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old bears new tricks

may 31, 2004.
[>∞-îl_o_tré-#03-<]

Placard friday was the sunniest and hottest day of the week. Before starting our net-streamed sessions, Martin, Peter and I went to the beach for a 'final stroll'. Martin brought his family and the Park equipment over in his old van, and touring the island in Martin's vehicle, be it only to go out to eat, or buy some beers in the supermarket, brought out these feelings of 'a band touring' ... But then, of course, in a way, we were sort of a band these days.

The Placard that we set up in Hollum was a première in more than one sense. Most noteworthy: this has been the first ever Placard in the Netherlands (and in a pretty unusual place as far as that country goes). It was Peter and Martin's first participation in a Placard. And my first time as an organiser and emitter.
Hollum is a very small village, with a mere 1100 inhabitants, and only slightly less traditions. Part of these is the local announcer, which one may hire to announce events in Hollum (or else on the island). He drives out in his car, that has two loudspeakers mounted on its roof, and slowly drives through the villages' streets, loudly speaking his announcement, accompanied by a tape full of merry tunes.
Okay.
We hired him to announce our placard event ... You can have a look at a small QuickTime movie of the announcement ...

Soundwise we mostly kept to our usual, pretty ancient, tools: our vocal chords, an old clarinette, cheap electric guitars (no effects), two kraakdozen (crackle boxes), (lo- and hi-fi) field recordings (those made for last year's GeluidEiland (Isle of Sound) project) played back through an MD-player and my usual assortment of dictaphones, or, sparingly though, via mp3-playlists on a laptop. Martin added to this the possibility of an occasional touch of electronica, with a small MIDI-keyboard and equally small digital mixing panel controlling Cubase installed on an iBook.
Well, I guess this can hardly be considered a limitation. Rather, it is a choice, that, as far as Peter and I are concerned, is rooted in a common history (old bears, say).

Beforehand I had planned to also build small sound producing contraptions, using objects found on the island. But I simply did not find the time to go out and find things. That would have taken, at least, one more (sunny) day on which to bike and stroll around to look for 'things'. And then one more (rainy, if need be) to build and experiment. There's an echo of the idea, though, in the last-minute grabbing of a small metal bucket filled with stones and shells that I saw standing near the entrance to the studio, and that I then used in the stream sessions. I was pretty pleased with its sounding result, even though I think I hardly touched upon its true potential. Still something short of a small universe to be explored here.

And what about the aesthetics of streaming? Well there's drops, and there's clips, and there's glitches, but probably the interesting first thing one should mention about streaming live on the internet is the amazing lag, that, in our case, turned out to be as large as 6-10 seconds. (In the irc-chat Erik Minkkinen even mentioned noticing a lag between the stream-signals received by two distinct machines in Paris.) I remember being warned about the lag. But we do have a thing with 'lags', we do. Rooted in a common history (old bears, say). And I guess this hardly can be considered a new trick, but of course we immediately fed back the stream into the stream. In last friday's Placard we set up and played an internet echo-loop ... and thus, (time warp) -pretty much incidentally - bridged near a quarter of a century.
Instantly.

Could one ask for more on an île au trésor?

[ technicalities : We used QuickTime Broadcaster to sent our mpeg4 stereo audio and (very lo-res) video signal to Park's QuickTime Server. All was almost trivially simple to be made to work, but then of course Martin already had done the bulk of the work when setting up the server.
On the receiving end: us being on MacOSX-only made it impossible for us to listen to the Ogg Vorbis-encoded stream sent by dokidoki; we were able to get some of the parisian 'ambiance' though, via an improvised qt-stream, that Erik M. sent to Park's server: I gathered from the irc-chat that he simply put a set of headphones over a computer's internal mike ... ... Btw, thanks to all that listened over there, including those that picked up the stream-url in the chat. ]

[ links : www.park.nl :: schateiland ]

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"... met vele artiesten ..."

may 28, 2004.
[>∞-îl_o_tré-#02-<]

The actual filling in of the project for the week had been kept wide open: we would be filming, recording, trying, playing, editing, searching ... kicking ideas around. A laboratory indeed. We made things up as we went along. Apart from friday's placard nothing much had been planned in advance. One of the ideas that circulated beforehand in our mail exchanges though, was to involve, in one way or another, local bands and musicians.

