Artistic
Director
Kevin Stalheim
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Present
Music
1840 N. Farwell #301
Milwaukee, WI 53202
Phone:
414-271-0711
Fax:
414-271-7998
web
design by:
darwin grosse &
the kmv group
Phil
Kline - Shadow Traffic
First presented at the Brooklyn Anchorage in July 2000, Shadow Traffic is a symphony for an infinite number of boombox tape players in motion. The multi-latered interaction of electronic voices is in constant flux as the boxes are moved through the sounding space by the audience itself, ensuring that each listener has a unique aural perspective.
Some notes on personal stereo
The most immediately noticeable feature of my work (and my apartment) is the boomboxes, of which I currently own about 40. I used them first as basic instruments in performance, making live tape loops in sequence to produce clouds of overtones and feedback, and then as players in a virtual orchestra, composing electro-acoustic works direct to cassette tapes which, when played back in unison, created dense yet pliant sonic textures that could be moved around in open spaces. Eventually I began combining the boomboxes with live instruments, and then turned to performer-driven instrumental works which asked players to imitate the mechanical processes of the tape players.
In another life I might have learned the violin, joined an orchestra and written for it, but the first instrument I learned to play really well was the tape recorder. It seemed obvious that this was a musical instrument, making a wide variety of sounds that could be repeated and manipulated with a kind of precision that was not exactly precise, but rather colored by the vicissitudes of the mechanisms and the subjectivity of a particular space and time. This made the recording and playback of tape not at all automatic or passive, but an active involvement in a musical process which yielded surprising phenomenological results and suggested certain philosophical questions.
Along with the Walkman, boomboxes helped make cassettes the universally accepted medium for home recording and what manufacturers call _personal stereo._ The initial derogation of these machines as _ghetto blasters_ was a comment on those who wielded them, and their perceived violation of _private_ pedestrian head space. Overlooked was the fact that they were the house system of choice on the street not only because they had handles but because they were pretty good sounding, with ample enough chassis for some stereo separation and respectable bass throw, far superior to the shoebox shaped decks Sony et al had previously put out.
For my purposes they were ideal, handy and relatively inexpensive. I acquired dozens of them because they were the best independent sound sources I could buy dozens of. The fact that these decks also contained tiny inboard condenser microphones was an added advantage. Now, by using precision-cut endless cassettes, one could record and play multiple loops in real time in a small room, studio or stage space without any extra equipment; even wires weren't needed as long as the batteries held up.
Loops are the plainchant, the fugal subjects of tape generated music. I wanted to make pieces with large numbers of loops that could be produced and handled live in real time. At first this was a cumbersome process, handling heavy open-reel decks, splicing tape and stretching it around the room, draped around mic stands like the cables of suspension bridges, but the advancement of boombox cassette recorders changed all that.
Lining up the boxes on a table and loading them with identical-length endless cassettes, I recorded repeated phrases, immediately playing them back and rerecording them to produce spiralling waves of phase patterns which gathered room tone and distortion as they accrued. These process pieces combined the most notable elements of the early tape works of Lucier and Reich (the slow planetary motion of Eno_s loops were not on the agenda at that moment) but with the added twist of live improvisation, the ability and tendency of the performer-surfer to look for a _groove_ in the increasingly chaotic flow and wash of the wave.
The large _orchestral_ playback pieces began with the simplest of aims, the desire to have a Christmas party, which later became known as Unsilent Night. I produced a multichannel tape, recorded the separate strands of the music onto cassettes, got several dozen friends with boomboxes together and gave them each a cassette. We started them simultaneously and walked around the village of New York City, creating a block-long stereo image for an audience which consisted of us and whoever happened to be passing by.
It was an experiment that worked beyond expectation. The music spread and filled the air in such a way that it was difficult to pinpoint where it was coming from even when you were in the middle of it. The sound mass seemed alive, blurring and oscillating due to slight variations in speed and pitch, and a constantly evolving polyphony was created in the moving throng as one heard individual machines suddenly coming into focus, then receding back into the overall cloud of sound. This changing perspective presented a paradigm of listener experience, attention and focus in which participants could wonder (as they wandered) what (and where) the piece was and what it sounded like even as they were listening. Was it the central information on the individual tapes, the hectic counterpoint one heard when walking in a small group of players or the great, rounded buzz one felt from the periphery?
That the sound mass literally moved made good Stockhausen_s 40-year old promise that one of the potentials of electronic music was a sonic plasticity to be achieved by transporting loudspeakers through space. Better yet, in this case, the speakers were moving into unclaimed territory, a vast stage-without-proscenium with an unlimited, untargeted (and unticketed) audience. Unlike the private island of the Walkman, the boombox reaches out, providing not only personal stereo but public statement. Those unexpected listeners we encountered on the street seemed genuinely engaged in a thing they enjoyed without being aware of any specific role (were they the audience?) hierarchical relationship (were we leading a performance?) or agenda (was this art?) Ironically, the success of this and subsequent presentations led to requests for such pieces to be played in museums and concert halls, bringing to mind the notion of the boombox as a Trojan Horse, a cultural crossover messenger working both sides of the street, ghetto-blasting indeed.
