Want to send a 600 MB AIFF?

by lawrence

This could be useful for sound artists, since they need to send / receive large audio files all the time. YouSendIt used to be a good one but since the maximum file size of a send-for-free service was reduced to 100 MB instead of 1 GB……

Mind you, the “P2P” in the above post’s title does not refer to P2P file swapping softwares such as Bit Torrent or eMule, but rather, “large file transferring software”.




2 Cases of Phonography art (?)

by lawrence

There are a lot of people doing phonography / field-recording around the world, most of them carry their recording gears wherever they go in order to escape from the potential impulse of committing suicide in case an epiphanic aural moment slips under their noses. However, this kind of labourious dedication doesn’t always promise remarkable end product. As the following two instances demonstrate, the best phonography works, more often than not, are the result of blind chance.

The first piece is probably already very familiar for some, it’s a video footage captured by someone with a cellphone camera on a double-deck bus in Hong Kong. The six-minute video features a apparently high-pressured middle-aged uncle and a twenty-something lad (later it turned out his name is Alvin). To put it simple: Alvin tapped the uncle on the shoulder suggesting that the latter restricts his volume when talking into cellphone, only to find himself inducing a series of scolding and obscenities. The event and its spin-offs were well-documented in English by Roland Soong of ESWN here. And here is the video (via YouTube, with Chinese and English subtitles).

The video also reminds Hong Kong netizens of another public notoriety, captured only as audio file this time. It’s the recording of a complain phone call session between a guy named Alan Ho and two female operators at The Airport Authority Hong Kong. This is an interesting case of phonography work not only for its content, but also its structure. A Wiki-style document of the event can be viewed here (in Chinese only). Click here to download the recording (MP3 format).

Question: Are these phonography art?




“From Flash to Pixel” (New Media exhibition in Shanghai)

by lawrence

A show in Shanghai, featuring Ulf Langheinrich of the Austrian multimedia duo Granular Synthesis, Thomas McIntosh of [The User], and Dumb Type (Ryoji Ikeda-related).

FROM FLASH TO PIXEL
International New Media Exhibition

Time: May 21 - July 11, 2006
Venue: Zendai MoMA (#28, Lane 199, Fangdian rd., Pudong Xinqu, Shanghai)

Opening ceremony: 19:00, May 21, 2006 (Sunday)
Curator: Richard Castelli

Artists:

Romy Achituv (Israel)
Gregory Barsamian (US)
Jean Michel Bruyère (France / Senegal)
DU Zhenjun 杜震君 (China)
Dumb Type (Japan)
Ulf Langheinrich (Germany / Austria)
Marie Maquaire (France)
Thomas McIntosh (Canada)
minim++ (Japan)
David Moises (Austria)
Erwin Redl (Austria / US)
Tomohiro Sato (Japan)
Jeffrey Shaw (Australia)
Pierrick Sorin (France)
Time’s Up (Austria / Australia)
Holger Förterer (Germany)




R.I.P.: Mr. LIANG Juhui 梁钜辉

by lawrence

From Arts.tom.com:

二零零六年五月二十二日，著名当代艺术家梁钜辉因突发心脏病抢救无效，在广州逝世，终年四十七岁。

(in translation) The famous contemporary artist LIANG Juhui died of a sudden heart attack in Guangzhou, May 22, 2006. He was fourty-seven.

I wouldn’t say I’m familiar with Liang’s works, though I’ve heard of his group Big Tail Elephants back in my University days. Last year, I had a casual conversation with him in one of the “D-Labs”, a series of workshops as part of the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial program. A wonderfully warm-hearted person, may he rest in peace.

Below is curator Hou Hanru’s open letter. Artist / designer Ou Ning wrote a few words on his blog (Chinese), and here’s the memorial page for Liang.

Dear friends,

I think you may have heard the terrible news that Liang Juhui, a Guangzhou based artist, and a member of the “Big Tail Elephants” Group past away yesterday due to a totally unexpected heart problem, which could result from a medical accident. this is immensely devastating… all his firends, including myself who have been working closely with him for over a decade, are deeply shocked and saddened!

A-Hui has been one of the most remarkable artists emerged in China, and has contributed to the local and international art scenes as an always energetic, creative and positive figure. He was incredibly committed, engaged in his search for the significance of contemporary art’s role in the society and produced a considerable body of wonderful works. in the meantime, he was one of the most generous persons that we have seen, always available and capable to provide aides to his comrades, old and new, Chinese or foreigne.

