CASCADE SERIES digital images at n'fold gallery
from WHITE_LINE
reviewed by BG Nichols
14 July 2007
Once again, and quite by accident, I came across the work of John Kannenberg whilst surfing around the net. Kannenberg's work offers irreducible textural solutions to fine art / graphic territories, through elegantly worked mappings of digital information, rinsed through a series of filters to produce a minimalist diorama that excites the imagination.
The "Cascade" series was my initial point of entry, a highly refined series of precision optics, that gradually reduce and subtract in content, yet still holding the attention with their fascinating patterns and pixelations. On further investigation, I discover that Kannenberg has a website: www.johnkannenberg.com, and here, I found a treasure trove of highly layered digital compositions, explorations of techniques that include photographs and drawings being composited, repeated, and layered to create dense, yet minimal textural fields like a finely woven fabric. Here we see energised patterns of planes, plateaus and striations that fuse into a singular visual screen, each series being subjected to further deformation and refinement to form a singularly unique body of work. It comes as no surprise to me then, that Kannenberg also works in sound, and applies similar techniques to sonic work via his net-label Stasis Field. Kannenberg is currently developing work further with video and live art presentations, and I recommend a visit to all of the websites mentioned for further information. In the much maligned world of digital visual arts, Kannenberg appears to have evolved a technique that is equally at home in the digital and physical environment with an impressive corpus of work that entices the eye, and ignites the senses. BGN
AUTUMN ENSO: DVD release on Stasisfield
from
Earlabs.org
reviewed by Jos Smolders
20 September 2006
Many of us know John Kannenberg as the host of Stasisfield, one of the finest netlabels around. The design of the site indicates that Kannenberg has an affiliation with image and design as well. Kannenberg released what he calls a videopainting at a dvd-r through his own label.
The piece starts with a black night and sparks which are springing from a fire, but shown upside down. So you see flashes of light falling down. The image is faded into a video where we look up in the air while driving in a car at night. And so we see the streetlights and the beams of a bridges following the same route as the sparks did: they also seem to 'fall down'.
Kannenberg constantly plays with real images, semi-real images and abstractions of images. The tempo with which images alternate and progress is in sync with the music and because the images are interesting to look at indeed constantly shift and move you just watching. Not so much in expectation of what is coming as in savouring the moment. Kannenberg is a master in selecting images and colors. With the use of software (MSP?) he creates an imaginary landscape just at the brim of reality and abstraction.
Some 6 minutes into the piece a clearly discernable melody is started (with the use of a shakuhashi?). In the meantime horizontally oriented blurred images are presented, really enchanting.
The sounds that Kannenberg uses range from acoustic (in the beginning we hear quasi realistic sounds in a quasi space) to melodic (albeit very minimal).
After 10 minutes real, discernable images appear again. This time accompanied by a synthetic tone. The image is distorted and resolution turned down until we see only blocks, which are then afgewisseld by a neat rows of blocks which each tilt ever so little. An easier lower music with a pink noise low in the background brings up rasters of some sort of cloth which fades away and the leaves and trees are again in sight.
The images and the sound match perfectly and I was not a moment bored. Sometimes keeping your attention at the screen can be difficult. But here the alternation of images (real, semi real and abstract) is very well structured.
The structure of the piece is clearly indicated with returning images. E.g. near the end the fire (of the beginning) is shown again but not upside down. The O that is on the cover certainly refers to a circle in the composition, and vice versa.
There are of course also flaws. Sometimes the video editing is a bit too rough (like the big O at 1'30") which immediately is clear when the rest is so smooth and the appearance of the O in a large focus of a painted o on paper (18'00") seems a bit odd within its visual context. And certainly the final few minutes are a bit 'easy' with too clearly discernable images. Which is strange considering the finesse that is shown in the earlier 30 or so minutes.
It is my opinion that Kannenberg has shown that, aside from his audio works, he also is a very good, promising video artist. Please carry on!
