keith rowe / seymour wright “3d” triple compact disc-recordable set

• david reid’s view (central, edge of stage) (41:56)
  
  
• chris trent’s view (right, front row) (43:05)
  
  
• jeff cloke’s view (extreme left, three rows back) (42:56)

w.m.o/r press release...

keith rowe & seymour wright 3d 3d: three views of guitar and saxophone on a november evening at the dance centre in derby, 2002. documents such as photographic, tape or digital recordings of works of art and improvisation are canonically problematic, even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence where it happens to be. (benjamin 1936 [1999:214]) specifically, documents such as tape recordings of improvisation are essentially empty, as they preserve chiefly the form that something took and give at best an indistinct hint as to the feeling and cannot convey any sense of time and place. (cardew 1971 [2006:127]) accepted. yet, by extension: are several documents such as tape or digital recordings of one improvisation, juxtaposed, equally empty, unable to convey any sense of time and place? or, are several documents such as tape or digital recordings of one improvisation, juxtaposed, exponentially more empty, serving to convey nothing but deficit time and place? or are, in fact, several documents such as tape or digital recordings of one improvisation, juxtaposed, actually cumulatively less empty and, thus, able to convey some relative sense of time and place? possibilities, for me, rest in the relative time and place relation created by and between these several juxtaposed documents. each document affords a different, but related, view and purchase on the others; cumulatively they delineate a relative, loco-temporal frame within which listeners position and reposition themselves, are positioned and repositioned and perceive canonically; where, potentially, the same subject seen from a different angle offers subject for study of the most powerful interest and so varied that [... one ...] could occupy [...one...] self for months without changing place, by turning now more to the right, now more to the left. (cézanne 1906 [2004:164]) perhaps, then, various documents such as tape or digital recordings of one improvisation, juxtaposed, are essentially different to a single document of an event, as they preserve, relatively, multi-dimensionally something of the form which that improvisation took, give at least a respective, relative distinction as to the feeling and cohere within their own relative dimension of time and place. perhaps, too, various documents such as tape or digital recordings, juxtaposed, from their respective essential emptiness – which i conceive as a one-dimensional ‘flatness’ – require us to fill them with a more substantial, experiential canon of time and place. in recent years i have been troubled by a growing and oppressive orthodoxy of complacent superficiality and one-dimensional, product-based accord. what is especially and specially interesting about these three recordings of this one improvisation from 2002 is less the respective discrete ‘flat’ objective documents themselves than the cumulative subjective space and time i find between these three views, juxtaposed. it is within this void space and time between these views and the listener that i suggest something more substantial and profitable may, with work, take shape perhaps echoing, simultaneously illuminatingly and obscurely, (laozi: xi) * seymour wright _ 28/03/08 ... * interpretation, translation and readings of documents such as the daodejing of laozi are canonically problematic, illustratively: [...] cut out doors and windows in order to make a room. adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the room. thus what we gain is something, yet it is by virtue of nothing that this can be put to use. (lau (trans.) 1963: 64) 1. [...] by cutting out doors and windows we build a house and on that which is non-existent [on the empty space within] depends the house’s utility. 2. therefore, existence renders actual but non-existence renders useful. (carus (trans.) 1913 [1994:342]) [...] we pierce doors and windows to make a house and it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends. therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not. (waley (trans.) 1958 [1995:23]) ... bibliography: benjamin w. 1936. ‘the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ in w. benjamin. (h. zorn (trans.)). 1999. illuminations. pimlico; london: 211-44. cardew c. 1971. ‘towards an ethic of improvisation’ in e. prévost (ed.). 2006. cornelius cardew: a reader; copula. harlow, essex: 125-33. carus p. 1913. ‘the canon of reason and virtue’ selected translations in, j.d.a. yohannan. 1994. treasury of asian literature; meridian; new york: 340-50. cézanne p. 1906. ‘a letter to his son paul’ in r. kendall (ed.). 2004. cézanne by himself; time warner; london: 164. lau d.c. (trans.). 1963. lao tzu tao te ching. penguin; london. waley a. 1958. ‘the way and its power; a study of the tao te ching and its place in chinese thought’ selected translations in h.s. fu (ed.). 1995. lao zi. hunan chubanshi; changsha, hunan. keith rowe: guitar seymour wright: alto saxophone 3d: three views of guitar and saxophone on a november evening at the dance centre in derby, 2002 1 david reid’s view (central, edge of stage): sony ecm-999pr to a sony pd150 video camera. 2 chris trent’s view (right, front row): a pair of oktava mk-012s to a tascam da-p1 dat machine. 3 jeff cloke’s view (extreme left, three rows back): sony stereo ecm-ms907 on adjacent seat to a sharp md-mt80h(s) minidisc recorder. w.m.o/r 33

