I’ve been trying to get my head around the interesting contemporary theoretical work of Brian Holmes (more about him here). I learned of Holmes’ work through my friend Stephanie Rothenberg (see the Woodstock Digital Media Festival post below) who has gone with him on ‘derives’ that he leads through various cities (I think Stephanie said they visited several cities in mainland China together). Holmes has been involved with student activism (see this interview) and is a strong proponent of education for social change.

Early this year, he made this post about Marcuse’s dialectics of liberation in University education, and I just have to re-blog this excerpt:

Education today must involve the mind and the body, reason and imagination, the intellectual and the instinctual needs, because our entire existence has become the subject/object of politics, of social engineering. I emphasize, it is not a question of making the schools and universities, of making the educational system political. The educational system is political already. I need only remind you of the incredible degree to which (I am speaking of the United States) universities are involved in huge research grants (the nature of which you know in many cases) by the government and the various quasi-governmental agencies.

The educational system is political, so it is not we who want to politicize the educational system. What we want is a counter-policy against the established policy. And in this sense we must meet this society on its own ground of total mobilization. We must confront indoctrination in servitude with indoctrination in freedom. We must each of us generate in ourselves, and try to generate in others, the instinctual need for a life without fear, without brutality, and without stupidity.

Factor e Farm, an open source ecology group in Missouri – food AND flame effects! :) from fgideas.org

Let’s build a new civilization.

It’s been interesting getting a sense of the living history out here in New England, hearing people reference revolutionary war slogans and history in casual conversation. For example the revolutionary war slogan ‘Live Free or Die’ persists as the slogan for New Hampshire and is still relevant (see the ‘ubuntu’ plate 2 posts down).

Benjamin Franklin’s famous ‘Join, or Die’ cartoon above calling for colonial unity also persists in cultural memory so well it can be referenced in playful images like this:

and used to represent the uniting of the 5 NYC boroughs in this logo and skate video teaser below:

The Helmholtz Resonator

As some of you know, good German engineering is something that really excites me, and I’m happy to say that for the major project for the MBR National Park, I’ve been able to riff on the acoustic design of a fascinating late 19th century German engineer named Hermann von Helmholtz. Helmholtz invented the ‘Helmholtz resonator’ (drawing above) to identify the various frequencies or pitches of the pure sine wave components of complex sounds containing multiple tones. Here is an example of how a series of various size resonators would be arranged for acoustic analysis, your ear would go into the small tube at the front:

For those of you who are interested in the physics of this concept here is an explanation:
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/Helmholtz.html

and an online calculator to determine the resonant frequency based on the size of the sphere and hole:
http://www.vk2zay.net/calculators/helmholtz.php

The basic concept of the Helmholtz resonator, a resonant chamber with a hole, is used in many if not all musical instruments, with variously sized chambers adding to the complexity of the sound. For example, the combination of four primary resonant chambers and specially shaped ‘f’ holes in a violin body contribute to the beauty and complexity of the resultant sound of the instrument.

Other contemporary uses of the resonator are in dampening or reducing certain frequencies of sound in architecture and vehicles like motorcycles. This is sometimes also called a bass trap. One of the weirdest Helmholtz resonator stories I found is one that claimed the head of a Chihuahua formed a resonator.

Since many of the historical resonators were made of glass, I became interested in creating a series of fanciful Helmholtz resonators as a way to connect the well-established glass blowing art and industry in this area of Vermont to the soundscape. Simon Pearce is the largest glass manufacturer here, but I also discovered many incredible small glass blowing studios.

Michael Egan and Topher Kerr-Ayers

To fabricate these fanciful resonators, I was lucky to find and work with Granville-based glass artist Michael Egan and his talented right-hand man Topher Kerr-Ayers. In my opinion Michael is the most skilled and creative glassblower in this area, and a great pleasure to work with. In two days, we designed and created over 10 resonators of various shapes and sizes!

Topher at the Glory Hole

Placing what we decided to call a ‘blobe’ (pronounced like ‘globe’ meaning a blown blob of glass) on the top of a resonator in progress.

Design sketches

Some completed resonators (or ‘sound vessels’)

We will be hanging these vessels along the trails at the MBR park for a reception on July 15th from 3-6PM, then they will be placed in an installation in the Pony Barn.

We want you to understand that theater is not yet an established form, not the place of commerce you think it is, where you pay to get something. Theater is different. It is more like bread, more like a necessity.

