Semiotics, Presence and the Sublime in the Work of Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier, in his uncompromising exploration into the artistic potential of acoustic phenomena, has developed a body of work that remains highly original and hugely influential across many disciplines. His seminal works such as I am sitting in a room and Music for Solo Performer foreshadowed ways of approaching sound that are in common use among electro-acoustic composers, installation artists, as well as in commercial products. Lucier, despite his far reaching influence, is and has always been a composer, and his explorations of acoustics have been singularly focused on the development of a rich body of music. In this article, I investigate Lucier’s unique approach and attitude towards acoustics and aspire to enumerate important aesthetic developments he has made in creating music through the exploration of acoustic phenomena. In particular, this article seeks to investigate the role of semiotics in Lucier’s work, commenting on the pre-linguistic nature of Lucier’s approach to acoustic phenomenon. Here as well, an exploration of Lucier’s musical materials takes place, focusing on his instrumental compositions, specifically Diamonds for One, Two or Three Orchestras, where instruments are used as catalysts to generate in real-time acoustic phenomenon which interact to produce a rich yet intimate world of sound. Finally, Lucier’s approach to semiotics and real-time generation of music is viewed through a sublime aesthetic provoking questions regarding issues of presence and the now.

The Absent Image in Electronic Music

A survey of the after-effects of recording technology on media arts, particularly in the digital age. The article covers a wide variety of sound artists, including work by the author.

Re-Envisioning the Artist Hero Through Two Cole Porter Biopics

Songwriter Cole Porter is unusual in having had two biopics based on his life: Night and Day (1946) starring Cary Grant, and De-Lovely (2004), starring Kevin Kline. The differences in the treatment of the character of Cole Porter between the films are striking, and indicate a change in the way that society envisions its artists, and the very act of creativity. Night and Day was conceived partly as a showcase of Porter's songs, but also as a means of providing inspiration to soldiers returning wounded from World War II, based on Porter's recovery from a traumatic riding accident. It depicts Porter as an everyman following a trajectory of achievement, from having little to great success, which was positioned as easy to emulate. De-Lovely, on the other hand, is about the relationship between Porter and his wife Linda, and the way that his creativity was influenced by his changing relationships with various people. Drawing on the work on biopics of scholars such as G.F.Custen, together with research into the shifting ideas of how creativity operates and is popularly understood, this article uses these biopics as case studies to examine the representation of changing concepts of the artist and the act of creativity through Hollywood film. It also considers how these changing conceptions and representations connect to shifts in American society.

Cast Offs (Touchstones in Practice)

The working process of an architect is not often shown publicly, as the finished buildings, more particularly images and publications on them tend to dominate how architecture is communicated. In this there is something lost. The experience of the building, which is its most valuable aspect, is only possible by being there physically. Photography and other means of representation of architecture can tend to an overly perfected and artificial read of both the building and how the design was produced. In truth the design process for a building is a complex one, full of chance discoveries, multiple abandoned ideas, and refinement which is lateral as well as rational.

When we were asked to exhibit it struck us that we should address this deficit in some small way. These are models made as part of the design process for four projects (an arts centre, a womens refuge, a villa and four artists studios). An important part of our work method is to try to explore the material qualities of the buildings we are working on. To advance this we commonly make models to allow us to make discoveries and to advance the project so that the finished building is imbued with material and spatial character. These models are not made to show the final design of the building but to highlight an aspect that we are interested in exploring, in some cases this is about a space, in others about texture and its relationship to form. We chose these four models as all in some way allowed us to make discoveries about the project being explored. This discovery, once made, is what we value. The model itself serves only to produce this, and once made we can cast off the model and move on. We show them, not as architecture, but as touchstones for ideas out of which architecture may come.

After & Since: Strand Lamps

A tribute to the Wexford born internationally acclaimed Irish designer and architect EILEEN GRAY and an intimate look at the work of 10 outstanding designers, craftspeople and artists working in Ireland today.

