Richard Chartier - an ultra-minimalist sound artist

Digital minimal composer, sound installation artist and graphic designer Richard Chartier has made a career of exploring the relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening. As an artist, Chartier has been responsible for critically acclaimed releases on 12k/LINE (USA), Trente Oiseaux (Germany), Spekk (Japan), Mutek_rec (Canada), and Fallt (Ireland), including collaborations with artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, COH and *0, and has appeared on numerous international compilations.
Jumping into the scene in 1998 with the lauded debut "direct.incidental.consequential," Chartier followed with a series of releases culminating in the release of "Series," the premiere release on his LINE label that was awarded digital music honorable mention by the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica in 2001. Since then, he has released a string of acclaimed solo releases and collaborative works. He’s performed his works internationally at MUTEK (Montreal, Canada), GRM/Maison de Radio France (Paris, France), Observatori (Valencia, Spain), DEAF (Dublin, Ireland), Transmediale (Berlin, Germany), Lovebytes (Sheffield, UK), The Leeds International Film Festival (Leeds, UK), The Rotterdam International Film Festival (Netherlands), Garage (Stralsund, Germany), La Batie (Geneva, switzerland), and other noted digital art/music festivals and at exhibits such as Frequenzen [Hz] at the Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt) and "A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968" and "Visual Music: Syneasthesia in Art and Music Since 1900" at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles).

His music is near-silent. He comments on his own art on his website --> http://www.3particles.com

A significant element of my work over the past several years has been the use of digitally rendered sounds that necessitate a focused engagement on the part of the auditor. Soft and hushed--almost imperceptible--fragments, high frequencies, bursts, static and quiet, low, shifting tones create a complex textural field. Idealized as an asymtotic process of composition which approaches an unattainable paradigm of formalism, the evidence left of the work's creation speaks to an incremental and meticulous process of reduction. Sonic moments placed under a microscope for consideration and eventual emaciation; a cutting away or a deepening within and into an isolated microsecond. Compositional focus often occurs in the space between the sounds....

IN PERFORMANCE
My live performance differs perhaps most significantly from my recorded work by virtue of an increased audibility and activity. The sounds used are selected from a collection of predesigned sounds, culled from past compositions and unreleased work but chosen with attention to the space and situation in which they will be presented as part of a new performative composition.......

(I cut them short, there are the remaining parts in his website)

In one of his interview he told his inspirations:

i have noticed that the things that influence my sound compositions the most have been visual. i think of sound in visual terms which stems from my education as a painter/designer. (and vice versa.. i often describe visual works with sound terms)
harry bertoia has interested me for a long time... his monoprints, his sound sculptures, his recordings, his design. i have collected mid century furniture since 1990 so thats where his work first entered my life.
marcel duchamp... because of the complete interrelationship between his works and his life, and the different mediums he explored.
other visual artists: gyorgy kepes, william baziotes, agnes martin, donald judd... off the top of my head.

For one of his installations with Taylor Deupree click ----> http://www.gfineartdc.com/chartier/chartier.htm

-a comment on his art by Bret McCabe ---> http://www.citypaper.com/special/story.asp?id=5997

and I Promise it will be my last link,

/(^_^)\

downloadable clickie---->

http://rapidshare.com/files/5639597/richard_chartier_-_direct__incidental__consequental_-_01.digisc.mp3

Some babblings about Sound Art.

I have been planning to write a post about sound art and it is a perfect time to write it. Thanks to Ozge, she put the nice events of Galata Perform.
So let's see.


I have been digging the late electronic music pieces since last year and lately i have found myself trying to learn how it evolved from the very first beginning to today. I felt very surprised when i noticed that every electronic musician that I love to listen are also sound artists when i clicked their personal sites. They say their music has the inspirations of the avant-garde backgrounds of music and they have been doing installations.


So what is sound art?

