life:
Clothed Descending a Staircase No. 2…
In an homage to Marcel Duchamp’s masterpiece Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 (itself inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs), Eliot Elisofon photographed Duchamp performing the act himself in 1952, and used multiple exposures to mimick the artist’s famous time-lapse-style painting.
(see more of innovative LIFE photos here)
Giacinto Scelsi: Four pieces for orchestra, each on a single note, No. 4 (1959)
From the album Quattro pezzi per orchestra, Anahit, Uaxuctum
“If you play a sound for a very long time, it grows. It becomes so big that you start to hear many more harmonies, and it becomes bigger inside. The sound envelops you. […] The sound fills the room you are in, it surrounds you, you can swim in it. But the sound is both creator and destroyer. It is therapeutical. It can heal, but it can also destroy. […] When you enter a sound, it surrounds you. You become part of this sound. Gradually, you are devoured by this sound and you need no other sound. […] It’s all in this sound, the entire universe is in this one sound that fills the room. All possible sounds are contained in this sound from the start.”
(Giacinto Scelsi, quoted in the liner notes for the album Natura renovatur)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Steve Reich - Piano Phase (by DrazzubNommoc)
by unknown pianists
Click to make circles… .then listen!!!
Space Bar clears the screen
i suck at this instrument. :P
Hilliard Ensemble - Shiroi Ishi (Ken Ueno, 2001) (by fabian1333)
Shiroi Ishi (2001)
Text and music by Ken Ueno
Composed for the Hilliard Ensemble
TEXT: TRANSLATION:
SHIro i iSHI White stone
Tsukiyo no umi ni SHIzumu Sinks into a moon-lit ocean
Sono toki hamon wa That moment, the ripples are
Nagare boSHI no kage shadows trailing a shooting star.
The first syllable “SHI” of the word “shiro” (white) has multiple meanings:
1): Four - for the number of performers.
2): Death.
3): Poetry.
This syllable acts as a link between the worlds of pitch and noise/timbre,
as well as word and sound. Structurally, each successive occurrence of this syllableopens a window of evocation to previous occurrences - the white stone passing into another existence synchronistically being related to another transient moment, that of a shooting star.
The relationship of the stone and the ripples (and the shooting star and its shadows) is akin to the relationship between consonants and vowels in the Japanese language. The whole language is built upon five basic vowels (a, i, u, e, o) which are arranged with different consonants in front of the vowels (ex.: ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, ga, gi, gu, ge, go, etc.). This means that the same five formants create meaning according to what noise elements (consonants) are affixed to the attack of the sound (every sound has three components: an attack, a middle, and a decay). There is a modular quality to Japanese language since the phonological aspects are so limited. In changing the rhythm of words and phrases, in stretching phrases, it is possible to derive or hear different meanings from one phrase. Even without understanding the Japanese, it is hoped that one can follow the statistical prevalence of certain consonants as a way to following the text (as opposed to following melodic phrases). It is some kind of common ground between Eastern incantation and modern electroacoustic sounds that I am seeking presently as a discourse in setting my text.
(Program notes taken from http://www.kenueno.com/performancenotes.html#ShiroiIshi)
Google’s “Martha Graham’s 117th Birthday” Doodle [Animation by Ryan Woodward] (via jomanimo24)
There Goes Concorde Again
…and the Native Hipsters
There Goes Concorde Again
