Revealing a deeper understanding of what sound means in our world, how it works as “currency” and “ghost,” Performance Artist Christine Sun Kim explores sonic media without the benefit of hearing. She finds how to make its presence more physical, to find greater dimensions of movement, and to make a personal connection beyond what most of us might find in the everyday sense. As she describes it to NOWNESS:

There are social norms surrounding sound that form our speech development and our way of handling sound with care. They’re so deeply ingrained that, in a sense, our identities cannot be complete without sound.

In a beautiful short film, you can watch her process in her studio, thanks to filmmaker Todd Selby:

Cult photographer and filmmaker Todd Selby’s latest short is a revealing portrait of performance artist Christine Sun Kim. Deaf from birth, Kim turned to using sound as a medium during an artist residency in Berlin in 2008, and has since developed a practice of lo-fi experimentation that aims to re-appropriate sound by translating it into movement and vision. “It’s a lot more interesting to explore a medium that I don’t have direct access to and yet has the most direct connection to society at large,” says the artist. “Social norms surrounding sound are so deeply ingrained that, in a sense, our identities cannot be complete without it.” Selby filmed an exclusive performance from Kim in a Brooklyn studio as the artist played with field recordings of the street sounds of her Chinatown neighborhood, feedback and helium balloons, and made “seismic calligraphy” drawings from ink- and powder-drenched quills, nails and cogs dancing across paper to the vibrations of subwoofers beneath. Working with sound designer Arrow Kleeman, Selby carefully choreographed the film’s ambient score to reveal the Orange County native’s unique relationship with sound. “Her work deals with reclaiming sound because it’s a foreign world to her and one she’s not comfortable in,” explains Selby. “I wanted the film to act as an artistic conduit for her to tell her story to the world.”

Interview, via NOWNESS Facebook Page

Via our friend Rucyl on Saturn Never Sleeps, by way of Rashid Zakat’s The Awesome Farm.

Todd Selby x Christine Sun Kim [Nowness.com]

I was once a speaker at DEAF, which stands for Dublin Electronic Arts Festival. Not thinking, I told the customs officer in Ireland that I was a musician attending the DEAF Festival. He had some cheeky comment. In this context, of course, what he took for granted can take on an entirely different meaning. If you have background in understanding accessibility and design, for people with different sense capabilities in vision and sound alike, I’d love to hear them. The world of sound technology most of us inhabit describes a very narrow range of expectations for vision and sight.

Against Detroit’s “industrial exoskeleton,” Resident Advisor has a new documentary short film examining Detroit’s musical revival, an electronic cultural phenomenon that brought healing and new life to a city whose economic livelihood had imploded.

The film is beautifully shot, and wisely starts with Motown and its connections to the auto industry, not simply with an out-of-context look at electronics alone. From those roots come the rich musicianship Detroit offers, a level of musicianship perhaps not generally associated with electronica. The film logically turns to the electronic revolution – and some reminders of just how fresh and modern the tracks sound, even if the, erm, fashions haven’t dated as well. This cultural invention against economic collapse seems about the most fitting picture of America in general one could find – at once cautionary tale and promising parable.

The dead husks of architecture and civic scene prove a silent, empty backdrop. And there’s a tragic side – the week in which England’s police and youths clash to destructive effect, there’s an ongoing inability to reconcile the warehouse music scene with police seeking to shut down raves, a pervasive sense of the city as failed even as the rest of the world might imagine its culture as vibrant. (Yes, I’m certain some Detroit residents are tired of being portrayed as some sort of wrecked quasi-war zone. Let me say this, instead: every major metro area in the US, and many smaller ones, has an area ravaged by economic change, just as America in general has serious challenges facing its poor and unemployed. The most dramatic images aren’t simply emblems of Detroit, but of those crises everywhere.)

But most hopeful, perhaps, is seeing a new young generation embrace accessible computer music technologies, the optimistic tick-tock of an Ableton metronome and a kid’s hands all over a Maschine drum pad controller. The early fathers of Detroit techno were able to produce a musical revolution because machines for the first time became affordable; who knows what musical imaginings these kids are cooking up in hours spent after school, or what greater focus and discipline that can give to their other work. (I can speak for myself: without music to calm me down, to give myself a center, to act as emotional and spiritual outlet, it’s hard to imagine how I ever would have done anything else.)

It’s wonderful documentary making, and a great editorial contribution on Resident Advisor’s part. Now the next question: can we find a way to make this kind of music vibrancy heal our cities and communities, at a time when economies are in freefall, Americans are out of work in absurd numbers, London is setting fire to warehouses of records, and a thousand other invisible crises worldwide threaten to pull neighborhoods apart? Detroit’s music to most might be some vague recollection of now-extinct Motown or music at parties; when music lovers start to tell a richer story, maybe that role for music will be more widely appreciated.

Some of the interviewees: Brendan Gillen (Ectomorph), RJ Watkins and Henry Tyler (The New Dance Show), Jon Dixon and DJ Skurge (Underground Resistance), Josh Glazer (Urb Magazine), Luke Hess and Brian Kage (Reference), and Mike Huckaby, among others. New sounds and new names are mixed in among the older sounds and veterans. (Kudos to the crew – John Fisher was DP; Patrick Nation and Daniel Higginson produced and directed.)

Oh, and Derek Mahone, age 11. Remember that name.