Over the past century, an artform has emerged between the realms of visual art and music. Created by both composers and sculptors, 'sound art' challenges fundamental divisions between these two sister arts and may be found in museums, festivals, or public sites. Works of sound art play on the fringes of our often-unconscious aural experience of a world dominated by the visual. This work addresses our ears in surprising ways: it is not strictly music, or noise, or speech, or any sound found in nature, but often includes, combines, and transforms elements of all of these. Sound art sculpts sound in space and time, reacts to environments and reshapes them, and frames ambient "found" sound, altering our concepts of space, time, music, and noise.Sound art’s redefinition of artistic space and time -- focusing our attention and changing our perception of particular moments through sound -- is often accomplished through the incorporation of new technologies. Technological advances at the turn of the 20th century provided both the fundamental tools of sound art (such as the radio and phonograph) and the modern concept of noise, which arose in tandem with the machine age. Indeed, the roots of sound art can be traced to that time, when new sounds and mechanical devices radically expanded possibilities in the visual arts and music.(Mass MoCA)


I have downloaded some composers that may be tagged as early electronic musicians, experimentalists, avantgardeners, minimalists, and concrete music is another tag for their genre.




Karlheinz Stockhausen (b.1928)

http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/stockhauseninterview.html

I won't write musical background of Karlheinz Stockhausen since it can be found anywhere, I want to share music of him.

http://rapidshare.com/files/5501164/01.etude__1952_.mp3



Iannis Xenakis,
who said
"with the aid of electronic computers, the composer becomes a sort of pilot: pressing buttons, introducing coordinates, and supervising the controls of a cosmic vessel sailing in the space of sound, across sonic constellations and galaxies that could formerly be glimpsed only in a distant dream"
http://rapidshare.com/files/5507192/iannis_xenakis_-_chamber_music__1955-1990__disc1_-_01_tetras.mp3



There are more than the above two for sure but I have seen their names many times when i searched so decided to introduce them. For the interested people,

http://www.ubu.com/sound/ has a great source of sound artists(not only sound but all intermedia disciplines.)

And lastly, last year I had a chance to watch a film called MODULATIONS (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139468/), which tries to introduce the root of electronic music. Full of interviews, impressive visual support and music for sure, if you ever have a chance to see it, you will be more satisfied.

So have a good weekend.

ART-IST EVENT: Yeno Ceno Music Program @ GalataPerform

STOMP!

I want to announce a group of very successful intermediatics:Stomp, a unique combination of percussion, movement and visual comedy. Below is the information gathered from their web page, www.stomponline.com There are also downloadable video and audio clips. Enjoy!



What does the word STOMP make you think of?

Music, Dance, Theatre, Choreography or Performance Art? All of the above! Or is it none of the above. Well, both are sort of right...In a way. Confused? read on...

STOMP is a movement, of bodies, objects, sounds - even abstract ideas. But what makes it so appealing is that the cast uses everyday objects, but in non-traditional ways.

There's no speech, no dialogue, not even a plot.

So why go see STOMP? Well, have you ever composed a symphony using only matchbooks as instruments? Or created a dance routine based around sweeping? You may have done this a little, but get a group of rhythmically gifted, extremely coordinated bodies with definitive personalities, and you have the makings for STOMP.

STOMP started stomping on the streets of Brighton, England. Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas the creators of STOMP were a group of street performers commonly know as "buskers" trying to grab people's attention.

And attention is what they received

Busking is an old custom in the UK, dating back to booth theatres erected at village fairs in the Middle Ages. Luke and Steve updated this historical custom and created a modern symbiotic marriage between movement and music.

You're mistaken if you look for a hidden message in STOMP. There are no political connotations, no pretentious techniques, and no dialogue to misconstrue. Instead, you're bombarded by noises that you usually try to block out. STOMP takes the everyday sounds of pipes and brooms, lighters and garbage pail lids, and creates the extraordinary.

So how do you describe STOMP? If you ask one of the creators, Luke Cresswell, he would simply say, "at the end of the day, STOMP is what it is."