TOWARDS SOUND presents its
wall of abandoned ideas
&
a collection of notes and stories
@
OPEN CALL · SCHAUSAMMLUNG 2020
Internationale Klangbasierte Künste
curated by Rochus Aust
28.10. - 07.11.2020 · Mi-Sa 16-20h
LTK4 · Klangbasierte Künste
Lutherturm
Martin-Luther-Platz 2-4
50677 Köln-Südstadt
www.ltk4.de/termine.html
wall of abandoned ideas
&
a collection of notes and stories
@
OPEN CALL · SCHAUSAMMLUNG 2020
Internationale Klangbasierte Künste
curated by Rochus Aust
28.10. - 07.11.2020 · Mi-Sa 16-20h
LTK4 · Klangbasierte Künste
Lutherturm
Martin-Luther-Platz 2-4
50677 Köln-Südstadt
www.ltk4.de/termine.html
WALL OF ABANDONED IDEAS
Requiem for a beetle (2000)
28 x 19 cm
28 x 19 cm
I remember: it was a normal night, I went out with some friends. That same day in the morning I had seen a beetle, I left home, spent the day out and when I came back I heard that I was stepping on something - it was the beetle. It was late and I probably had had a few drinks. I picked it up, went to the table and looked at it.I told him I felt so sad that we never met. I had seen him in the morning, it was flying a little and it was very beautiful. They have these very beautiful movements of the wings, you know. It’s not like a mosquito, it is very particular, a very different wing movement. When I saw it like that now I was very sad, because I love beetles. I don’t know why, but I love them. I was looking at it and I thought I should write a requiem, an orchestral piece, a big piece. As it was smashed I thought it would be nice to have spatialization, chamber music groups that are working alone as individual sound material but working together at the same time, like an installation. Trying tor econstruct the sounds of the pieces I was seeing of the beetle and to reconstruct them within the pieces. Composing the deconstruction of the beetle. It felt like a crazy, drunken dream and when I woke up in the morning I had a little headache and thought, that it would be impossible to do this . But now - as we are talking - I feel that probably it would be nice. Why not?
In the sketch you see the shape of the corpse. The beetle was a bit like that, I was trying to give it different volumes inspired through concert hall designs by Xenakis with upper and lower stages.
In the sketch you see the shape of the corpse. The beetle was a bit like that, I was trying to give it different volumes inspired through concert hall designs by Xenakis with upper and lower stages.
Infinity (1999)
28 x 19 cm
28 x 19 cm
When I made this sketch I was working on tonality. I wanted to keep tonality as a main thing, but not really. I was not very close to microtonality back then, which is stupid. I wanted to create different chords, to build something new. When I see the formulas now I have no idea how it worked. I was working on the circle and I was trying to work with the infinity formula inside music. I was 14 or 15 years old and still living in Mexico, trying to write the infinity inside music, trying to at least hear it. I was reading a lot of magical literature back then, Ouspensky and Gurdjieff mainly, I was really crazy about that.
Umwelt als Klang
21 x 15 cm
An attempt to bring two areas of thinking together
21 x 15 cm
An attempt to bring two areas of thinking together
This is one of the ideas I had to do: to bring two concepts together. I did a research project about the UMWELT and I found a book called THE UMWELT ALS KLANG, which I couldn’t read very well, still it somehow stayed with me. I also realized that conversations are often part of my work. I started to catalogue my conversations and this idea of having them around me.. I was drawing vaguely what I was thinking to do. But then I realized that these two concepts do not need to be brought together..