Cannibale, Frigidaire, and the Multitude: Post-1977 Italian Comics through Radical Theory

A direct connection between comics and contemporary critical theory is to be found in the activity of the collective of artists who created "Cannibale" and "Frigidaire", the two most innovative Italian comics magazines of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The work of Andrea Pazienza, Filippo Scòzzari, Stefano Tamburini, Tanino Liberatore and Massimo Mattioli should be regarded as an expression of the radical movements from which Marxist Autonomist thinkers such as Antonio Negri, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi and Paolo Virno also emerged in the same period. As a consequence, the writings of the latter can be used to analyse the narrative and visual style, the recurring themes, and the editorial characteristics of the comics of the former. Moreover, an interesting parallel can also be drawn between the work of the most influential of these artists, Andrea Pazienza, and the thought of another prominent Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, whose earliest books were published at that time too. The aim of this article is to show that the ideas of a number of the thinkers who have recently become internationally known as representatives of radical Italian theory, are useful to understand the work of this group of comics authors.

The Queen's Shilling:A collaboration with Goldin+Senneby

A performance art piece in the Centre for Contemporary Art, Derry/Londonderry as part of the City of Culture. International conceptual artists Goldin+Senneby commissioned me to write a short play inspired by their obsessions with alchemy, royalty and the financial markets. The play dramatises the suffering of Queen Elizabeth II as she confronts her own mortality in a world where she is an immortal symbol. Through a conversation with her predecessor Elizabeth I, she reveals that the whole stability of the financial system rests on the weight of her daily effluvia.

Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in Belfast

This article introduces examples of recent sound art in Belfast, a city that has undergone radical transformation over the past decade and is home to a burgeoning community of sound artists. The text investigates the ways in which sonic art can redraw boundaries in a city historically marked by myriad political, socioeconomic,
religious and sectarian divisions. The article focuses on sound works that reimagine a “post-conflict” Belfast. These include site-specific sound installations in urban and public spaces, soundwalks, sculptures, locative and online works, and experimental
sonic performances that draw upon traditional Irish song and music.

Sounds of the City

“Sounds of the City” is a large-scale community project and exhibition commissioned by the Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC) and led by artists from the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), Queen’s University Belfast. Over a four-month period, the artists worked together with two intergenerational groups in Belfast with the aim of addressing specific sound qualities of places, events and stories. Themes that surfaced from this process constitute the basis for the exhibition which promotes listening as a form of intersecting daily life, identity and memory. Five installations address aural contexts ranging from Belfast’s industrial heritage to the local family home. These are shaped by present and past experiences of workshop participants at Dee Street Community Centre in East Belfast and Tar Isteach in North Belfast. The themes and contents of these installations center upon the relationship between sound and memory, sound and place, and the documentation of everyday personal auditory experience.
All materials exhibited have emerged through workshops, interviews and field-recording sessions. Workshops acted as a basis from which to inform each group about the project’s aims, methods of listening, methods of documenting sound and the wider areas of soundscape studies and acoustic ecology. They also provided a central point allowing participants to organize outside activities and share material for exhibition.
“Sounds of the City” explores the relationship between sound and community through everyday life and presents a dynamic and ever-changing soundscape that shapes Belfast’s identity.

Sounds of the City has been exhibited at the MAC, Belfast 2012 and at Espaço Ecco, Brasilia 2013.

Relics, Scenarios and Props

Peter Mutschler and Ruth Morrow of PS2 profile '5 ways to say your prayers', which re-presented a selection of the belfast-based organisation's public engagement projects, facilitiated by Engage Studios at the Shed, Galway (26-21 July, 2013)

Transgressing Contemporary Boundaries:The Narrator as True Custodian of Cultural Knowledge in Ulster Society

Historically in Gaelic culture, the bard was greatly valued and admired as an important and integral part of society. Travelled, schooled and specifically trained in their art, the bard helped ensure identity and reassurance for Gaelic families by grounding them both temporarily and spatially into their landscape. Entrusted with the duty and responsibility of recording place and event, the bards worked without writing and by transgressing man-made boundaries, travelled throughout the land weaving their histories into the very fabric of society.

Now no longer with us, we find ourselves without the distinguished chronicler to undertake this duty. Yet the responsibility of the Gaelic bard is one still shared by all artists today; to facilitate memory and identity, whether good or bad. Many Ulster writers, by happenstance and geography have found themselves located in a place of painful histories. An immediate difficulty for those local writers becomes manifest by being intrinsically implicated into those histories – whilst having first-hand knowledge and comprehension beyond that of the outsider, the local writer is automatically damned by association and relationship, thereby tarnishing their voice in comparison to the perceived impartiality of others.
Some writers however have successfully sought ways to escape this limitation and have worked in ways that can transgress the restrictions of prejudgement. John Hewitt, by purposely becoming a self-imposed tourist was able to distance himself to write impartially about the past, recognising that ’the place without its ghosts is a barren place.’1 In ‘The Colony’,2 tradition, peoples and mapping of the land are all narrated by Hewitt in a similar way to the Gaelic bardic topographic poems of Sean O'Dubhagain and Giolla Na Naomh O'Huidhrin3 in compiling a rich cultural atlas.

