Listen With Others No.1 – June 6th 2025
Links are in blue
1. Deep Listening Band (Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Panaiotis) – Suiren (10’01”) Deep Listening (1989)
“For the song, they managed to capture the acoustics of the Fort Worden Cistern, a cavernous underground water tank in Port Townshend, Washington, which possesses a 45-second reverberation time producing pure, smooth reverberation that overlaps the original sound.” Spotify link
2. Toshiya Tsunoda – CD 1: Extract From Field Recording Archive #1 / Track 1: Solid vibration from the concrete pavement of a pier where the fish market used to be held (11’34”)
“recorded at the Misaki Seafood Regional Wholesale Market at the Misaki Port, Miura City, Kanagawa Prefecture on May 5, 1996” Bandcamp link
3. Jennifer Walshe – Guillaume De Machaut: Messe de Notre Dame, Agnus Dei (4’03”) A Late Anthology of Early Music Vol. 1: Ancient to Renaissance (2020)
“The author reflects on their experience teaching Western music history, which traditionally presents music as evolving logically from early vocal forms like plainchant. They collaborated with Dadabots, who trained a neural network on recordings of the author’s voice, producing 841 AI-generated audio files. As the network progressed, it began to resemble the human voice, echoing the historical progression from primitive sounds to structured music. In their piece A Late Anthology, the author aligns the AI’s learning process with the historical development of Western music, using each as a lens to interpret the other. The work proposes an alternative way of understanding music history through the interplay of voice, machine learning, and time.” Bandcamp link
4. Jez Riley French – Turbine hall mezzanine railings (05’24”) – Audible Silence – Tate Modern (2019)
“Works based on the structural and spatial resonances of architectural structures has been a key aspect of my interest in listening for many years, beginning with a fascination with church acoustics, sound jars and the vibrations of utilitarian structures.” Bandcamp link
5. Miya Masaoka – Part 1 – While I was walking I heard a sound (8’57’’)
“Boy sopranos, male falsettos and operatic singers join forces in a total of three choirs and nine soloists consisting of one hundred and twenty singers. While I Was Walking, I Heard a Sound is scored for up to 42 voices and explores the boundaries of vocal art. It was recorded in a large, resonant cathedral with a natural 2.5 second reverberation.” Link
6. John Tjhia – Thing-Like (9’36”) 2019
“Jon Tjhia has created a suite of ‘exercises’ – basically analogous to piano études, or studies, for edited sound works. Taking Walter Ong’s preoccupations with the ‘immersive’ and vital nature of oral culture as a point of departure, these pieces tease and critique the heavy burden of speech and its value: as social currency, blunt instrument, monetary resource and point of connection.” Podcast link with artist interview
7. Morton Feldman: Three Voices (excerpt)
“Three Voices is a 1982 composition by Morton Feldman, written in homage to his friends Philip Guston and Frank O’Hara, and dedicated to Joan La Barbara.[1] The work consists of three vocal parts: Feldman’s original intention was that a singer would perform one part while being accompanied by pre-recordings of the two other parts. Alternatively the piece may be performed by three voices.[2] Most of the work is sung without text, but Feldman also incorporates two lines from O’Hara’s 1957 poem Wind.[3]” Bandcamp link
8. Alvin Lucier – I Am Sitting In A Room (45’ 00)
“In this fascinating exploration of acoustical phenomena, Alvin Lucier slips from the domain of language to that of music in the course of 40 minutes and 32 repetitions of a simple paragraph of text. In I Am Sitting In A Room, several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. As the repetitive process continues, those sounds common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforced. The others are gradually eliminated.” Bandcamp link
“I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.” Wikipedia page here
1. Deep Listening Band – Suiren (10’01”)
2. Toshiya Tsunoda – Solid vibration from the concrete pavement of a pier where the fish market used to be held (11’34”)
3. Jennifer Walshe – Guillaume De Machaut… (4’03”)
4. Jez Riley French -Turbine hall mezzanine railings (5’24”)
5. Miya Masaoka – Part 1- While I was walking I heard a sound (8’57’’)
6. John Tjhia – Thing-Like (9’36”)
7. Morton Feldman – Three Voices (8’48”) (excerpt) [we didn’t end up listening to this due to a late start and poor maths]
8. Alvin Lucier – I Am Sitting In A Room (45’ 00)
This is a Spotify playlist that includes some of the above pieces
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