AUTUMN ENSO : CDR release on Why Not LTD
from
Vital Weekly
reviewed by Frans de Waard
16 November 2005
JOHN KANNENBERG
AUTUMN ENSO (CDR by Why Not LTD)
The enso is a stark black circle of ink, known from Japanese calligraphy and one of the important symbols of zen. John >Kannenberg saw examples in an exhibition and was inspired to make enso using autumn leaves. These leaves were then put in a circle around instruments that are circles: a snare drum, hi-hat and crash cymbal. The snare drum was covered with rice paper. That's the basic set-up by which Kannenberg plays his music. Drum sounds as such are not in there, except maybe for the percussive opening sounds of 'Prelude'. Each of the six pieces are low humming beauties of drone music. It's hard to tell what it that he does exactly, by what means of processing, but he slabs out some truely beautiful pieces of overtones sounds, ringing and buzzing around, like a continuous semishigure. As pieces of music that are inside drone music, even when the entire process seems to be made with computer. Microsound with a capital M (I'm sure the lowercase posse will be offended by this). Some great stuff on there. (FdW)
Address: http://www.geocities.com/whynotltd/
ENTROPY AND INCANDESCENCE: split release with Omnid on Cohort
from
Vital Weekly
reviewed by Frans de Waard
05 October 2005
OMNID/JOHN KANNENBERG -
ENTROPY AND INCANDESCENCE (CDR by Cohort Records)
This is the first release in a new series of split CDRs, with each artist contributing around thirty minutes of material. On this first one two entirely different artists team up. First on is Omnid, perhaps well-known to the Vital Weekly reader, who offers seven tracks of his laptop music. A mixed bunch at that, but mostly Omnid is playing around with glitchy rhythmical notions and other fine processing of whatever Omnid can layhis hands on while recording. It's not his finest moment as the tracks don't leave a big impression on me. It's sort of the usual, standard ok microsound material. The other artist is John Kannenberg who offers just one piece. Very softly recorded (or mastered), this is a top piece of microsound. Hissy, glitchy, slowly developing and enveloping, this is a great ambient glitch piece. This alone is worth getting it. (FdW)
Address: http://www.cohortrecords.0catch.com
LIVE REVIEW : "Two Cities" w/Glenn Bach, live at so.cal.sonic
so.cal.sonic
April 19-24, 2005 in Long Beach, CA
By Greggory Moore
[ The following contains excerpts from a review of so.cal.sonic, a week-long festival of experimental and improvisational music that took place in Long Beach, CA in April of 2005. Read the entire exhaustive review of every act from every night of the festival at so.cal.sonic's official site. ]
Ludwig Wittgenstein writes: "It will often prove useful in philosophy to say to ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing." God has not inscribed on tablets what sound qualifies as music or as good, or that it is music only if it is poured into the molds of leitmotifs and movements or verses and refrains; there is only sound, label it how we will. so.cal.sonic, a six-day festival of "experimental and improvised music" held in various locations about Long Beach , is about sound, the sonic moment, the waves of air upon the eardrums before the brain begins its narrative. That in no way diminishes the designs of the artists involved - many of which were not improvisational at all, and none of which were simply random; instead, using instruments and equipment both traditional and not, they constructed pieces and soundscapes without rules or boundaries (except for those of their own choosing), the specific nuances of each performance dictated by the venue, the acoustics, the energy of the audience, the now.
[ . . . ]
Day 5, Saturday (@ the Dome Room in the Lafayette , 528 E. Broadway; 8 p.m. )
The night opened with curator Glenn Bach explaining that he and John Kannenberg would be performing "Two Cities", a piece on which they had been working for about a year via the Internet that was inspired by their walks to work in Long Beach and Chicago , respectively. Each manning a laptop, slow, eerie electronic glissandos were eventually joined by piano samples in a similar mood. Saw waves and sine waves began to fill the open spaces. I found in what I heard (whether it was actually there or not) footfalls on a sidewalk, pigeons taking flight (in twisting, backwards loops), the squeaking given off by autos shifting on their frames as they cruise down the street, the wind of a coming storm, water on concrete, the distant bell of an elevated train, insectival quiet and hiss, cars and trucks driving over metal plates used to cover bad portions of road in construction zones. In my imagination their walks to work take place as the hustle and bustle of the morning commute is just creaking to life; in my imagination their feelings for their day jobs often cast a pall over the stimuli they receive as they move along the cement, step by step.
[ . . . ]
Words cannot convey more than a shadow of the auditory. There are people of uncommon skill, dedication, and vision creating musics that will never resemble anything played on MTV or commercial radio. Many people who might enjoy them may not be aware that this kind of thing is even out there to encountered. For those seeking it out, so.cal.sonic aptly demonstrated that Long Beach is an epicenter of this shifting, churning, living ground.
Information about the performers, future/related happenings, etc., can be found at www.socalsonic.com.
