Synesthetech

Another new video piece I’ve completed since starting school this fall, Growing is the first really personal video I’ve made. It’s inspired by Alex and I quitting our jobs and moving away to a new city so that I could start school, but it draws its audio and visual source material from the small garden we had on our new apartment’s back porch this summer. This is the first time we’ve ever been able to grow any vegetables, so it’s been a pretty life-changing event for us in and of itself! So, into my lap gardening plopped as a metaphor for personal creativity.

This video will have its gallery premiere next weekend in Long Beach at the annual Soundwalk festival. Wish I could be there to see it alongside all the other exciting work there…hopefully next year!

• Home Run (00:36, 1.7MB mp3)

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  The first piece in what I’m planning as a series of performance-based sound and video projects involving the baseball diamond in West Park, directly across the street from our apartment in Ann Arbor. This first piece is extremely simple: the sound of me running the bases around the baseball diamond, while holding my breath so it doesn’t show up on the recording. Stark and without fanfare, context or narrative, it’s a raw recording of me partaking in a celebratory act without an audience (it was recorded in the early morning hours while the park is usually deserted). I win! I’m practically in my backyard! Now that’s a home run.

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PHOTOS: Images of the interiors I recorded in Toronto on July 31 and August 1 of this year, from my Flickr stream.

This first set of field recordings I made recently on our trip to Toronto focuses on interior spaces, most of which are museums and galleries.

1. Film projector in Henrik Håkansson’s Monarch - The Eternal, The Power Plant Gallery, Harbourfront Centre (6:07, 12.5MB mp3)

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   Our visit to The Power Plant almost didn’t happen, as we were pretty worn out by the time we made it to the Harbourfront Centre and had already spent the entire morning at the Art Gallery of Ontario (see below) But it’s a good thing Alex was determined for us to go, because otherwise I would have missed the best exhibit I’ve seen so far this year. Universal Code, as the exhibit description puts it, “presents responses from a broad range of contemporary artists to cosmology and ideas of the universal in our current information age.” There was so much jaw dropping work here…acoustically, my favorite piece was the one in the foreground of this recording, Henrik Håkansson’s Monarch - The Eternal, a large room containing a film projector and a massive screen showing footage of butterflies. While the visuals were definitely engaging, the sound of the projector in this space was overwhelming (in a good way!), and when combined with sounds from two other pieces in the corridor outside (the rhythmic “boom, boom” sounds come from Antonia Hirsch’s String Theory while the occasional rising and falling buzz is from Tania Mouraud’s Le Fabrique) they created an amazing sound composition. The abrupt change in the acoustics in the middle of this recording happened when I decided to start walking around the room, and quickly dodged the projector beam and started walking around the perimeter of the room, behind the screen, and back out into the corridor.

2. Iain Baxter&, Television Works, Art Gallery of Ontario (3:28, 7.2MB mp3)

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   Earlier in that same day, we visited the Art Gallery of Ontario. One of my sonically favorite pieces was this installation of analog televisions, all of which were tuned to static. The buzz from the picture tubes was amazing in person, and luckily at least some of its impact showed up on this recording of me slowly walking past each television in sequence from right to left.

3. Michael Snow room, Art Gallery of Ontario (3:25, 6.8MB mp3)

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   Also at the AGO an entire room of experimental filmmaker Michael Snow’s works, whose centerpiece was a slide projector. This recording documents the time it took me to walk all the way around the room and pause for a brief look at each piece, with the slide projector a moving focal point.

4. Robert Smithson room, Art Gallery of Ontario, (2:24, 4.8MB mp3)

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   A brief interlude sitting in a room in the AGO predominantly filled with works by Robert Smithson. The soundtrack to a video featuring Smithson’s voice can just barely be heard in the first part of the recording.

5. Walker Court, Art Gallery of Ontario (6:13, 12.1MB mp3)

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   The main entry court of the AGO is a fantastic space, with a winding staircase visible above. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to foresight to document the installation which is audible here: a tent containing a chandelier and a video projected on the floor. If anyone could let me know who it is and what it’s called, I’d appreciate it!

6. Escalator inside PATH underground walkway, Toronto (2:13, 4.6MB mp3)

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   We’d almost forgotten about the underground PATH system, which is similar to the Chicago Pedway. We walked into it our first night there, after business hours, and were the only people using it. Being alone in it had kind of an eerie, THX-1138 vibe even though the decor is borderline suburban. At the end of the first hallway we walked through was this squeaking escalator.