And indeed we did, even though this proved to be easier said than done. It is was one of the things that, first, should have been organised better, and longer in advance. And, second, in order to really get this off the ground, we would have needed much more time than we did. It's sort of a project within a project, actually.
Ideally, it would involve meeting musicians, getting to know them, listening to them play. Then, having heard them play, we would need, of course, to think about in what way we'd like to involve them in a recording session. Having clarified this first of all for ourselves, one then should meet up again, and try to explain what it is that we would like (us/them) to do.
This time around, all of this had to be squeezed together into the span of a couple of hours on a mere two evenings.
On tuesday evening we visited the village fanfare, the Hollumer Gromkes, during their weekly rehearsal in a backroom of the village inn, Herberg de Zwaan. They were kind enough to let us record several pieces from their repertoire. Even kinder, as they were also willing to let us record parts of pieces: trumpets only, horns only, et cetera ... A next step would be to try to involve them into some sort of improvisation, doing things they do not do usually ... But that would have been too much for a first evening. We have to keep that in mind for a possible 'next time' ... for I really do consider the fanfare to be one of the great 'sonic treasures' of the village.

The 'guitar evening' that we had planned (not earlier than on monday evening, really) for wednesday, in the end - apart from a shortish but intricate solo éléctrique by Dick Tuinder and a couple of groove-searching thumb-struhmmmbs by Timo Mank himself, seated on a corner of his very own Henk Vos table - involved mainly us: Martin, Peter and me, that is. Not for lack of guitar players on the isle of Ameland. But simply a matter of 'bad timing' ... All the more reason to appreciate the visit of singer/guitarist Martin de Boer later that same evening. Martin sang some of the highlights of his goldies repertoire for us, while accompanying himself on his guitar. And we, well ... we recorded his performance, and then went for a beer, just across de road, in what had become our late evening hang-out: café 'De Welvaart'.

[ listen to Martin de Boer's and the Hollumer Gromkes' contribution on Park's iRadio 'treasure island stream' ]

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"... uut hollum komt de mesiek"

may 26, 2004.
[>∞-îl_o_tré-#01-<]

There is was a digidivi-stream where you can could listen to snippets of the daily recordings we've been making the last couple of days in and out of our 'treasure island-studio'.

You can also have a look at the videos that meanwhile are being made by Mertens, Takken and Tuinder

We've been testing webstreaming for friday's placard, and generally been busy being very busy from early on in the morning until late evening... just in case you're wondering, i mean ...
It's not easy to manage time. When one's editing, there's no time to record. And while recording, one cannot edit. Editing, obviously, is the most time consuming part of the process.
Snippets, therefore, for the time being.
Like in 'work in progress' ...

[ links : www.park.nl :: schateiland ]

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tafelmuziek placard

may 20, 2004.
[>∞-îl_o_tré-#00-<]

Preparing for the 'follow-up' to last year's 'geluidjutten' project on the Dutch Isle of Ameland. (I think I didn't mention on these pages yet that meanwhile i finished a bèta of a CDrom-version of the Island of Sound? .... checking ... no, I did not ... well, I'll do that later ...). This year I'll be joining a Park4DTV team (Martin Takken, Dirk Tuinder, Peter Mertens) for a week of 'pure sound and image' [ ∞ / OK01 ], during which we'll be setting up studio in Timo Mank's Dit Eiland, in the village of Hollum. The gallery presents [ ∞ / OK01 ], along with a number of other 'multimedia' projects, as part of the activities of this year's (Dutch) national Week van de Zee. The week's theme is 'Schatten uit Zee' ('treasures from the sea'), and when you mix that with an island, what do you get...? Well, yes, of course you do!

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This year's 'island of sound' will be a large table (by Henk Vos), on which we will cut, mix, break, tear, swish, reverse, ramble, rush, push, hit, bake, wangle, mirror, mash and mangle sounds. And objects making sounds. Part of the project will consist in live recording sessions with local musicians. And I really hope that we will be able to also involve in one way or another the village fanfare, the Hollumer Gromkes ... Micro and macro, and all that's in between. From epsilon to infinity ... like a huge blank canvas waiting to be filled.

I'll be on the train to Amsterdam on saturday, and arrive on Ameland this sunday 23rd. Back to Amsterdam saturday 29th. Back home sunday 30th. That's the schedule. The island is not the easiest place to get to, but you're more than welcome to hop over and say 'hello'. (Drop me an email!)

Friday 28th we will present the week's sounding results as a series of live webstreams from the gallery, in a placard, as part of the 2004 edition (the seventh) of the 'international placard headphone festival', that started earlier this month in Poitiers, and will continue until mid august. The placard is scheduled from 16h00 to midnight, and we will alternate emission slots with slots of listening to the placard that at the same time is taking place in Paris.

[ Next related SB-entry: water, wind, zeilen; earlier related SB-entries: [Ameland] geluid jutten :: [placard] gaité lyrique ]

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