FOUR PAINTERS : MP3 release on Stasisfield
from
Disquiet.com
reviewed by Marc Weidenbaum
1 December 2004
MP3S AT AN EXHIBITION
John Kannenberg's Four Painters EP collects piercing, minimalist tributes to a quartet of modern master visual artists: Paul Klee, Agnes Martin, Kazimir Malevich and Cy Twombly. Each track appears at first as little more than the sort of server-room rumble familiar in most 21st-century office buildings, a mix of chillingly high tones and some intangible thudding in the low to mid-range. Over time, with each listen, each piece takes its own surprisingly individual shape: the Klee with its cinematically rich opening, the way in which staggered samples are echoed into a reverberant, ecstatically ominous haze, and its penchant for the odd mechanical cesura; the Martin, the way its near inaudible opening comes to singular glow; the Malevich, the most varied of the four, how it moves from UFO hovering to a dog's pant; and the Twombly, which goes as deep and wide as the Martin does high and narrow. Ranging in length from eight to over 13 minutes, the compositions last long enough to get lost in. Kannenberg's passion for his subjects is evident particularly in the rich rhythms of the Klee and in the teeth-rattling intensity of the Martin as its root pitch rises. These selected artists aren't merely prime figures from the 20th-century canon. Each in one way or another helped set the aesthetic stage for today's electronic music: Klee with his colorful abstractions, Malevich with his affection for monolithic simplicity, Martin and her elegant graphs, which always looked like silent musical compositions in the first place, and Twombly with his gestural simplicity. One looks forward to another set of Kannenberg MP3s at an exhibition; here's a vote for Robert Ryman, Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian and, just for the fun of it, Jack Kirby. Available for free download from the Stasisfield netlabel, which Kannenberg runs.
GELIDUS : CDR release on Retinascan
from
Paris Transatlantic Monthly
reviewed by Dan Warburton
1 August 2004
GELIDUS
Retinascan RE 35
John Kannenberg's work curating the virtual artspace www.stasisfield.com will be familiar to PT readers, but anyone who hasn't yet heard his music (there are several pieces on free download at his site) should make it their business to hunt down a copy of Gelidus forthwith, because unless Eliane Radigue graces us with a new release, it's right up there with Jason Kahn's Miramar as slowmotion masterpiece of the year. Though recorded in a single take on the morning of Christmas Day 2002, the six continuously-running movements that make up Gelidus, which the composer describes as "a sonic interpretation of extreme cold", were sourced from processed field recordings made outside Kannenberg's house "after a snowfall", a sinewave test tone and cassette tape hiss manipulated with an analogue equalizer. Though the work's global structure was loosely mapped out, Kannenberg deliberately recorded in real time: "Most of my audio work tends to be hybrid of composition and improvisation," he writes, adding that the forthcoming "soundtrack" to the novel "A Canticle For Leibowitz" for the Sine Fiction label is more composed than improvised. In keeping with the meticulous concern for visual detail that characterises his website, Kannenberg has, in a twelve-page accompanying booklet, also included photographs (by himself and his wife) to "enhance the feeling of extreme cold I was trying to produce in the music", using them as source material for his original artwork and manipulating them in Photoshop using some of the same principles he applied to the sound material, including repetition, reduction, phasing, fading and reverberation. Chilly and austere it is, but also compelling and moving too. Well worth checking out: go to www.retinascan.de and wrap up well. -DW
---
from Fakezine
reviewed by Toni Dimitrov
March 2004
John Kannenberg - Gelidus ( Retinascan )
here we have a new piece of music from the owner of one of the most established and quality net labels for experimental and above all microsound music. www.stasisfield.com. it's John Kannenberg that's running this net art space, releasing quality music. this time the outlet for his new release is the german label retinascan and it's called geldius. geldius is an album that consists of six parts and presents a six-part sonic interpretation of severe cold. his intention to show the concept of cold through sound is captured. long static noise bits mixed into the whole release assuredly capture and show the freezing effect. in case you're exposed to real freeze, while listening to this polar soundtrack, the more complete your experience will be. the second part part 02 is an eleven minute sound-cold that freezes the space around you evolving slowly into the full length of its existence, taking the temperature far below the zero. balanced by sound, this album beside the quiet parts at moments, is mostly in accordance with its sensibility. the very fact that it's all about manipulated field recordings intensifies the actual feeling of cold. the out standing design of the artist and designer John Kannenberg contains photos of cold places where additionally the temperature of those places is indicated with the time of their taking. placed in a dvd pack, the cover is filled with digital photos created from the author that contribute to the frosty transparent look of the entire release.
STASISFIELD Year 01 : MP3 CDR compilation
online reviews :
Reviews of the first mp3 and digital video CD-R compilation from Stasisfield.com, collecting every release from its first year of activity.
