I've been pretty busy the last week or so and haven't had time to post anything new. Let's see... I'll have another performance of for technician and audio on the 21st. This time with actual audio. It'll be a longer program with more pieces than last time so I'm hoping that will mean more people in the audience. I was hoping to get onto the program for next week's Sounding Out concert, but I'm not an MFA so they couldn't fit me in. Eh. I was going to present a new piece I'm developing called n equals. Technically, the version I would have presented would be called n = 5; 34.3927, -118.5674. Not really as mathematical as it looks, although I personally really enjoy that aspect. I pick a central location (ROD Music Hall @ CalArts) and an integer (5, because ROD has a 5.1 sound system). Then, in the directions from which each of the speakers face, I travel 5 km and make a field recording wherever I end up which lasts 5 minutes. Then I bring those recording back to the central location, and play them all simultaneously from the direction they originated. I kind of want to talk about what this means to me, but I wouldn't feel comfortable at this point putting something like that into writing, even if it is entirely editable. Of course I found out I wouldn't be able to present the piece AFTER I made the recordings. These 5 locations I ended up with looked pretty cool. Several of them I would have to hike to, which I'm more than fine with. One was in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, another was in some kind of industrial park. With my good friend Houston, I set out to make these recordings. We were heading to the first location, which was way far east on Pico Canyon Road, when we reached a gate and a dude who was supposed to be security.
guy: Who are you guys with?
me: No one, we just wanted to check out what's over here.
guy: Can't let you in.
me: Why? Is it private property?
guy: I just can't. How are you gonna get in? There's a gate right there.
me: Well then what IS over there?
guy: Can't tell you.
me: ... Okay... Thanks...
So that was a big, sketchy let down. I anyone reading this knows what's at the end of Pico Cyn, I would very much like to know. Also maybe how to get in... So we had to go back to town, and redo the directions. I ended up changing it n to 3, maintaining the hard left and right directionality, but combining the rear left and right into a back center. This made things much more manageable. The three new locations were a high school, another suburban neighborhood, and somewhere in the middle of Railroad in Newhall. These recordings turned out very well. And Houston got some beautiful pictures of the process. Here's a stereo mix of the result:
http://www.mediafire.com/?gj05jsa4ct781
The best news of all is that I've sent an email to an artist called Naut Humon who curates a space with 10.2 surround sound and 360ยบ, 10 channel video projection. He calls it the RML. I've asked him to help me do a realization of n = 10. That would just be incredible. I would die. Here's his website. The thing looks pretty sick to say the least.
I'll be better about posting in the future.
Lates.
-- Aidan