josetxo grieta “euskal semea” compact disc

• epeear semea i ( version for 20 guitars
  
• broken glass
  
• 3 watering cans and voice) (22:47)
  
• epeear semea ii (with drums and vocals) (28:11)

julien ottavi “for degreadable music : the cdr i will never release” compact disc-recordable

• for degreadable music (65:00)

w.m.o/r press release...

julien ottavi for degreadable music:the cdr i will never release w.m.o/r 15 cdr released: 15th october 2004 “ the cdr has a different status from a regular cd, a status which makes the creation of a cdr label quite paradoxical. the regular cd proposes something fixed and lasting and its sale is based on these elements. on the other hand, the cdr represents both an intermediate state and an objet of transition : the information engraved on it is destined to be rendered, at a certain point in time, to its virtual state of digital composition interpretable by a computer. from cd to cdr, we move from a practice of conserving finalised products to a practice of stocking or transmitting transitory products (and this way of using the cdr is most obvious in the practice of pirating). the cdr is an extension of the computer, developing a circulation mode that is similar to the internet, but outside the virtual net. the nature of the cdr implies another relation to time and to the process of creation. in this sense it seems contradictory to consider a cdr as a finalized product. with the cdr as with the sound pieces on the internet we seem to enter in a new field and manner of developing and showing artistic practice: not only showing finalised propositions but also the different stages of the artistic creation. the cdr and the internet become a tool in a process of experimentation and not only means of conservation. this social use of the cdr as a transitory objet is a reflection of it's material structure : the cdr has a short life span as a physical objet, therefore the recorded sound is destinated to deteriorate. when mattin proposed to me to produce a sound piece for his cdr label, i started thinking of the specificity of the cdr medium and wanted to hijack his proposition. the question was : how to render in sound the nature of the cdr, i.e., how to make a transitory sound form and at the same time propose a reflection on this form ? how can the sound content act on the cdr itself as a material structure ? this reflection was linked to work i started some time ago, of hand-engraving or pouring acid on the material support of the cd and see how it would act on the recorded sound. but these attempts mainly focused on the material aspect of the cdr and neglected the sound. so i began thinking about the sound content again and i realised that when you engrave a cdr on your computer and keep it for a while, the first things to disappear, soundwise, when it deteriorates, are the very high and very low frequencies. this is why this sound piece is only composed of extreme frequencies, at the limit of what man can hear and of what the machine can reproduce. the result is that the sound piece acts not only on the material structure of the cdr but also on the material environnement of the listener's body. the sound piece on this cdr is at the limits of the audible. ” this sound piece was realised under gnu/linux operating system with free audio software as ardour, jack, rezound, audacity, puredata.

taku sugimoto / yasuo totsuka / mattin “training thoughts” compact disc

• training thoughts (65:48)

belaska “vault” compact disc

• vault (1) (11:02)
  
• vault (2) (9:00)
  
• vault (3) (14:40)
  
• vault (4) (14:46)

mattin / rosy parlane “mendietan” compact disc

• arnieta i (5:53)
  
• arnieta ii (4:12)
  
• bera ii (4:03)
  
• paresi i (4:58)
  
• bera i (7:38)
  
• paresi iii (7:21)
  
• bera iii (4:42)
  
• ikasta (7:34)

mattin / taku unami “attention” compact disc

• attention (74:00)

mattin / taku unami “shyrio no computer” compact disc

• shyrio no computer (1)
  
• shyrio no computer (2)
  
• shyrio no computer (3)
  
• shyrio no computer (4)
  
• shyrio no computer (5)
  
• shyrio no computer (6)
  
• shyrio no computer (7)
  
• shyrio no computer (8)
  
• shyrio no computer (9)

tim blechman “re-reading” compact disc-recordable

• re-reading (43:47)