A-Hui was an extremely kind and tender hudsband and father, left behind him his wife and two lovely children… and all those who loved him.

His death hits us most dramatically and we miss him infinitely…

A-Hui’s family and the art community in Guangzhou will organised his funeral in Guangzhou in the morning of 26th May, and a memorial exhibition of his work, including his new installation for the 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, will be presented in the Guangdong Art Museum in Guangzhou on the same day. we hope to be able to see you there, and share our love and memory of our dearest brother…

yours
Hou Hanru




Osram China: Whose Utopia?

by lawrence

This is a text that I translated for CAO Fei 曹斐 and Zafka (ZHANG Anding 张安定)’s Osram project “What are they doing here?”, which will be presented at the Sydney Biennale soon. The project is funded by Siemens Arts Programme and has debuted last month in the Osram factory in Foshan, a city about 1-hour’s drive from Guangzhou. Choreographer Frances d’Ath has a write-up here. Basically it’s a project about the social changes of China in the context of globalization, or so the artist claims. Anyway, the text below probably has very little to do with sound art whatsoever, I’m posting it here because it’s one of the rare cases that Chinese sound artist gets involved with other forms of contemporary art (in this case: theatre and video). Okay I know that people like ZHANG Jian (of FM3) does a lot of sound design for theatre pieces, but that’s another story. Here’s the text, read it and make your own conclusion.

Osram China: Whose Utopia?

I went to Osram several times in the weekends to do field recording during the past six months. The trip from Guangzhou to Foshan is not very long: get off at Keng Kou metro station in the suburb of Guangzhou, drive along the Guangzhou - Foshan Expressway, and you’ll see Osram besides the spiral highway in 20 minutes.

The whole trip is quite psychedelic for me. But what’s more psychedelic than the trip itself is the sonic environment of Osram: a fascinating blend of pre-industrial and industrial sounds. The factory is not huge, but the contrast and mixture of sounds in different spaces are very interesting: outside of the factory are vast, quiet farming land and the roaring railway and expressway besides the walls. Inside of it, there are also grassland and densely organized courtyards in addition to the standardized production line workshops, as well as dormitories and dining halls which stay empty regularly because of the working schedule. All these spaces are inter-embedded into a big complex space in which the workers work and live, results in what I call the “aural Osram”. The warble of the birds on the grassland, mixed with the mumbling noise from the workshops in the distance, form a psychedelic soundscape of pre-industrial and industrial sounds.

Such a sonic environment feels radically unreal. Even when dealing with the workers, I can still touch this unrealness and the omnipresent alienation. It’s like a giant black hole - the workers’ dream and their torporific life happens in the factory area at the same time. The leftist hatred that I prepared for modern industry didn’t work, my planned critique or sympathy, together with the workers’ pain and joy, vanished in the factory before even a sparkle of idea.

In another word, in the sample of Osram, the criticism of me as an outsider has turned into a 100% utopia. And the workers’ utopia - the imagination that they have on modern industry and their aspiration towards modern life - is also present at Osram. What’s cruel is the fact that the situation is but the two sides of the same coin of modernity, after all, their utopia is nothing different from mine. In the seemingly misplaced imagination are the paralleled utopias about the ultimate situation of human beings. Such utopias, examined nowadays, more or less sank into the swamp of diluteness.

Yes, as Slavoj Žižek puts it, we must reinvent a new utopia - it’s neither the imagination of future nor the reminiscence of the past. The new utopia is now. The very practice of turning the impossible into the possible is utopia.

Therefore, the arrangement of sound structure in this album is based not on critical reasoning. I tried to paint my imagination, feelings and memory about Osram in an impressionistic fashion by using both concrete and abstract materials, thus creating an aural utopia in an attempt to present the above issue: their utopia is also our utopia.

All materials were collected on the way to Osram and in the Osram factory. The three tracks are arranged in the sequence of “City - Factory - Product”. City’s Dream is about my listening and imagination when traveling between the two cities; Factory Sonata is my attempt to recreate my feelings when strolling between different spaces of the factory; the third track is an imagination of product, which aims at a state of meditation during the field recording work in the workshops and the “Playing with light bulbs” session.

