The latest issue of The Wire (#409) contains my article on ‘psyphonics’ – the idealistic practice of attempting to embed idea, emotion and ‘thought’ within sound. A blogpost over at the Miraculous Agitations blog gives a little background to the idea. The Wire article charts how this romantic concept survives and even flourishes within modernity’s rigours.
A newly formed Psyphonics Facebook group now exists for anyone wishing to explore the idea further and share related music/recordings.
I feel behaviourally aslant in my secret indulgence for dolls house paraphernalia. But that’s mainly due to a culturally-instilled inhibition that really needs to be shaken off. After all, dolls houses are affordable, but real houses are not. As the saying goes, you must “live within your means”.
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| ‘Rendering that scaffolding dangerous’ |
For some years now I’ve itched to create a Sound-House, as defined in Sir Francis Bacon’s unfinished fable ‘New Atlantis’ (1624):
“We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds, and lesser slides of sounds; divers instruments of musick likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp. We make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps, which set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echos reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it, and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller, and some deeper, yea, some rendring the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes in strange lines and distances.”
A previous posting (here) touched upon some visual clues as to how Francis Bacon may have designed his Sound House if he had been tasked with realising one.
The “we have also sound-houses” passage has come to be quoted as a foresightful envisioning of electronic sound treatments. Yet the majority of modern electronic works invariably pivot on trickeries and deceptions of the ear – keeping the listener ‘in the dark’ as to the nature of sound sources and treatments. (Also, Bacon’s words conjure to mind a mechanical acoustic endeavour with contrivances similar to those imagined by his inventor contemporaries Salomon de Caus or Cornelis Drebbel.) Allying Bacon’s Sound Houses with electronic sound technique seems incongruous when Bacon later writes a few paragraphs later:
“And surely, you will easily believe that we that have so many things truly natural, which induce admiration, could in a world of particulars deceive the senses, if we would disguise those things, and labour to make them more miraculous: But we do hate all impostures and lies insomuch, as we have severely forbidden it to all our fellows, under pain of ignominy and fines, that they do not shew any natural work or thing adorned or swelling, but only pure as it is, and without all affectations of strangeness.”
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| John Reid: Pyramid Sound-Houses? |
If I ever had the opportunity to build a full size Baconian sound house, it would contain resonant granite sarcophagi (akin to those found in Egyptian tombs), moveable granite panelling and compartments. Deep stone tunnels with mix-and-match obstructors. Parallel surfaces for flutter echoes. Bellow-pumped pipe tone generators and trumpeted alterants. Clues may also be found in Bacon’s acoustical investigations documented in his Sylva Sylvarum. In the meantime, I will continue experimenting with my dolls houses… The dolls houses are more like weird garages, over-plumbed within an inch of their daintiness. And the ‘dolls’ exist only in the mind.
Miraculous agitations in our acoustic environment – as I’ve written elsewhere – indicate the possibility of real-world sound rivalling electronic sound in terms of tonal complexity and delineation. It is a question of engineering. The miraculous agitation assemblies eventually come to resemble ‘houses’ – or ‘garages’ – stressed with the addition of perilously piled Jenga-like miscellany. An ‘electromechnical Baconian dolls soundhouse garage’. With all property so dismally unaffordable, I would like to live in one of these… cohabiting with Cliff Richard’s proverbial ‘Living Doll’ – a husk of hope. (“Take a look at her hair, it’s real / And if you don’t believe what I say, just feel / I’m gonna lock her up in a trunk / So no big hunk can steal her away from me” [?!])
I comprise one quarter of the improv quartet Oscillatorial Binnage. Last Thursday we played a short set at the AMM book launch. Due to an alleged paucity of electricity sockets at the venue, it seemed an appropriate occasion to test drive an acoustic oddity I devised which I call a bookophone.
A bookophone consists of a paperback book and a rod/pipe ‘activator bow’ of some description. The rod can be metal, plastic or lacquered wood, and it is drawn perpendicularly across the book’s textblock in a bowing action. It produces acoustic pseudo-shepard tones and, with some practice, a variety of barks and yelps can be produced.
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| Bookophone technique: A metal ‘activator bow’ is rubbed across the book |
The AMM event was one of the more off-the-wall performances of recent memory. The two new books being discussed that night were Ben Watson‘s Blake in Cambridge, and 1839: The Chartist Insurrection by David Black and Chris Ford, both books published by Unkant. (Tangentially, whilst setting up the space, Ben Watson found convenience in my bookophone’s ‘activator bow’ in liberating from the ceiling the Union Jack bunting left over from a Queen’s Jubilee celebration some days earlier).
Interestingly, Watson chose to launch his own book by giving a platform to its critics who proceeded to denounce various aspects of its content, creating much debate (which also encompassed ventings on AMM’s anti-academic stance). Watson – an expert in language-defying tone poetry and mega-freeform vocalistics – then encouraged Oscillatorial Binnage to acoustically ornament/mimic the ensuing debate, which was already agitated by Watson’s occasional divergences into his hyperconfusing wordjazz. Electronics, crackleboxes, bean slicer, clarinet, squeaky toilet paper holder combo, harmonica and bookophone (among other things – mostly stuff found in bins) culminated in a noisome uproar. Regretfully, some of the younger people present did not at all enjoy the ultra-high pitched amplified blasts. (All recordings can be heard here).