7. Royal Ontario Museum gift shop walkthrough, Toronto (2:33, 5.1MB mp3)

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   The current blockbuster show at the ROM, the Dead Sea Scrolls, was such a huge draw the line to get in was out on the street and around the block when we got there, which was only about an hour before closing time. Needless to say we didn’t make it in to the show, but we did get to walk around the gift shop. I hadn’t been to the ROM since the new addition, the Daniel Libeskind-designed “Crystal” was added; the new structure is pretty breathtaking, at least on the outside - a colossal difference between it and the rest of the architecture surrounding it. It definitely has a more bombastic feel to it than the somewhat more sombre Contemporary Jewish Museum that Libeskind recently completed in San Francisco, which we saw last summer.

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Mixing board on the Bluhm Family Terrace, Modern Wing, Art Institute of Chicago, during grand opening festivities on May 16, 2009. (More photos here.)

In the previous installment of this field recording series, I included some recordings of the Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing while it was still under construction. Here’s the payoff, when Alex and I visited the Modern Wing on the day of its grand opening. Also, the next day I visited the MCA and made some recordings at Olafur Eliasson’s “Take Your TIme” solo show.

1. Renzo Piano Speech at SAIC Commencement, Millennium Park (9:04, 19MB mp3)

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   On our way to the Modern Wing, we stumbled upon the commencement ceremony for the School of the Art Institute which was going on in Millennium Park. A friend of ours, Alicia Chester, was graduating so we hoped we’d bump into her, but the crowd was too big. Instead, we managed to stick around for a speech by Renzo Piano, architect of the Art Institute’s Modern Wing. We also got to hear a redwing blackbird, a young boy fascinated by the sound of stepping on a drainage grating, and a Japanese family sitting down in front of us with several bouquets of flowers wrapped in crinkly paper.

2. Photography Gallery, Griffin Court and Pritzker Garden, AIC Modern Wing (6:16, 12.5MB mp3)

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   Interior and exterior sounds of the new Modern Wing, starting inside the ground floor photography gallery, then out into the Griffin Court entrance hall, and finally out a side door and into the Pritzker Garden, a gorgeous space which envelops you in the building’s architecture while still affording you a wonderful acoustic vantage point of downtown Chicago. Lots of traffic sounds echo around the space in a way that feels tranquil rather than bustling.

3. AIC Modern Wing Galleries 182-184, Cy Twombly, “The Natural World” (4:02, 8.1MB mp3)

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   Recorded during my second walkthrough of the Twombly show, when I went back in to take pictures on the (bad) advice of the security guard in the photography gallery. I got busted immediately (but not until I was able to take this picture), so I immediately switched my camera with my Zoom H2.

4. Olafur Eliasson, “Ventilator”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (3:07, 5.9MB mp3)

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   On to the MCA’s installation of Olafur Eliasson’s “Take Your Time” retrospective…one of my favorite pieces was “Ventilator”, a room containing an electric fan hanging from the ceiling which whips around the room at a height of about six inches above the top of my head. Fun, scary, and sonically blissful. I thought I was being pretty slick by holding the exhibition program in front of my Zoom to hide it from the gallery guard (and help cut down on the wind noise); she probably just shook her head and kept walking.

5. Olafur Eliasson, “Beauty”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1:39, 3.2MB mp3)

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   Another Eliasson installation, “Beauty” is a dark room containing a dim spotlight and a hose on the ceiling which spouts a wall of fine mist that you can walk around. A gorgeous bit of white noise in a black space.

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Recording traffic passing over metal construction plates, 111 West Jackson St, Chicago, April 29, 2009 (photo by Alessandra Gillen)

Picking up where I left off, here’s my second batch of recent Chicago field recordings, my sonic farewell before Alex and I move to Ann Arbor…

1. Rain outside apartment sunporch (9:35, 20.7MB mp3)

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   Almost ten minutes of a lovely evening rain from the acoustically rich interior of our apartment’s sunporch, facing north.

2. Purple Line CTA train arriving at Howard (4:47, 10.5MB mp3)

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   A healthy portion of the second half of my morning commute (Brown line to Belmont Purple line, then Purple line to Davis). This is actually a Purple line only to Howard, so occasionally my commute has had three parts instead of two. I was lucky to get a recording of the train interior without anyone speaking.