AERO : mp3 release on Stasisfield
» by Jeremy Keens, Ampersand Etc.
This is a suite of 12 pieces - connected in a variety of loose ways. A number of them feature a washing sound of cars passing in the rain, and other samples appear throughout (thunder in 'Ascent', a beach in 'Pteron', breath in 'Aether II') and there is an overall mood which struck me as wistful nostalgia or melancholy. They also reminded me of Eno's 'Music For Films 1 and 2' in construction - a collection of short pieces each exploring a theme - and musically on occasions.
The 'Prelude' introduces the wash sound and adds a processed guitar, pulses and site sounds and the 'Ascent' which is more abstract, like most of these images, where a rhythm/bed is established - a deep scrape rumble - little echoed ticks and then a varying four note extended tone sequence, thunder rolling over. A bouncy sample loop runs through 'Pteron' building speed in steps with the crunchy sand and gull sample with some synth squiggles.
In the 'Aviary' a percussive shimmer loop jumps from speaker to speaker as various bird sounds (warbling, squeaky and ringing) ply through together with a sine tone. 'Aether I' pulses percussion and popping chitters with soft long tones which really brought Eno to mind, as a keyboard melody wanders through. There seems less structure to 'Scope' as high tones noodle, a deep echoed rhythm pulses and other sounds intrude, and then we get the powerful movement of 'Airship' with jumpy keys and swirls.
Insects chitter lightly in 'Contrail', a tone moves through, then a scrape/hiss loop and hollow reverb, all spaced out, the tone gathering, slowly. More space in 'Front' too as echoed keyboards, crackling and hollow scrapes build. Big washes jumping and clicks form a 'Torrent' before a variation in 'Aether II' which is more languid and finally the title track. A machine rumble, the wash and then a return of instruments, a piano-keyboard to the fore, the car wash, and the fade.
A strongly gathered group.
STASISFIELD.COM : record label curation
online reviews :
» Paris Transatlantic Magazine
review of the mp3 label Stasisfield.com which is created, designed and curated by John Kannenberg. written by Dan Warburton, editor-in-chief.
SONIC PLANAR ANALYSIS 01 : Compilation CDR on Stasisfield
online reviews :
contains music by Capricorn One, Jon Irving, J3, John Kannenberg, Ethan Koehler, Loam, Phluidbox, Pressboard, Psychiatric Challenge and Wireshock
TREES LIKE TORCHES : Compilation CDR on Electronic Musik
online reviews :
» modern-dance.co.uk
[reprinted by electronicmusik.co.uk]
Contains music by Eddie Prevost, Daniel Weaver, John Kannenberg, JM Pinto, Vivahead, Paul Burnell with LDT and Walter Cianciusi
FOLKTALES 1 : CDR on Crouton Records
Featuring C. Rosenau | Hal Rammel | John Kannenberg
online reviews :
» Splendid
e-zine
» Brainwashed.com
» Fluxeuropa.com
» Artistdirect.com
print review
from SIZE MATTERS
The Wire Magazine, issue
207, May 2001
Folktales is a new series exploring "the literary aspects of sound and performance." The first triple 3" CD pack (Crouton 9/Folktales 1) centres on a brief text written collaboratively by Jon Meuller, C Rosenau, Hall Rammel and John Kannenberg. It's oblique and interrogative, creating an unsettling mood and posing questions. The syntax is familiar enough yet the utterances are suggestively obscure, impacted or off-kilter, ostensibly unconnected narratives connecting unexpectedly. Radiating from this short fiction are three concise soundtracks on three 3" CDs occupying the remaining three panels of the pack. They share common structural contours, disparate elements coming together, gelling and almost setting then dispersing into scattered droplets, but each is realised with a distinctive and personal voice. Rosenau sounds a wine glasss, resonates an acoustic guitar and brings a metal lid, heating vent, crash cymbal, tin, salt, eggshells and dry ice into play. Brittle and precariously lovely, recorded in a basement.
Rammel mixed his vignette in Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio. It hums like a trapped bluebottle, veers into a knot of edgily rubbed strings and dull chiming. Then hunched up and pared down, it hobbles along the rest of its journey. What it is, this curious slouching thing, is never quite clear. Kannenberg uses shortwave frequencies, field recordings, bass and synthesizers to build a shimmering ebb and flow - wind in the wires, light on water, waves on shingle. To conclude, the focus shifts to an echoing and irregular pulse, interspersed with something unidentified that skitters across the acoustic space.