologically produced art. in my mind, it’s precisely that we can’t hear the nuance in something like chopin’s vibraspace — it’s the problem with the facile ease with which we can make sounds with broad strokes in the digital domain. i’m not saying bring back the tape and razor blade, but there’s something to be said for really meaning an edit, you only have one chance to cut.

By: Henri Chopin ( 1922 - 2008 ) || Echoes at in|ad|ae|qu|at

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:20:34 +0000

[...] Avant-Garde Sound Poet Henri Chopin Has Died , But Give Him a Listen ( Peter Kirn , create digital music , 9. 1. + discussion ! ) [...]

By: Henri Chopin ( 1922 - 2008 ) || Echoes at in|ad|ae|qu|at

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:10:35 +0000

[...] , wie sie eben - sehr lesenswert - zum Thema auf Seiten wie create digital music stattfinden, erweisen , dass der Poet mit seinen ( auf YouTube ausgestellten ) Performances gerade [...]

By: audioworld

audioworld — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:49:36 +0000

peter,

one of our radio art projects back in 1993 really was based on sampling, mixing and manipulating human body sounds of all genres… the title “body sounds & body music” speaks for itself.
http://www.kunstradio.at/1993A/3_6_93.html

yes, that included — and no, I am NOT kidding

By: Georg Nikodym

Georg Nikodym — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:17:58 +0000

Best. Artistic debate. Ever.

LMAO.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:43:47 +0000

Yeah, I can’t make fart sounds academic. Actually… it’s all about playing with social taboo, about letting the interior become exterior, freeing the most personal and essentially physical. By recording the act, you place it in a frame — it comments on the act of recording and impermanence, and reverses the cultural valuation of recording as art by making it intentionally vulgar. It’s self-sampling.

Don’t worry. I AM kidding.

By: audioworld

audioworld — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:33:05 +0000

plurgid,
thanks for taking the time to read+listen to the extended material. your “upgrade” certainly qualifies you as an educated individual;-)

and (with respect to peter):
“recording fart sounds” definitely counts as an “ability to be child-like with a mic”;-)

By: plurgid

plurgid — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:40:15 +0000

Well I think one of the main purposes of art is to provoke a response in the observer, which this definitely has. So in that respect, it definitely gets the Art with a capital A.

Oh and I left something off my list.

5) fart sounds

I WAS 9 after all.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:23:25 +0000

Well, I’m never a big fan of talking about “Art” with a capital A, anyway. I respect that there are people that do what you did when you were 9, plurgid, and make that their creative output, if that’s what’s meaningful to them and — well, someone else somewhere. But likewise, I understand moving on if that’s not where your art takes you. (My work doesn’t sound like this, certainly.) So I don’t think you have to justify why you *don’t* like this any more than someone else has to justify why they do.

Of course, I do have some obligation to defend what I’m talking about as a writer — that is important. But I guess I’d say, the range of expression we have with recording now partly comes from that spirit of being able to make funny vocal sounds into a mic. Maybe presenting that raw is not what you want to do, personally. But I’d be pretty sad about my own work if, somewhere in it, I didn’t still have the ability to be child-like with a mic.

By: plurgid

plurgid — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:44:23 +0000

audioworld,

ok, I listened to the MP3.
I will upgrade from “childish and lame” to “interesting long form mouth noises”.

As far as the dissertation goes. Well ok. At least he had a well thought out defense/explanation for his hours and hours of mouth noises.