3. Traffic over metal construction plates, 111 West Jackson St. (5:56, 12.3MB mp3)

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   Recorded at the same time the picture above was taken. A block-long stretch of Jackson Street down in the Loop has had a series of large, square metal plates on it for some time, and when the traffic runs over them they make a great booming sound which echoes amazingly off all the skyscrapers nearby.

4. Fountain, Art Institute of Chicago garden (4:00, 8.2MB mp3)

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   Public fountain season’s upon us, so this is a recording of this fountain now that it actually has water in it again.

5. Modern Wing of Art Insitute of Chicago under construction (3:20, 6.9MB mp3)

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   A compact little field recording symphony. I love the way the drone of the equipment and the traffic interplay at first, followed by the construction worker’s whistling and the woman’s footsteps in the gravel. A great beginning, middle and end. Can’t wait to finally see the inside of the new Modern Wing in person this coming weekend!

6. Walking to Sox-35th CTA station after White Sox victory (1:37, 3.3MB mp3)

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   A nice moment of public euphoria, saxophone and changing acoustic spaces as we walk across a bridge over the freeway and into the Sox-35th CTA Red Line station.

7. Birds, cars and El trains, 5:15am (8:47, 17.3MB mp3)

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   Since I have the sleeping habits of a 70 year old man, I usually wake up around 4:30am. When spring starts, the morning birds go crazy. This was the first really riotous bird morning of the season, and i recorded this out the windows of our living room.

8. Chicago River bridge raising alarm bells from Merchandise Mart CTA train platform (1:32, 3.1MB mp3)

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   I’ve rarely seen the bridges over the Chicago River down in the Loop raise up to let boats pass underneath. I’d never seen the bridge raise up in front of the Merchandise Mart CTA train platform while I was actually on the train until this past weekend. With the bridge up, the train couldn’t pass, so we disembarked and stood on the platform so I could get a recording of the bridge’s warning bells as it lowered back down into place, mixing nicely with the walkie talkie communications of a CTA employee standing next to me.

9. Hissing air vent above Chicago Union Station Amtrak track, National Train Day (2:25, 4.6MB mp3)

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   After touring an Amtrak Superliner train during the free National Train Day event at Union Station last weekend, we stepped back onto the track and walked right under an air vent with an amazing hiss. That wall of white noise has a few cracks in it which expose some of the other sounds in the station at the time.

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Recording birds in a Lincoln Square apartment window, April 18, 2009 (photo by Alessandra Gillen)

Later this month, Alex and I will be moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I’ll be entering the MFA program in Art & Design at the University of Michigan this fall. Although I’m really excited about what lies ahead there, it means not only leaving a lot of great friends, but also leaving a sonically-rich world-class city for a much smaller college town.

With that in mind, I’ve been trying to document even more of the sounds around me as I make my final rounds throughout Chicago. I’ll be posting them here in batches over the next few weeks. I’ll also be doing a going-away performance on WLUW’s Something Else program on Sunday, May 17, and I’m planning on one of my sets being a mix of untreated field recordings of Chicago which will use many of the recordings here among others I’ve made over the years.

1. Automated voices in Union Station (3:31, 7.1MB mp3)

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   One of my favorite sound spots in all of Chicago. I could listen to the Amtrak track identifiers all day.

2. Event setup, The Great Hall, Union Station (2:20, 4.6MB mp3)

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   While I was waiting to pick up some friends, I recorded an event that was being set up in Union Station’s Great Hall, a wonderfully reverb-heavy space.

3. John Hancock Tower open-air observatory (1:05, 2.4MB mp3)

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   A great place to stand and listen, but difficult to make a recording without the sound of other people on the observation deck!

4. Birds in Lincoln Square apartment window (1:09, 2.7MB mp3)

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   Heading to the Metra on the morning of Alex’s birthday, we stumbled across this ground-floor apartment window with a birdcage and a very talkative bird. I didn’t realize at the time that there are also lots of other birds inside the apartment, which you can hear in this recording.

5. Morning weekday traffic, 143 E. Chicago Ave. (10:47, 22.2MB mp3)

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   Downtown rush-hour on a fairly quiet stretch of Chicago Avenue, a block away from the Museum of Contemporary Art.