Track titles / Durations:

1. City’s Dream 18:58
2. Factory Sonata 21:34
3. An Imagination of Product 14:40

Original text by ZHANG Anding (Zafka)
Translated by Lawrence Li




Torturing Nurse live @ Zendai MoMA 06.03.03

by lawrence

Go download it here.

Some fotos from the show.

Toturing Nurse’s Junky (guy in green shirt in the video)’s diary about it.




SAND festival 06 (Hong Kong)

by lawrence

(UPDATE June 26, 2006: For the final line-up of the festival, please refer to the official site - linked at the bottom of this post.)
Good to learn about a new (at least to me) new music festival. Looks like there are far more experimental (?) musicians out there from or based in Hong Kong than I previously thought. Also, Chinese artists from Southeast Asian countries are basically absent on Chinese New Ear, we shall catch up……

[SAND MUSIC FESTIVAL]

When: June 24th, 2006
Where: Para/site Artspace (G/F, 4 Po Yan Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong)

Artists:

Ang Song Ming (Singapore)
Cedric Maridet (Hong Kong)
Fathmount (Hong Kong)
Li Chin Sung (Hong Kong)
Nanahara Shuya (Hong Kong)
New Fairfield Recreations and Parks (Hong Kong)
Pei (Taipei)
Peter Scherr (Hong Kong)
Sylvain Holtermann (Hong Kong)
Yeoh Yin Pin (Malaysia)
Zenlu (Shenzhen, China)

SAND Summer 2006 is the first music festival organized by the band New Fairfield Recreations and Parks and White Noise Records. The festival aims at presenting contemporary music such as drone, noise, sound art and free jazz by artists with different cultural backgrounds. By combining different acts on one night, we wish to present the diffusion of this art form across different geographical areas.

Official Website




Review of NOIShanghai anniversary show (by Dominik)

by lawrence

A review of the NOIShanghai anniversary concert (official site) on May 7, written by one of the participating artists Dominik. It will be published in the next issue of That’s Shanghai. (That’s Magazines do love new music/sound art, don’t they?)

Go read the review here on Junky (of Torturing Nurse)’s blog.




(fwd) Avant-garde et art sonore chinois

by lawrence

To French readers: just found this page about FM3 (official site), 718 (SUN Lei), Aitar & LI Chin-sung in my referrers list.




That’s PRD reviews Double Fish’s EP

by lawrence

Spotted a review of Double Fish (ZHU Jianhui)’s EP “inter net” on the May issue of That’s PRD (formerly That’s Guangzhou and That’s Shenzhen), an English language free local guide magazine. Isn’t it thrilling for D.F. to be on the same page of Madonna? ^_^

First thing first: the title of the EP, to be more accurate, is “inter 叻”. The Chinese character is used in Cantonese language for “smart” or “bright” (adj.), with a pronunciation that is close to “let”. Since Cantonese people has a long tradition of messing consonant “l” with “n”, it is used here as a cross-language word play of “inter net”.

The review is quite okay for a magazine like That’s PRD, but why bothers reading it when you can listen to three of the six tracks on its webpage? Go try it, and support D.F. with your 8 USD (for the EP). Don’t forget to check out the rest of the Reconfiguration Records website too.

My opinion? I think D.F. has produced some of the most enjoyable and energetic electronica music of China, although…nevermind what’s after “although”, musicians make music, and that’s it.

Related:

# About D.F. and his “netwav” online label




GNO Top 10 series - Wolfenstein

by lawrence

Wolfenstein (XIE Zhongqi) is a sound artist based in Taipei. He is a member of Taipei Sound Unit - a local branch of China Sound Unit - and has been experimenting with as many techniques of sound making as possible.

Wolfenstein’s Chinese language blog is here and his entry at Chinese New Ear is here.

WOLFENSTEIN’S TOP TEN ALBUMS

# LIM Giong 林強 - Entertainment World 娛樂世界 (1994)

The only work of Taiwan pop music that is up to the international standard.

# Massive Attack - Protection (1994)

# Underworld - Everything Everything (2000)

Top-notch electronica performing group.

# Goldie - Timeless (1995)

The first time I heard “flying” beats. Too bad that drum’n'bass went into a beat cul-de-sac later, and Goldie stopped being able to produce anything exciting.

# Ryuichi Sakamoto - Neo Geo (1987)

The only piano piece from Prof. Sakamoto that’s worth listening to (forget about the live version).

# Carl Stone - Shing Kee (1986)

Was completely dumbfounded when I first listened to this. Grandiosity within such simple rules and form.

