NetNoMusic

http://www.paulbailey.us/2010/01/19/rip-netnewmusic-2008-2010/

Field Majority

Ah well. Good news and indeterminate news, as indicated by this photo.

The good news is that the 2009 Field Report arrived Wednesday morning and here you can see me using it as a shield to protect me from the news that arrived Friday morning - the loss of the Labour Party vote and the arrival of a hung parliament. I don't often comment on mainstream politics given the remit of this blog but these are unsettled times politically and I hope have the seeds of positive change in them. The Liberal Democrats, fronted by Nick Clegg, appeared to have a surge of interest which would help develop a three-way rather than two-way form of politics. We are left wondering if this is ever possible now.

And talking of seeds of positive change, the latest Field Report is as creatively rich and enjoyable as ever. As has become my ritual, I sat down to digest it in one sitting, although I have saved looking through the appended material, attached to the back cover, for a later time. I note with interest that rather like the footnotes in Flann O'Brien's 'The Third Policeman' - this extra material is heading to become larger than the main text i.e. the book. I wonder if the future editions of the Report will take a different shape?


Appropriately enough, the cover contains a reworked image of Paul Strand's 'Wall Street' from 1915:

Paul Strand 1915

David Dellafiora 2009

The insides of this collective bookwork are as eclectic as ever and it's difficult to resist the urge to scan the whole book to show you (though I won't be doing this today! ;-) so here are just a few snapshot examples:






I especially like this piece by Peter and Sven de Ru:

www.kunstenko.com

More power to the Field to continue to spoil its ballot paper...

New Shelves

I'm resurfacing again after being ill with CFS for a while so the world is beginning to take on colour again and my desire to be creative returns.

I posted my Field Report pages last Saturday (20th March) and have emailed Carla Cryptic to resume the threads of our collaboration on a PMusic Single. Also have plans over the Easter break to write up the text for some invited Consembles (more of this later). Have been working on an artist website for my colleague and friend Sarah Bennett - making me consider the possibilities of Chameleon Lectra in this direction (I must update my own site!). So much to think about. Ideas and plans pile up like the excess books that are strewn across the convenient resting places of my flat.

I've been thinking about putting up some new shelves.

Walk Into January (Mythogeography 2010)

Photo: '20/FLOWERPOT LANE' (I added the 10)

Note:
'Phil Smith, a senior research associate in Theatre & Performance, is opening up his research work to other members of the university (academic, research, technical and professional).

Phil's background is in theatre-making, as a writer and dramaturg, specialising in recent years in performance inspired by walking. For his most present research he is carrying out a series of walks, experimenting with the use of ‘inner maps’ (simple mental disciplines with a spatial aspect) and monitoring their possible applications for exploratory walking, and what disruptive or reparative qualities they have for walkers.

While some of the walks will be solo, Phil is now inviting any interested member of the university staff to join him for one of his ‘Inner Map Walks’.'

And so as per the above Phil invited me to walk with him around St. Thomas in Exeter UK. There were a few false starts (as there often are with someone who suffers from CFS - Solvitur Ambulando?) but we finally met on Monday 11th Jan in the newly-minted year of 2010. It was cold. In fact when we first met, by the railway arches, we began by looking at the melted water running behind the ice - a sort of covered waterfall - on the brickwork.

Phil declared the theme of our unguided tour to be 'texture' and we used this as a point of focus 'case we rambled too far. We walked around many subjects - the inappropriate use of rarefied terms in science esp. geology and medicine; councils' neglect of the visual landscape; the poetry and politics of using local materials; the variety of front gardens; our various forms of previous employment and the cheapest shop for beer in Exeter. We talked around the behind streets of St Thomas in parallel to Cowick Street and found churches, surprising curved brickwork, a closed community and the variety of front gardens.

We concluded our journey in suitably surreal fashion with a cup of tea and some eats in Crafty Cakes, a hybrid café/cake decorating shop in Cowick Street which led, perhaps inevitably, to discussions of wedding ceremonies we had attended before branching out into talking about writing, music and performance.

I think Phil would find Rochester fascinating so we parted with another sideways walk as a possibility...


recommended:

Counter-tourism at www.mythogeography.com

Walk walk walk: an archaeology of the familiar and the forgotten

walkwalkwalk: Stories from the Exeter Archive

Dusk Letter/Dusk Disk

Been away for a break, visiting friends and family in and around Rochester, Kent. Pleasantly surprised today by a letter from David Dellafiora found on my doormat today just as I was about to do catch-up supermarket shopping.

The package also contained a disk for submission to Consemble B: 'Dusk' with several tracks of birdsong recorded in Australia, at dusk, by Dave and his partner and fellow artist Sue Hartigan.

It is refreshing to get a contribution that has been put together with such care and integrity. There is a kind of creative energy that is perpetuated by such activity and Dave, and Sue, always contribute fully to any project they're engaged in.

Said in my reply email:
'Thanks once again for participating - and it's refreshing to get a CD in the mail that has been so lovingly crafted: it will certainly go into my archive! ...I'm pleased with Consemble B as it has the rather introverted, purple sky feel I was hoping for. I've gained a lot from doing this project and particularly in terms of composition I feel I've also learned and developed a sensibility for PMusic and its potential'.

Current Consembles now have just a eight more days to run.


click on the above image to hear track 1 of the disk

also listen here to Consemble B: 'Dusk'

Report from the Field of 2007

Ah, what joy! It's that time of year when a thump at your letterbox announces the arrival of the latest Field Report - the annual journal of Mail Art group Field Study International.

This edition is the thirteenth and it does not disappoint, in fact this publication is growing in terms of energy, scope, media - and size! What was once a breakfast-sized meal is now a ten course feast - impossible to digest in one sitting.

Coincidentally, as one of my contributed pages was for Consemble, the theme of sound is also pursued in this Field Report by Martin Desloovere's Thaw to Melt tracks (with link to 'ode to communicage') and the man from icons's binaural recordings of journeys to and from the BMC gallery, Brighton (these being provided on the Report's first audio CD).

There is a sense of maturity here as well - of Mail Art having grown up - and, on its own terms become more articulate and sophisticated. That's not to say that there isn't the place for intermittent idiot glee or the occasional anarchic acid slash - but the thing that strikes me is the sense of community (or communities) here, that the politics of Mail Art has lead it into people's lives in areas that Art, with the exception of music, rarely reach.



Although the Report is the work of many contributors, it is assembled with integrity and great care by David Dellafiora, maître d' of Field Study - and so many thanks to him from myself and fellow Studyiers.



(above 2 images by the Sticker Dude, raggededgepress.com)

Field Notes 2007

My, how time flies. This purpose of this post is to describe Chameleon Lectra's plans for 2007 and to announce the launch of 'The Sound of the Field' sound art mail art project. Twenty eight people - ranging from composers to non-musicians - responded to TSOTF, sending sounds by post (as CDs), email or phone. Initially a small-scale endeavour, offered as a contribution to Field Study's 'Field Report', I realised the potential of such a project and in April 2007 I shall be launching 'Consemble' - an ongoing series of invitations to make PMusic tracks as part of an 'Open Compositions' initiative.

Consequently, with PMusic releases coming to the fore, some of my planned RMusic projects will be developed later in the year but are still very much present in my thinking. One idea is to do a Motile page with Robert Jarvis on the topic of 'sound ecology'. Robert recently appeared on a BBC Radio 4 programme 'Endangered Sounds' in which he spoke about this aspect of his work.