Similarly the Belfast poet and novelist Ciaran Carson also writes and records the city from an intermediary position; that of translator. Mediating between reader and aisling,4 Carson himself takes the reader on a journey into name, meaning, time and place, focusing primarily on the city of Belfast, familiar in name but impenetrable in depth to most.

Furthermore, this once-forgotten tradition to chronicle is now being continued by the new breed of Irish crime writers where the likes of Brian McGilloway, Stuart Neville and Adrian McKinty can, by way of the crime novel, accurately record contemporary society. Thus, ghost estates, listed buildings, archaeological digs, street and city have all provided setting and subject matter for recent novels. Moreover by choosing the ‘outsider from within’ as their chief protagonist, whether detective or criminal, each author is able to transgress the boundaries of prejudice and preconception that hinder genuine understanding and knowledge.

Looking in turn at the Gaelic bard, the twentieth century Ulster poet and the new breed of Irish crime writer, the authors will outline the real value of the narrator, by being able to act as cultural transgressor beyond the seeming and alleged as the true chronicler in society, and then with specific reference to city and countryside in Ireland, as a valuable custodian of knowledge in architecture and place.

Keywords
Architecture, Crime Fiction, Cultural Atlas, Place, Poetry.

1 From ‘The Bloody Brae’, a one act play written by John Hewitt in the 1930’s.
2 Hewitt, J. (1968) published in Collected Poems 1932-67. London:McGibbon & Kee.
3 Lengthy and detailed medieval Gaelic poems composed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries first edited by John O'Donovan in 1862 for the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society in Dublin.
4 The aisling is the Irish song or poem genre when the poet is visited by their muse in a daydream or dream-vision state.

Leisure sports and postural control:Can a black belt protect your balance from aging?

To determine potential benefits of intensive leisure sports for age-related changes in postural control, we tested 3 activity groups comprising 70 young (M = 21.67 years, SD = 2.80) and 73 older (M = 62.60 years, SD = 5.19) men. Activity groups were martial artists, who held at least 1st Dan (black belt), sportive individuals exercising sports without explicit balance components, and nonsportive controls. Martial artists had an advantage over sportive individuals in dynamic posture tasks (upright stance on a sway-referenced platform), and these 2 active groups showed better postural control than nonsportive participants. Age-related differences in postural control were larger in nonsportive men compared with the 2 active groups, who were similar in this respect. In contrast, negative age differences in other sensorimotor and cognitive functions did not differ between activity groups. We concluded that individuals engaging in intensive recreational sports have long-term advantages in postural control. However, even in older martial artists with years of practice in their sports, we observed considerable differences favoring the young. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Empowering Art: Reconfiguring narratives of trauma and hope in the Australian national imaginary

Aboriginal art has been the source of much contention between art curators, gallery owners, art critics and Aboriginal artists themselves. Early aesthetic debates about whether so-called traditional works should be considered ethnographic or artistic have led, at times, to conflicts over the rights of Aboriginal people to have their works exhibited according to the criteria applied to other kinds of Western artworks. This article explores how the dilemmas of troubled ethno-histories are critically embodied and reconfigured in texture and colour. It considers the problems that silenced histories pose for those responsible for their display to the public. As Aboriginal images often conceal troubled intercultural encounters it asks how artworks can be used to provide a counter-polemic to national rhetoric as artists seek to reshape and improve intergenerational futures. This text is published as a counterpart to the contribution to Disturbing Pasts from the artist Heather Kamarra Shearer.

Visualising Invisible Networks as Collaborative Arts Practice

This paper examines approaches to the visualisation of ‘invisible’ communications networks. It situates network visualisation as a critical design exercise, and explores how community artists might use such a practice to develop telematic art projects – works that use communications networks as their medium. The paper’s hypotheses are grounded in the Australian community media arts field, but could be applied to other collaborative contexts.