honestly don't know (soundscape)

honestly don't know from Bonnie Veblen on Vimeo.

what did I do? what was I trying to do?

I listened to sounds. I noticed how I listen to sound, what I choose to listen to, when I want music, when I don't. I listened to songs on once repeat, which is normal. I listened to my breath, which is normal. I listened to cars from my studio, and cringed as they passed, which is normal.

I looked up roots of words, thought about The Spell of the Sensuous, thought about Leap, translated between french and english, found roots in both. I breathed, I listened. I took pictures of my lung x-ray. I looked at the sumac outside my window.

I cut up the words of Terry Tempest Williams, Nervous but Excited, T.S. Eliot, Patty Larkin, Allen Ginsberg and Mary Oliver into perhaps a thousand pieces, and pulled them one at a time out of a pile, stringing them back together. I saw what was there, and started to play with it. I moved things, cut it down, recorded myself speaking it.

I played on a guitar. I experienced making harmonics with strings for the first time. I listened to right after, my song I play on clarinet, on once repeat. I recorded some basic guitar.

I recorded my voice, my breath. I recorded my voice, my breath. I recorded my voice, my breath. I recorded Latin, French, English. I recorded my voice, my breath. I recorded my voice my breath. Irecordedmyvoicemybreath. I honestly don't know.

I came back to the cut up. I chose. I recorded my voice, my breath.

I put together a video of photographs of a sumac tree and an x-ray of my lungs, my window at home.

What did I want to do? I’m honestly not really sure. I suppose this is a meditation on death and life, and the ambiguity between those. Can we experience death in life? Can we experience life in death? Do we ever really know where we are? Do we ever really know whether we’re alive or dead?

I had to find the sound that was right for the video, to set the tone, guide the viewer's thoughts towards our bodies, impermanence, quietness, death//life, fractures, joy, shyness, hesitancy, being on a border, being the same as another and different from another, being in multiple places at once, and I'm not really sure what else. A huge long cut up was too much, instrumental music was too abstract, and going between breath to Latin to English to Latin to breath was too literal a progression and too abstract//conceptual. I wanted to push the viewer in some kind of direction with the words and my breath, and the quietness, but also leave room for openness.

Perhaps I’m not all that interested in making a piece about sound, but using it in tandem with my images. It's not about one or the other, both support each other. And now I just want to make more.

cut up

I did a cut-up of a lot of different writings//lyrics I was reading and listening to this summer--all of them were incredibly resonant at the time, and still are. I then edited it down and recorded myself reading it. I'm not sure that I like it as a sound piece, perhaps because it's strange for me to listen to my own voice. So while there are some interesting themes running through it, and I really like the repetative, obsessive quality of it, I'm not sure that this is the best form for it. I've thought about putting parts of this to images in a video, but it seems like it might take away from the video footage, or be too explicit. It's not like the hair piece where the words came along with the images. And it's really long, too, so I don't know that anyone would make it all the way through since it's so free-flowing and there's hardly a place to grab on. I need to keep trying some other things with it, I guess.

I also did this recording of me fooling around on guitar, sort of similar to the song I wrote//have been continually improvising with on clarinet, but I don't actually know guitar, so this is a lot harder//more elementary and thus even more repetative. Again, it is obsessive.

One major thing is, I need to figure out what sound goes with my videos, if any. I feel like something should, but I don't know what. This is why I did these two experiments, but they're not right for the video, nor are they completed sound pieces in themselves.

I guess I have a lot of different ways that I appreciate sound, so this is a hard project for me to approach. I have played clarinet for 12 years, so have quite a bit of a formal//classical background in music. I love French music especially--Debussy, Saint-Saens, Poulenc, Jeanjean--pretty much anything rhapsodic, with a tendency towards slower and darker pieces.

In terms of listening to music, I tend to listen to songs obsessively, often preferring hearing a single song to hearing anything else for days, sometimes weeks. I don't know why this is, other than that I simply crave those sounds. And far more often than not, it is the sounds I crave--the harmony and the rhythm--rather than the lyrics. In the last year I have finally started to barely catch and sometimes listen to lyrics, but it is not what I hear first by any means.

In terms of sounds I make with my body, I like listening//feeling the sound of my heart and my breath. I like the rhythm of walking, and the feel, but sometimes don't notice the sound. I like humming and absolutely love reading aloud for the vibrations. I often read aloud to Emma and Jacob, the kids that I have babysat for about 8 years, for an hour or so at a time. I love being with them, and I love reading, and sharing an enjoyment of books with them, but there is also just something very calming and comforting to feel my own (or someone else's) voice run through my body, and to be sharing that with others. My mom read to us as kids, and I think my own satisfaction in this sense of vibration probably comes from that. In this way, recorded sound almost seems like a cop-out because your body isn't actually penetrated by the sound, so it is a strange experience. And yet recordings are the only thing that allow me to listen to the same song//sounds for literally days on end.