First presented at the Brooklyn Anchorage in July 2000, Shadow Traffic is a symphony for an infinite number of boombox tape players in motion. The multi-latered interaction of electronic voices is in constant flux as the boxes are moved through the sounding space by the audience itself, ensuring that each listener has a unique aural perspective.
Some notes on personal stereo
The most immediately noticeable feature of my work (and my apartment) is the boomboxes, of which I currently own about 40. I used them first as basic instruments in performance, making live tape loops in sequence to produce clouds of overtones and feedback, and then as players in a virtual orchestra, composing electro-acoustic works direct to cassette tapes which, when played back in unison, created dense yet pliant sonic textures that could be moved around in open spaces. Eventually I began combining the boomboxes with live instruments, and then turned to performer-driven instrumental works which asked players to imitate the mechanical processes of the tape players.
In another life I might have learned the violin, joined an orchestra and written for it, but the first instrument I learned to play really well was the tape recorder. It seemed obvious that this was a musical instrument, making a wide variety of sounds that could be repeated and manipulated with a kind of precision that was not exactly precise, but rather colored by the vicissitudes of the mechanisms and the subjectivity of a particular space and time. This made the recording and playback of tape not at all automatic or passive, but an active involvement in a musical process which yielded surprising phenomenological results and suggested certain philosophical questions.
Along with the Walkman, boomboxes helped make cassettes the universally accepted medium for home recording and what manufacturers call _personal stereo._ The initial derogation of these machines as _ghetto blasters_ was a comment on those who wielded them, and their perceived violation of _private_ pedestrian head space. Overlooked was the fact that they were the house system of choice on the street not only because they had handles but because they were pretty good sounding, with ample enough chassis for some stereo separation and respectable bass throw, far superior to the shoebox shaped decks Sony et al had previously put out.
For my purposes they were ideal, handy and relatively inexpensive. I acquired dozens of them because they were the best independent sound sources I could buy dozens of. The fact that these decks also contained tiny inboard condenser microphones was an added advantage. Now, by using precision-cut endless cassettes, one could record and play multiple loops in real time in a small room, studio or stage space without any extra equipment; even wires weren't needed as long as the batteries held up.
Loops are the plainchant, the fugal subjects of tape generated music. I wanted to make pieces with large numbers of loops that could be produced and handled live in real time. At first this was a cumbersome process, handling heavy open-reel decks, splicing tape and stretching it around the room, draped around mic stands like the cables of suspension bridges, but the advancement of boombox cassette recorders changed all that.
Lining up the boxes on a table and loading them with identical-length endless cassettes, I recorded repeated phrases, immediately playing them back and rerecording them to produce spiralling waves of phase patterns which gathered room tone and distortion as they accrued. These process pieces combined the most notable elements of the early tape works of Lucier and Reich (the slow planetary motion of Eno_s loops were not on the agenda at that moment) but with the added twist of live improvisation, the ability and tendency of the performer-surfer to look for a _groove_ in the increasingly chaotic flow and wash of the wave.
The large _orchestral_ playback pieces began with the simplest of aims, the desire to have a Christmas party, which later became known as Unsilent Night. I produced a multichannel tape, recorded the separate strands of the music onto cassettes, got several dozen friends with boomboxes together and gave them each a cassette. We started them simultaneously and walked around the village of New York City, creating a block-long stereo image for an audience which consisted of us and whoever happened to be passing by.
It was an experiment that worked beyond expectation. The music spread and filled the air in such a way that it was difficult to pinpoint where it was coming from even when you were in the middle of it. The sound mass seemed alive, blurring and oscillating due to slight variations in speed and pitch, and a constantly evolving polyphony was created in the moving throng as one heard individual machines suddenly coming into focus, then receding back into the overall cloud of sound. This changing perspective presented a paradigm of listener experience, attention and focus in which participants could wonder (as they wandered) what (and where) the piece was and what it sounded like even as they were listening. Was it the central information on the individual tapes, the hectic counterpoint one heard when walking in a small group of players or the great, rounded buzz one felt from the periphery?
That the sound mass literally moved made good Stockhausen_s 40-year old promise that one of the potentials of electronic music was a sonic plasticity to be achieved by transporting loudspeakers through space. Better yet, in this case, the speakers were moving into unclaimed territory, a vast stage-without-proscenium with an unlimited, untargeted (and unticketed) audience. Unlike the private island of the Walkman, the boombox reaches out, providing not only personal stereo but public statement. Those unexpected listeners we encountered on the street seemed genuinely engaged in a thing they enjoyed without being aware of any specific role (were they the audience?) hierarchical relationship (were we leading a performance?) or agenda (was this art?) Ironically, the success of this and subsequent presentations led to requests for such pieces to be played in museums and concert halls, bringing to mind the notion of the boombox as a Trojan Horse, a cultural crossover messenger working both sides of the street, ghetto-blasting indeed.