# Farmers Manual - FSCK (1997)

All the Mego CDs are fading in my mind, with this only exception.

# Yoshimatsu Takashi - Piano Concerto “Memo Flora” (1997)

# Dajuin Yao - ForeTaste Radio (2000 - 2003)

Dajuin is Dajuin, others are others.

# Autechre - Untilted (2005)

Everybody thinks I’m an Autechre geek so I have to pick one of theirs.

(GNO Top 10 series invites Chinese sound artists/experimental musicians to list music/albums that are either their personal favorites or have crucial influence on them as artists. By doing this, we try to present the Chinese aural art scene in the context of the global music ecology.)




Max/MSP lecture at Central Conservatory

by lawrence

This is of course too late: in three hours, there will be a Max/MSP lecture by Diato Manabe at Central Conservatory, Beijing.

(from We Need Money Not Art)

DorkbotBJ Meeting 1
Max/Msp Lecture

Lecturer: Diato Manabe
Time: 15:00, May 19, 2006
Venue: Studio 2 of CEMC, Central Conservatory, Beijing

Daito Manabe:
Sound designer, programmer

Born in 1976. B of Mathemati[k]s at Tokyo University of Science. After working as a system engineer and a programmer, he graduated from IAMAS (International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences) in 2004. Internationally acting Turntablist and Sound Artist using surround/oscillation/super low frequency technology and pursuing sensual peculiarity, commonality and interaction. Living in Tokyo city. (bio from Manabe’s own website)




Apocalypse PRD (show in Guangzhou tomorrow)

by lawrence

Here’s something to look forward to for tomorrow night, note that the title of the performance has evolved from “Apocalypse Guangzhou” to “Apocalypse PRD”. PRD for Pearl River Delta 珠江三角洲 of course, a bit puzzled at why the Chinese title isn’t 珠三角启示录. Btw, I blogged about their pre-show video screening session a month ago.

Apocalypse PRD 岭南启示录

- Canton demon nightmare in Liwan
- Death metal pornographic Chungongtu
- Zhuangyuanfang acid-dipped showgirls
- Going upriver and out of your mind

Frances d’Ath, Paul Emmanuel and Emile Zile would like to invite you to Apocalypse PRD, a Death Metal Cantonese Opera performance at Park 19.

Where: Park 19, 8/F, Building #2, 168 Nantai Rd., Jiangnan Da Dao Nan, Haizhu district, Guangzhou.
When: 20:00, April 16 (Sunday)
Contact: +86 20 2228 5151 (Chinese), +86 135 3984 9666 (English)

# Supported by Australia-China Council and Wales Arts International.

D’Ath’s award-winning blog: www.supernaut.info
D’Ath’s website: www.francesdath.info
Zile’s website: www.emilezile.com

Liwan (荔湾): a district of Guangzhou.
Chungongtu (春宫图): ancient Chinese porn illustration.
Zhuangyuanfang (状元坊): famous inexpensive shopping area in Guangzhou.




C_/Chinese_/Challenge_ (show in Guangzhou)

by lawrence

Rock music (no matter what kind of prefixes you add before the word) is usually out of the range of GNO’s radar, but this could be something potentially interesting.

C_/Chinese_/Challenge_

Time: 20:00, May 13, 2006
Venue: Bunker Bar (G/F, Guangliang Plaza, Huanshi Rd., Guangzhou)

Bands:

A (Guangzhou)
Xiao He 小河 (Beijing)
Attic Circus (aka Top Floor Circus 顶楼马戏团, Shanghai)

Entrance: 50 yuan (30 yuan for students)
Inquiry: Mr. BGG, +86 135 8033 4244

A: electronica/ambient trio.
Xiao He: alternative folk + improv + avant-rock + Jazz.
Attic Circus: crackpot hysterical punk/rock + exhibitionist stage performance.




Hei! At least this improves my Technorati pagerank

by lawrence

http://iphen.blogbus.com/logs/2006/05/2426560.html (Chinese only)




And the winner is…

by lawrence

Congratulations to my friend Jimi Shi Wenhua, whose short film Endless was awarded at:

1. Athens International Film + Video Festival 2006 (a winner of Experimental film category). Full winners list.

2. The 39th Humboldt International Short Film Festival (Best Experimental - film or DV). Full winners list.

Wenhua’s website is here.




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