Sketches for a piece for strings based on a Fugue by J. S. Bach (2000)
29 x 39,5 cm each
29 x 39,5 cm each
German original:
Das habe ich nie fertig gemacht, das ist nichts geworden. Keine Ahnung. Ich hatte eine Bach Fuge, das weiß ich noch. Was ich damit gemacht habe - keine Ahnung. Siehst Du - das ist diese Fuge. Daraus wollte ich ein Stück machen, für Streicher, aber ich habe es nicht geschafft, es wurde immer abstruser. Manchmal sieht das nur gut aus, das ist das Problem, oder? Was ist das überhaupt? Sul Ponticello, Flageoletts, Ausdehnung….meine Güte. Ich habe wahrscheinlich monatelang nur an diesen Skizzen gearbeitet und es ist nichts daraus geworden. Das ist alles eigentlich mehr Skizze als Ergebnis. Ohne Musik…Das sieht schön aus, aber das ist keine Musik, Das ist die Frage mit der ich immer zu kämpfen hatte. Inwieweit verselbstständigt sich dieses Hilfsmittel? Und in wieweit kommt tatsächlich ein Klangerlebnis zustande? Man verliert manchmal den Anschluss. Ich hatte damals auch schon immer das Bedürfnis nach mehr Übersicht. Ich wollte immer mehr Übersicht bekommen, immer mehr solcher Blätter haben. Das ging dann irgendwann nicht mehr, das dauert dann ewig. Davon habe ich mich durch das Programmieren befreit. |
English translation:
I never finished that, it didn't work out. No idea. I had a Bach fugue, I remember that. What I did with it - I don't know. You see - this is the fugue I wanted to use as a basis for a piece, for strings, but I couldn't do it, it got more and more absurd. Sometimes only the visuals are good, that's the problem, right? What is that: sul ponticello, flageoletts, expansion .... my goodness. I probably worked on these sketches for months and nothing came of it. This is actually more of a sketch than a result. Without music ... It looks nice, but it's not music, that's the question I've always struggled with: To what extent does this auxiliary develop a life of its own? And to what extent does it engender a sound experience? Sometimes you lose touch. Back then, I always had the need for a better overview, I needed more and more overview, so I needed more and more sheets like these. At some point that didn't work anymore, To create them takes forever.. Through programming.I freed myself from needing these sketches. |
THOMAS VAN WALLE
Ik wil de weg niet wegdoen (2019)
29,7 X 42,0 cm, graphite, colored pencils, chalk paper
29,7 X 42,0 cm, graphite, colored pencils, chalk paper
The sketch ‘ Ik wil de weg niet wegdoen ‘ has been made for the Wave Field Synthesis project in the Hague, in the Netherlands. The WFS is a spatial renderingtechnique, characterized by creation of virtual acoustic environments.
‘I wrote a theme for the saxophone which I wanted to repeat during the piece, but it didn’t have the right effect for me, when it was sent through the many speakers of the WFS - installation. The music I aligned to the plan didn’t have the desired result when it became part of the installation.
‘I wrote a theme for the saxophone which I wanted to repeat during the piece, but it didn’t have the right effect for me, when it was sent through the many speakers of the WFS - installation. The music I aligned to the plan didn’t have the desired result when it became part of the installation.
NOTES AND STORIES
THOMAs VAN WALLE
Train Sketches (2019 - 2020)
11,7 x 7,5 cm each
11,7 x 7,5 cm each
I work as a music therapist in Brussels and live in Antwerp, so a lot of small sketches are made when I take the train from Antwerp to Brussels. I want to use my time well and the noise of the train with its continuously changing environments is triggering elements for me, it gives me the right vibe to create new stuff, I get a lot of ideas . At the beginning of creating, I do not always know what the final medium will be. In general I‘m exploring and looking for the right tension between points, lines & planes. I do not only see this as a visual component,. Very often I hear music while I’m composing these sketches.
I ‘d like my work/world to be a heterogeneous mix of musical and visual expression.
I ‘d like my work/world to be a heterogeneous mix of musical and visual expression.
The Rocks (2019)
A fragment from a Notebook
A fragment from a Notebook
The rocks keep coming back - they are one of the things I am trying to create in sound, but I don’t know how. Rocks have a very particular shape, they manifest themselves. It is a sort of obsession to draw rocks all over again, always in a group, this is a way to stimulate my brain. The earlier idea was to make sound that you could enter and leave. Or that sound would have a mass. But it is not possible to have them in clusters somehow. I experienced something like this physically once in my life. I was at a concert by a Japanese sound artist. An announcement said take care of yourself and take your earplugs, this music will hurt. When he started, it was unbearable, I was hiding behind bodies. Slowly I adjusted to the volume, I felt the sound everywhere. Then he made it move, like a mass, not a cloud. One of my ambitions was to attempt something like this, but it was impossible, it only works with force. His inspiration for this work were the earthquakes in Tokyo, it was an experience of what an earthquake can mean. A combination of low sound /rumbling, but very harsh, icy, high pitched as well and it was constantly moving and you were being moved all the time, like a beast. So these rocks for me are always a memory of that concert and a longing to make something like that. To have these different shapes, but his shapes were morphing.