Real Scenes: Detroit [Resident Advisor]

From the other side of the pond, and poignant given ongoing unrest in the UK, here’s Real Scenes: Bristol. It makes a worthy companion to the Detroit piece. As RA puts it:

The eyes of the world have turned to the UK in recent years and have found some of the most exciting, genre-defying young artists to emerge from electronic music. But while London’s scene can be fractious and hard to pin down, there seems to be something in the air in Bristol that unites its participants. Whether they’re creating dubstep, house, techno or something else entirely, the cross-pollination in Bristol is unique. In RA’s first official entry into video, we journey to Bristol to explore how the city has flourished in recent years, discovering why this small metropolis is one of the most influential electronic music outposts in the world today.

(Apologies to Bristol; I should probably wax just as poetic about your town, but happened to miss the release of the earlier film when it came out!)

Real Scenes: Bristol [Resident Advisor, July 5]

REFORMAT THE PLANET trailer from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

The journey to complete and release a documentary is a long one, but Reformat the Planet, a feature-length documentary on the chip music scene, has reached the other side. Focused on the hub of artists in New York and the Blip Festival, Reformat the Planet has had some significant success out on the festival circuit, and it’s the product of a talented team of producers called 2 Player Productions, who do some really lovely work. (Staking out a corner of the indie game world, they also have worked on the Penny Arcade video series.)

The DVD represents a more finished vision of the film, with a new cut, a new short (RTP “1.5″, excerpted below, with additional interviews from the past couple of years), a new audio mix, and bonus content.

The DVD set is US$15 and available from Fangamer. Sadly, no VHS or LaserDisc (and I’ve just heard from my sister that the family LaserDisc is working perfectly). Fangamer will also happily relieve you of the burden of additional cash and replace it with posters, pins, and other goodies.

http://fangamer.net/products/rtp-dvd

Reformat the Planet 1.5 clip from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

I’ve never been big on idol worship or celebrity; it’s my feeling you can draw inspiration from any musician as a fellow artist – it’s really the point of music. But that works both ways; for all that can be said of him, and for all that people may be suffering from Michael Jackson fatigue, the man’s talent can still be stunning.

My editor at Keyboard, Steve Fortner (via Twitter), sends along this trailer for an upcoming Michael Jackson documentary. It features some of the rehearsal footage prior to the artist’s death. You can also spot keyboardist Michael Bearden, Friend of Keyboard Magazine – who has, in turn, been featured on Keyboard TV. Check out his incredible bio. And on the same note, it’s often these lesser-known artists, the people playing next to all the famous artists everyone has heard of, who can be equally inspiring. Their sounds and musical imagination is woven into a lot of the popular music of the last half century, even if their names may not be as imprinted on people’s brains. They also typically have to have the ability to quickly sit in with artists of radically varying styles and “make it work.”

I think it’s possible to be a champion of the lesser-known or obscure without being allergic to the well-known. To do anything else would deprive you of the experience of some great musicians. And the documentary looks like it could be terrific.

"Atomic" cover by Glomag f. stealthopera @ Blip Festival 2008 in NYC from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

Glomag, here’s an idea for your next set: I stand nonchalantly at your side, edging ever closer until you punch me in the face with one of your air fists. Slapstick gold.

And here’s our friend / CDM drinking buddy Joel Johnson interviewing our other friend 8-bit artist Bubblyfish, for Boing Boing and Offworld.

For more video goodness, Peter Swimm has a whole Blip album up on Vimeo:

Blip Festival 08

Assuming you happen to hate chip music (it’s been known to happen), there’s still plenty to learn from this crew. Sure, you could argue they came up with a gimmick – although I think the essence of marketing is figuring out if there’s a sellable hook in something you already love. But having watched Blip and 8-bit music take off, there are a lot of other, underrated factors:

• They worked together. The 8-bit community in general has done a fantastic job of cross-promotion, supporting each other as fans, going out to get gigs, and advocating the work they do, even before you look at collectives like the awesome 8-bit collective. (That, incidentally, is a great place to start looking at this scene.)
• They have fun. People can bring friends to a Blip gig and be sure their friends will have a good time, whether they’re hard-core fans or not. Now, maybe your music is less “accessible,” but part of what makes this work is that the 8-bit folks do throw good parties, and they share infectious positive energy in what they’re doing, which could be applicable to anything.
• They’re on-message. The 8-bit folks really do have something to say about how technology is used musically, and they say it, via all sorts of different press outlets and the lie. That’s helped add to their longevity, because people believe it’s worth following this music over time. Replace those sentences with something you care about, find some other people who feel the same way, and this is something that can be replicated.
• They’re global. I love New York, which has been a epicenter for this kind of music, but New York can’t begin to sustain these artists on its own. A whole lot of this crew tours, and there’s strong coordination worldwide. Even in New York, it’s a niche genre, which means it needs that international reach to thrive.
• They found parallel fields to connect. Cross the streams! Art, gaming, tech – it turned out that the stuff from the 8-bit crowd mattered to people outside the music world. Result: get out of your own personal bubble.

All of these points sound like a recipe to help unusual music genres do better around the world. I have no doubt that we could have more screaming crowds of people in laptop music, for instance, and that even the world’s hot spots (hello, London, New York, Berlin, Melbourne, and company) would like their scenes to improve. Obviously, the 8-bit scene benefits from timing and their unique field. But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them and fight for your own Indietronica Augmented Microtonal Banjo movement.