6. Michigan Avenue construction (5:11, 10.8MB mp3)

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   Standing in front of the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, I recorded the work being done at the recently-demolished building across the street. Lots of great traffic sounds, too.

7. Afternoon traffic on Lake Shore Drive (9:28, 18.9MB mp3)

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   Nice stretch of droning traffic sound, recorded while sitting at a bus shelter right on Lake Shore Drive (while not actually waiting for a bus). Nice mix of foot and vehicle traffic.

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Alex and I took a trip to Kenosha last weekend and road their downtown streetcar, a single car loop track about two miles long. Alex took some photos and I took some video (above, here and here). I made some field recordings too…

• Kenosha streetcar arrival (1:31, 3.4MB mp3)
• Kenosha streetcar interior (3:31, 7.8MB mp3)
• Kenosha streetcar interior with windshiled wipers (1:20, 3.2MB mp3)

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PHOTOS: My photos from the rally at Grant Park - view the photos on Flickr

Alex and I had tickets for the Obama rally in Grant Park on election night…truly one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Here are some photos (above) and sounds (below) from throughout the night.

• Crowd reaction to Obama winning (1:05, 2.5MB mp3)
  Not the immediate reaction, but as much of the roar of the crowd as I managed to record after the giant screen in the park (which was showing CNN) broadcast Wolf Blitzer calling the election for Obama.
• Crowd with CNN reaction commentary (1:20, 2.5MB mp3)
  The crowd continues to celebrate as various CNN commentators react to the historic Obama win.
• Soundcheck for the new president (:21, .5MB mp3)
  Testing Obama’s microphone.
• “Shoot a moose” (:10, .5MB mp3)
  A man in the crowd reacts to McCain’s concession speech.
• The crowd chants (1:05, 2MB mp3)
  The crowd chants Obama’s name. Someone takes a picture, and the synthesized shutter sound effect on their camera goes off.
• The National Anthem sung by Kim Stratton (2:02, 3.9MB mp3)
  Kim belted it out before Obama came out to speak. Too bad she forgot the words, though. Ouch.
• First family onstage, Obama begins his speech (4:00, 7.8MB mp3)
  The crowd goes wild as the Obama family takes the stage. You can hear the roar of the crowd work its way up to the back of the park, where we were standing. Eventually Obama begins speaking and everyone around us begins screaming at all of his applause lines.
• Leaving the park, walking under the Loop’s El platform (2:54, 5.4MB mp3)
  We quickly made our way out of the park, and the crowd’s euphoria just wouldn’t stop. Another crowd roar in the distance, and a train goes over our heads.

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PHOTO: Obama casting his vote, photographed live off my TV this morning

Some sounds from voting this morning in Chicago…one of the most mundanely exciting experiences I’ve ever had. Alex and I are off to the rally in Grant Park tonight as well…

• Ambience in 14th District poll center (2:25, 4.5MB mp3)
  Our poll center is a Mexican restaurant about a block and a half away from our apartment. It’s always really stuffy in there when we vote, which takes place in the restaurant’s “party room”. It was incredibly chaotic this morning even though there were few problems (other than the pollsters only stocking a single box of markers needed for the paper ballots).
• Casting my vote (:37, 1.2MB mp3)
  Listen as I try to juggle the massive ballot, its privacy sleeve, and my Zoom H2 while trying to get the ballot into the machine.

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This weekend, Alex and I went hiking at the North Park Village Nature Center, a great little sanctuary that’s only a half hour bus ride away from our apartment. The colors weren’t quite as close to peak as we’d hoped, but we both managed to get some decent photos of early autumn. A slideshow of my photos is above, and here’s the Flickr set.

I wasn’t able to do as much recording as I’d hoped; even though the park wasn’t very crowded, we were almost always within earshot of people talking. I managed to get one decent recording:

• Traffic with falling leaves (3:00, 5.5MB mp3)
  Alex led us off one of the trails into an employees-only area of the woods. It had a pretty thick canopy of trees, but was fairly close to the border of the nature center’s land which rests on a busy street. While we were taking pictures I noticed that each time a breeze came through, leaves started falling pretty loudly all around us. Of course as soon as I turned my recorder on the wind died down completely, but eventually I captured three really nice waves of falling leaves, all very close together. Keep your ears peeled for barking dogs, crying children and Alex’s footsteps near the end.

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