Involuntary drawing (2020)
On a piece of paper
28 x 19 cm
On a piece of paper
28 x 19 cm
Sometimes when I compose, I need to see the sound in front of me. There are moments when I get really stuck. Sometimes I stare in the distance. I have nothing on my wall, I need it to be empty. When I did the drawing, I was stuck. I remembered a class of one of me colleagues and also my father who told me that sometimes it is good to draw and not to look at what you draw. I was wondering what this would be like without me hearing anything, but I could not grasp it, so it was sort of a failure. The sketch landed in my big file, which isn’t really treated very well, also I did not use fancy paper. The problem with me sometimes is that there are many layers of sound and I want to make them click into a whole. Sometimes it just doesn’t work and then I am frustrated. So what you see is my frustration on paper.
Sketch for (de)cor(o) for fixed media and performer ensemble (2019)
You can really hear (de)cor(o) in this. This is 37 minutes. You can hear the beginning, then the balls, the voices, the Larsson thing - you can really hear this.
Sketch for Migratory Echoes (2016/2017)
20 x 15 cm
Migratory Echoes (2016-2017) is a performance/installation work based on the following question: “Which sound come to mind when thinking about your home or motherland?” The response offered by the people of diverse origins, all temporary or permanent residents, serves as raw material to create a new textual sound composition which becomes both a collective and personal archive of voices, silences, breaths and discourses on the past: memories and dreams of dislocated migrants.
The Sketch shows my reflection about my own “home” and its possible soundscape of fire, as well as the interview and reflections with Greek-Austrian musician Elena Kakaliagou about the Greek words “Estia” and “Patrida”, both terms describing the concept of home in different perspectives, from mythology through nationalism.
20 x 15 cm
Migratory Echoes (2016-2017) is a performance/installation work based on the following question: “Which sound come to mind when thinking about your home or motherland?” The response offered by the people of diverse origins, all temporary or permanent residents, serves as raw material to create a new textual sound composition which becomes both a collective and personal archive of voices, silences, breaths and discourses on the past: memories and dreams of dislocated migrants.
The Sketch shows my reflection about my own “home” and its possible soundscape of fire, as well as the interview and reflections with Greek-Austrian musician Elena Kakaliagou about the Greek words “Estia” and “Patrida”, both terms describing the concept of home in different perspectives, from mythology through nationalism.
Sketch of 'A Weightlessness Process (or how to become ethereal)’ (2019)
15 x 12 cm
The expression 'As if it were nothing at all' belongs to a book that has deeply inspired me during my research on timbre: Dust: a history of the small and the invisible by Joseph A. Amato. The piece is part of my current PhD research in composition at the University of Leeds in which I am studying timbre specifically from its multidimensional condition. Therefore, it responds to an exploration of mass as a timbral dimension, and I was focused on developing instrumental techniques that allowed me to approach the perception of weight reduction.
15 x 12 cm
The expression 'As if it were nothing at all' belongs to a book that has deeply inspired me during my research on timbre: Dust: a history of the small and the invisible by Joseph A. Amato. The piece is part of my current PhD research in composition at the University of Leeds in which I am studying timbre specifically from its multidimensional condition. Therefore, it responds to an exploration of mass as a timbral dimension, and I was focused on developing instrumental techniques that allowed me to approach the perception of weight reduction.
JAMES ETHERINGTON
Scrap with adhesive tape (1989)
12 x 9 cm
12 x 9 cm
The scrap with adhesive tape on it was an attempt to try and get at a long form I had set my heart on, an hour-long solo that would hold the listeners’ ears. I was aiming for something continually developing while essentially remaining the same, and this pyramid – widening out from top to bottom in what I thought of as a spiral – was my way into the compositional process. Once I had the first few notes, I put the sketch aside. The tape is a trace of the impulse to archive, to document, to preserve. Why does it seem important to remember the search, the doubt?
scribble in preparation of Pferd Tiger Schlange (2018)
28 x 19 cm
The squiggly arrow pointing at Hilary was really meant for me – to tell myself that someone wanted something from me. I was trying to remind myself of my impressions of Hilary, so as to write for him. But the shaking violence of the line has nothing to do with my sense of Hilary or with what I thought to write for him. It’s more me telling myself to get on with it.
28 x 19 cm
The squiggly arrow pointing at Hilary was really meant for me – to tell myself that someone wanted something from me. I was trying to remind myself of my impressions of Hilary, so as to write for him. But the shaking violence of the line has nothing to do with my sense of Hilary or with what I thought to write for him. It’s more me telling myself to get on with it.