I also have an interest in harmonics (and dissonance) as related to quantum physics, schumann resonance, biological receptor molecules, and the fifth chakra//meditation, which all meet up in the back somewhere. I don't really want to make artwork about that. But let's just say, anything that deals with sound deals with all of them in some form or another.

If I were to share anything about sound, it would be the satisfaction of vibration. What about asking everyone to stand in a circle and hum with everyone's hand on the other's back? What about having the group read something? What about engaging a group with live ambient sounds rather than recorded sound? (Recorded sound is technically live, but resonates differently). If I were to use sound convey something, it would be to put to my videos that I'm working on, but I don't know what I want to do with that right now. I don't know what I need to say. I don't know if what I need to say is in words or in sounds or in music I play. I do know that I miss my clarinet, and that I need to go to bed.

the art of noise // Frank J. Oteri and Paul D. Miller interview

These readings (for process and evidence) go right back to the idea of modernism//postmodernism for me.

In The Art of Noise, Russolo puts forward a futurist manifesto, promoting the acceptance of noise as music. I somewhat agree with him--we should be more engaged with the sounds we make--but don't really like his attitude so much, which is very insistent and focused on dominance and the "man-made" being better than the "natural". This is a very nice complement for the visual art that was going on at the time in terms of re-evaluating what art (painting, espeically) could and should be. Like art, noise is now accepted as music as with noise bands. In an epoch of post-modernism, anything is art (whether it be visual or aural).

I found it interesting in the interview that one of the people said that we are at a point today of "information overload." If anything can qualify as music (or art), then my response is:

we must choose. we must choose what information we put into the world. we must choose what images we put into the world. we must choose what sounds we put into the world. we must take responsibility for our effect on the world, which means we must choose.

I personally have a lot of trouble with choice--choosing sounds and images--because there are so many. Multiplicity is almost too easy to achieve now a days, but making meaning out of that multiplicity requires choice. I also don't have trouble choosing some things. Sometimes I'll listen to the same song for literally days or weeks. Sometimes I choose to not listen to any music for periods of time as well. I repeat words in my head that way. I crave visual images that way, too.

My own interests in sound run along lines of language (how different sounds convey different meanings, and how these are universally accepted across cultures in many cases), and ideas of resonance and string theory (harmonics and dissonance), which is related to how we make meaning out of sounds. I found it really interesting in the interview that one person said that noise is anything de-coherent, a signal that is decayed or something non-understandable. We do understand sound though in a physical and instinctual way, and language is based off of that. An unpleasant noise stems from it being related to a warning, of not joining with, of dissonance, of stay away from that. A pleasant noise stems from something being okay, of wanting to join with, of harmony, of being comfortable. We can train ourselves to be comfortable with anything, even dissonance, as Russolo has shown us.

post-bac critique thoughts

rhythm. time. sense of movement. pattern.
the rhythm of an experience. how to communicate stability and movement (bound and flowing).

oriented//disoriented.

how do I ride the line of abstraction and representation? how do I ride the line of literal and metaphorical? how do I ride the line of illustrating and initiating ideas?

direct//removed or vicarious experiences. issues of translation. issues of boundaries.

when people can't understand the relationships between the subjects of a work, it becomes about the act and process of translation (my abstract paintings from the spring). I don't think this is about me processing things, though that's a totally valid thing. I do want to communicate something. (is it about artistic practice and thought, or is it actually about the subjects and their relationships?). though now that I write that, it is also about my processing. it isn't only about the woods and it isn't only about my thoughts, what I've read, the sounds that come back to me over and over. it's about both together. the process of experience and the environment. because they are dependent on eachother. they need eachother in order to exist at all. (and I'm back to phenomonology or buddhism or whatever you want to call it. I'm back to togetherness.)

acquisition (to take on, appropriate). I do this so easily with some things.
abnegative (to choose, to edit out, to manipulate). I have so much trouble with this.
purposive. (to have meaning, purpose. to have something that matters.) I want this but I doubt it.

