Last Thursday was interesting, and provided a lot to talk about, so I'll be posting it in parts, starting with something I posted the next day to levnet, as the journey to where I was going had some bearing on an ongoing discussion there...
The mind, as Aldous Huxley noted, is a reducing valve, filtering out everything that is unimportant. We walk around seeing only what we need to see, hearing only what we need to hear. Are you aware of the myriad sounds that fill your every waking moment, the airplane passing outside your window, the low hum of the mains, the central heating, the stretching and creaking of the structure of your house? Mostly not. And yet these are as much a part of the beauty of nature as the daffodils you put in a vase, the landscape hanging in a frame on your wall, if only you have ears to hear.
This is what noise art is about, for me. It's about reprioritising one's hearing so that every sound is important, significant, enjoyable.
When I learned about fractals, the geometry of nature, I learned to walk in a landscape of incredible geometrical structures, as big as clouds, as delicate as a fern, as beautiful and strong as a tree.
When I learned photography I learned to see the world as a series of still-lifes filled with structure and light and colour. Done well, with a keen photographer's eye, a walk to the shops can be as aesthetically pleasing as a visit to an art gallery.
Yesterday I created a unique sonic composition that will never be heard again, and for which I was the entire audience. I called it "To The Horse Hospital."
It started with the click of a door lock, and continued with quiet footfalls down an empty street accompanied by the distant drone of cars on a main road and intermittent bird song. The highlights of the piece included the complex pattern of rhythms, the hisses, clunks, swooshes and screeches of an underground train pulling into a station, random snippets of libretto - a young female voice saying "I was sooooooo drunk," the station announcement at Kings Cross St Pancreas "Alight for the Royal National Institute For The Blind" (isn't that lovely, "a light for the blind",) brief bursts of incongruous melody from mobile phones and the tinny hiss of an iPod's earpieces cut short by the sudden blare of a car horn, the echoing patter of two hundred or more shoes ascending a stone staircase. And so on.
And as with any piece of music, it had rules! I defined the rules when I decided on the composition, and they were to travel to The Horse Hospital from my house by the most direct route, and to listen to the sounds around me with the same concentration and thoughtfulness and openness as I would were I attending a concert or listening to a CD.
And what a most enjoyable piece it turned out to be. Later this evening I might create a new piece called "Having A Bath" somewhat calmer in tenor, quieter, more ambient, and lasting about an hour.