To change the subject slightly…. My shoes are always broken. Earlier that rainy, rainy day, I had been in the second-hand book basement of a King’s Cross bookshop, trying to identify a louder £1 book for bookophone implementation (without actually compromising the shop’s stock by bowing the book edges). Owing to a hole in my shoe, rainwater had made ingress to my sock, making an unpleasantly wet foot; an irritating feeling which distracted me and so impaired bookophonic sonic book judgement. Abandoning the search, inspiration made me hop to the British Library where strong plastic bags can be obtained – most convenient! There, I made myself a plastic sock to place inside my shoe thereby offering protection against the rainwater. This provided comfort, not just for the rest of the day, but for the next week too.
[Such a feet/feat of necessity is perhaps worthy of Vladimir Arkhipov’s attention: specifically his Home Made series of books cataloging folk artefacts borne of such necessity].
However, by the time the AMM book launch began, the plastic sock had started to smell really bad. There’s an esoteric quirk of hygiene that sees unventilated feet turn odorous. Yet by the unpremeditated combining of the bookophone sounds with the ‘British Library bag-sock’ footsmell generator, I had fused both scent and sound into a new emission-sensation. However, the other members of Oscillatorial Binnage were undecided and mildly dismissive of it. I did wonder what the academics and anti-academics would make of this multi-faceted concept-fusion of bookophonics, British Library bag-socks, bad odour twinned with questionable bookwhine sonics… It is probably too irrelevant or ‘lumpenproletarianesque’ to even contemplate.
Now I must explain the title of this blog – ‘Miraculous Agitations’. Miraculous agitations are complex sounds which fortuitously occur every now and then in the oddments of acoustic furniture surrounding us. Any agitational forces such as draughts of air, hums of electromechanical appliances, etc., allow for vibrational interactions between clustered objects. When combinations of different agitational forces are acting simultaneously upon clustered objects, fascinating flourishes may be heard.
This month’s Brooklyn Rail features a article I wrote on this topic – ‘Miraculous Agitation: Scroungings Toward a New Acoustic Synthesis‘ – which should help explain things. [The live performance mentioned in the article may be heard here].
The occurrence of fascinating sonic flourishes (the miraculous agitations) in our acoustic environment suggests the possibility of building a mechanical synthesiser to acoustically reproduce the miraculous agitations. Pulleys, jacks, clamps, levers and cranks control the resonances and couplings between vibrating physical elements.
A lot of time and thought has gone into the construction of these apparatuses – many of which use electromagnetic feedback: a multitude of ferric objects ‘bowed’ electromagnetically. What is immediately clear is that physical vibration exploits any weak points in an assembly. Untightened bolts will unscrew, parts will migrate, mechanical hysteresis alters the resonant properties of anything remotely flimsy, and objects placed atop vibrating surfaces will be shunted in a hot potato effect. Subharmonic undertones are produced, along with many failed subharmonics (unfulfilled bounces). The picture above shows a resonated pitchfork overarched by subharmonic selector prongs. Possibilities begin to present themselves when resonant objects are allowed to periodically collide: a physical kind of granular synthesis is effected. On top of this, entrainments occur between feedback systems. When sympathetic resonance is also taken into account, the sonic potential of mechanically moderated apparatuses is evident.
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| Scrounging an apparatus for miraculousness |
There is a problem with this. If it is possible to reproduce a miraculous agitation willy-nilly, it will lose its miraculousness. However, quirks of acoustic interaction operate on knife-edges beyond our immediate perception. Also, it is not practical to ‘box up’ vibrating elements into an enclosed ‘synthesiser’ construct – everything must be readily accessible. Even with all axes of control at our disposal, miraculous agitations certainly remain elusive. I have had to scale down the control mechanisms to near-microscopic ranges. Magnifying glasses are used to moderate grazing collisions. These acts of timbre-seeking serve to create fertile ground for chance flourishes to occur. Even with magnifying instrumental aids, the apparatus is never fully under control owing to the bewildering array of variables even in a primitive few stacked objects.
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| Futility: Examining grazings between vibrating objects |
In the Charles Dickens book ‘David Copperfield’, there is a character named Wilkins Micawber, a debtor who is known for his hopeful motto that ‘something will turn up sooner or later’. This attitude is often referred to as Micawberism. It is by applying Micawberism to music that the miraculous agitations may be patiently anticipated. It may not be known what expressive form or character they will take, but if one waits long enough at a vibrating assembly, something miraculous will indeed turn up.
Just as the assembly is played through experimentally scrounging for these interesting moments, the apparatus is similarly constructed from amalgamating scrounged materials picked from the trade waste bins of small businesses, charity shops, factories, etc. “Soiled knick-knacks” are sought (see local newspaper report in the previous posting). This dispenses with commercial hardware fetishism, and relegates the ‘composer’ to compositor, working in the service of the apparatus, rather than vice versa. All pretensions are placed on the back-burner during such services.