My work is making meaning for me. my rain project especially. potentially my videos//paintings together. I hope it is making meaning for others. I can guess at how it might do that for you, but I can't really say what that is for you or anyone else. I can't really say what a chicken or a bee feels. I can guess. I can guess by my interactions with them, by my experience of a mutual relationship with them. I can guess a lot, but never really know. I can make an artwork and understand it to a certain degree, but never really know how it is communicating to others. this would be impossible. and terribly boring. terribly bound.

once again comes space. openness. room to move. (within the bounds of our experiences. within the bounds of my experiences.) an implicit body. a me//we.

accessiblility. this all deals with accessibility.

words

capable--from capabilis (receptive) // capax (able to hold much) // capere (to take grasp, lay hold, catch, undertake, be large enough for, comprehend) // kap- (to grasp)

reciprocal--from reciprocus (returning the same way, alternating) // reco-proco- // recus- (backward) procus (forward)

reflection--from reflexionem (a reflection, a bending back) // reflex- // reflectere (back, to bend)

control--to check, verify, regulate; from contreroller (exert authority) // contrarotulus (a counter, register) // contra- (against) rotulus, rota (wheel, roll) from medieval method of checking accounts by duplicate register

should--from shall // sceal (I owe/he owes, will have to, ought to, must) // sculan // skal- or skul- (to owe, be under obligation) // scyld (guilt) // skeleti (to be guilty) // skilti (to get into debt)

passive--from passivus (capable of feeling or suffering) // pass- // pati (to suffer)

active--from act // actus (a doing) // acactum (a thing done) // agere (to do, set in motion, drive, urge, chase, stir up) // ag- (to drive, draw out or forth, move); ag-riculture

post-critique and post-dinner 'huh'

I was going to just go straight home after dinner, but I needed to write some of this down first.

As for the critique, the question came up if I felt like I was finished with the mushrooms//spore prints. I said no, but in truth, I don't want to do more. I didn't even like doing them in the first place very much because I felt I was just messing with this beautiful and intricate thing that I have no right to mess with, that was more beautiful than any representation or manipulation of it could be. And worst, I was messing with it for no reason, and couldn't make anything happen.

In fact, I can't make anything do anything it seems. And now I'm remembering a comment of Liz's that my landscape paintings were feminine in their passivity as compared to plein air painters--can I make a masculine, active, dare I even speak the word--dominating--landscape? I don't think so. Manipulation does not come naturally to me, which is not to say it's not an important thing. Making active decisions to change something in a particular way is important, and I need to learn how to do it better. Choosing and acting are the problems I've been having in my artwork, and in my life lately. I can look at a landscape (or a slug) and put it back out, having mediated it in some small way, processed it somehow so that one part of it becomes more apparent, but hell if I can make mushrooms grow a certain way. I don't even want to try to do that. I felt ugly and mean doing what I did, but also a little curious, and that's what kept me going. If it hadn't been an assignment, I never would have done the spore prints, but might have done the slug video, or something like it. And that should tell me something...

At dinner, the conversation about farming and land use and how we make things work for us (biologically) and enslavement and veganism came up. Through farming, I have come to see our use of our surroundings differently. For a while, I couldn't stand the idea that I cause other things to suffer or manipulate them to benefit myself, and indeed, I realize that this is often subconsciously driving me to act as I do--extremely passively. For a while I couldn't stand harvesting because of the harm it caused to the plants, but farming is good for me because it has made me come to terms with doing things actively in order to nourish myself and others, but not without forgetting the plant or animal I am forming a relationship with. And it is that farming isn't just about that active manipulation, but about reciprocity--about forming a relationship of both give and take (and many other things) with the world.

Again comes that word relationship.

Something strange is going on here, though, because I feel like I just don't know how to act at all. I don't know how to communicate (an active thing). I find myself interruping others a lot, which I don't like. Why is what I want to say so important? I also can't seem to say important things, I find myself often babbling, and when I have something definite to say, I can't communicate it clearly in precise language. I am able to take in and process things, but my circuitry in terms of what comes back out is all messed up.

I am experiencing a major problem with mediation and also editing here.
What do I need to say? What don't I need to say?

'What is essential?'

This is the thought I had while reading Kuo Hsi's words on Chinese landscape painting, "an artist should concentrate his spirit upon the essential nature of his work. If he fails to get at the essential, he will fail to present the soul of his theme. Discipline should give his picture dignitiy. Without dignity, depth is impossible. Diligence and reverence will make his work complete."

If I babble, there is no reverence, no respect, nothing with which to form relationships, nothing with which to communicate. (If there's so much art, none of it makes meaning). If I'm silent, I deny my own existence, that I have thoughts that are meaningful and valid.

What I really need is some discipline. I need to find what is essential. For the sound project, I am thinking now that I may spend a day in silence and then a day only saying what I feel is essential. I don't know where the art object is in that, but it's something I need to do. I also want to see what meanings I can find using more cut-up method trials with passages of writing that mean a lot to me (that I have actively chosen, and passively processed), and (actively) editing them down. My next thought: I am going to see where it goes.

I am always seeing where it goes. That's not the hard part. The hard part is the structure, the deciding, the discipline. Okay, enough for tonight.

work in-progress

I haven't posted anything this last week because I was working (instead of being on the internet), so here is an update, en masse.

soutenir, sentir, sembler
(explorations of meanings between french and english)

rain//hair project with translation into french and an in-between.
two beginnings of tree mandalas

and this. (biology?)