Infinite Sounds – Session 1

How to approach time in sound? How to go beyond the conception of time as a simple sequence of events? Inhabiting sound, working with infinite sound… approaching the infinity of sound. A detailed discussion of the work and ideas of four very different composers / sound artists; Joel Ryan (US),  Barbara Hammer (US),  Pauline Oliveros (US) and Ellen Fullman (US).

Joel Ryan
Knowing When

Music when looked at analytically is usually taken to be a system of rules. Yet the experience of listening and making music is one of freedom and spontaneity. The kind of judgment involved in making and applying rules doesn’t seem to match musical experience. Taking time as an epitome of music making, there seems to be an innate capacity for perceiving its quantity, outside of language and analytic thinking.

The fact is, I know when. I know when things are too fast or too slow, I know when timing is good, stiff or perfectly graceful. Before it happens I know when a beat should come and after if it was out of time or right on-time. Playing or listening to music this knowledge comes not in calculated reflection but in the moment, fast enough to make time happen without breaking the flow.

Barbara Hammer

Bent Time (1983, 22’00, 16 mm)

A one-point perspective visual path across the USA beginning inside a linear accelerator or atom-smashing device and travelling to such high-energy locations as the habitat of an ancient sun calendar in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico; the site of Ohio Valley Mound cultures; and the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges. Scientists have noted that light rays curve at the outer edges of the universe, leading them to theorise that time bends too. Inspired by this idea, Hammer used an extreme wide-angle lens and ‘one frame of film per foot of physical space’ to simulate the concept of bent time. The film is accompanied by Pauline Oliveros’ score for voice and accordion, Rattlesnake Mountain.

Pauline Oliveros & Ellen Fullman
In conversation