I had tried to shoehorn the study of miraculous agitations into my university studies in 2005, but was dissuaded at the time due to my lack of articulateness on the matter. In time, poverty taught me the correct lingo. Continued dustbin investigations have led to the crystallisation of ‘dream mechanics’. ‘Dream mechanics’ may sound like a troupe of male strippers, but it actually refers to idealised mechanisms suggested by conjunction of concepts. This blog was originally intended to present these mechanics sequentially, but this would appear to be too esoteric to contemplate. I will, however, elaborate on various mechanisms and miraculous agitation techniques in later postings…
Available here, on the ‘Post Electronic Sound Harvesting Initiative’ Soundcloud page, is a rare live attempt to produce miraculous agitations in 2009 at the Gasworks Gallery. It failed somewhat, but miracles can’t be summoned at will in such a relatively short space of time, and apparatus is not easily transportable. Some electronic blasts are also fed into the agitators in the hope the feedback strands may be periodically unsettled to produce changes in vibratory states (to avoid the boredom with comes with waiting). There are still some moments of timbre-seeking approaching miraculousness.
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| Pages from the scrapbook of dream mechanics detailing waveshapers to generate object-couplings, subharmonic grazings and non-linear chatter |
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| Solar Fictions; A free inquiry into the received astronomical doctrine and popular opinions concerning the sun |
UPDATE 18/01/12: It appears the Noel Edmonds troll story is true after all, and not an April Fool’s fabrication. If Edmonds or any of his retinue are reading this, vis-a-vis the hint in the above text, I’d be unbelievably keen to embark on a PhD in the origins of trolling, its cultural ramifications, etc., but I have no money… My own theory is that trolling instances rise in tandem with the decline of alleged ‘poltergeist’ activity – as the same motivation underpins both, and the internet offers the path of least resistance. I’ve been begging for PhD funding (in a wide range of fields) since 2007.
To mark the exhibition of the Oramics machine at The Science Museum, this month’s The Wire contains an article I wrote on the little-known esoteric interests of Daphne Oram. This represents, it seems, the most extensive examination of this aspect of Oram’s work in print at present. Daphne Oram was a true pioneer in experimental and electronic music – she is known principally for her establishing of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and her subsequent development of Oramics (a technique of crafting electronic music by hand-drawn notation).
What is not generally known is that Oramics refers not solely to the drawn sound technique, but also to a wider philosophy of sound – a holistic approach to studying all vibrational phenomena and their relationship to human life. Part of the reason for the obscurity of this phase of Oramics may be in part due to the general scarcity of the only book she published – her groundbreaking ‘An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics‘ (1972).
‘An Individual Note …’ presents not only a breathtakingly fresh perspective on electronic music, but also asks “fascinating questions relating to the working of the human mind and the present and future roles for the individual and for society”. It studies the human aspects of electronic music. Of particular relevance today is the analogy Oram gives involving “mismatched impedance” (relating to audio devices improperly connected). For a healthful functioning society, people must find matched impedances, e.g. university graduates should secure an employment where their energies are put to use comfortably. If a highly qualified or energetic individual finds himself/herself psychologically constrained, working in a fish and chip shop, a form of potentially damaging distortion ensues. I would personally go further and say that if no matched impedance is provided, i.e. unemployment upon graduation, it is utterly destructive in many ways – one’s activity is bounded by hard constraints (waveform clipping!) and these ricochets against the constraints produce agonising harmonics. Incidentally, the writer known for studies into the unknown, Colin Wilson, has highlighted a link between artistic frustration and criminality… But I digress…
In the early 1980s Daphne was preparing another book, this time on ancient acoustics – a field of study known today as archaeoacoustics (the most notable recent study being ‘Archaeoacoustics’ published by McDonald Institute in 2006). If her manuscript, ‘The Sound of the Past’, had been expanded and published in book form, it would have marked yet another pioneering achievement. Sadly, lack of matched impedances prevented this being realised. However, this short unfinished text will soon be available on the Daphne Oram website.
In ‘An Individual Note’, Oram places emphasis on the joy of musing – “on sniffing the air” and “catching scents”. She says, “if the scents lead me sometimes ‘up the garden path’, I still enormously enjoy catching them”. In time, science may go some way to verify some of Oram’s more radical speculations (particularly those in her unpublished notes). For instance, the behaviour of the human organism in response to geomagnetic wave phenomena is taken more seriously now than in previous decades. These zones of thought on the periphery between knowledge and mystery are also where profoundly fascinating insights take place, with accompanying inspirations. And such inspiration is, after all, fine fuel for artistic creative endeavours.
Acupuncture, astrology, ancient resonances of Egypt’s Great Pyramid and Britain’s dolmens and barrows, John Erskine Malcolm’s curious theory of systemic arterial resonance…. Read about all this (and more) in this month’s The Wire, issue 330… because it’s extremely difficult to condense all this into a single blog post.
Miraculous Agitations - Daniel R Wilson 