Bread & Puppet Theater

While in Vermont, I’ve had the opportunity to see and participate in some Bread & Puppet Theater performances. B&P was created by Peter Schumann and since 1974 has operated an incredible theater and museum in Glover Vermont (an area that’s called the ‘Northeast Kingdom’). Every summer in July and August the existing company of musicians, performers and puppeteers are joined by volunteers and interns from all over the world to create plays, parades and circuses.

The first performance I saw was given by a group of student interns from Montreal and addressed the issue of the commons from a historical and contemporary point of view. The text for the performance came from a 17th century pamphlet written by a group of Protestant English agrarians, who became known as Diggers due to their activities and belief in economic equality. The Diggers and other activist groups like them are often cited as the originators of the concept of the ‘commons’, basing their beliefs on the concept of shared land, what was called a ‘commonage.’ As is well known, Lawrence Lessig and others who argue for the preservation of the electronic commons and ideas as common intellectual property, have often cited the Diggers.

The B&P perspective on the commons is really interesting. For example, the performers each held one part of a body and after various mishaps were able to create a coherent whole. This metaphoric representation of society as a human body that is disconnected and fragmented unless it adheres to the principles of the commons was very powerful, especially in the form of a large puppet that required the cooperation of a large group of puppeteers to operate.

At another part of the performance, the actors were banging on pots and pans as an expression of sonic protest. This has a long history, for example there was a common practice of ‘Rough Music’ in English towns in which a humiliating and loud public punishment was inflicted upon one or more people who violated the standards of the rest of the community. Feminist movements like the Redstockings used this tactic as have many others throughout the world.

In May of this year, protesters in Montreal grabbed their cooking vessels and utensils, wore red and took to the streets to execute the ‘Biggest Act of Civil Disobedience in Canadian History.’ They were protesting Bill 78, known as the ‘anti-protest law’ imposing fines of between $1,000 and $5,000 for any individual who prevents someone from entering an educational institution or who participates in an illegal demonstration. (Democratic Underground)

Here is a very moving video document of the protest:

At the end of Bread & Puppet’s bilingual French/English performance, the Montreal-based troupe wore red ribbons in solidarity with the contemporary Quebec student protest movement.

On July 4th, I performed in two parades with B&P, as part of a wonderful human-made ship. The ship’s body consisted of performers holding a large looped banner with several masts and a percussion band inside. We sang, sank, and did a short choreographed skit for the parade audience.

Our ship said ‘we are all in the same boat’ referencing the current economic crisis.

A marching band, some beautiful stilt-walkers and Peter Schumann dressed as a clown Santa Claus held up the rear. Much more cathartic than fireworks!

B&P poster

Referring to virtual and other non-physical ‘somethings’ and considering the life cycle of products of course.
Via fgideas.org

Lea at Natureza from her GMF flickr feed

The phenomenal social practice artist, filmmaker, curator, ISEA2012 Radical Cosmologies theme co-leader and friend Lea Rekow’s latest project in Rio is Green My Favela (GMF). Lea is working with The Valão, one of the poorest neighborhoods of Rocinha, Brazil’s largest favela. A quarter of a million people occupy less than a square kilometer of space. There is no drainage, planned water runoff, or sewerage system, and there are few green spaces.

Lea is working with Rochinha community leader Tio Lino and the kids of The Valão to produce their own food through a series of urban food garden and related projects in order to increase food security and protection for at-risk children, and children in need of care.

She recently sent me an update on the project, presenting the work at the Naturenza Arte Scienzia 2012 Symposium.

Lea’s beautiful daughter Sophia (she’s so much bigger than the last time I saw her!) looks over the variety of vegetable starts for give away at Natureza.

Through the GMF blog, I learned about 596 Acres, an exciting project in NYC that links a variety of media and online tools with research about the hundreds of acres of vacant land that exists in the city and ways that communities can access that land. Here’s some information via their promo, more videos via their site 596acres.org:

596 Acres Promo from Conspire Films on Vimeo.

According to a UN study one third of the world’s food goes to waste – the largest part thereof in the industrialized nations of the global north. Equally, 925 million people around the world are threatened by starvation. The series ‘One Third’ describes the connection between individual wastage of food and globalized food production.

Disturbing photo series by Klaus Pichler via my new favorite blog fgideas.org

Kent McFarland formatted the anabat bat call files from the MBR park using a shareware program called ‘anamusic’ and passed the files on to me. The raw sounds have a very ‘electronic’ feel and range from very simple clicks indicating basic navigation to complex squeaks and trills that happen during feeding. So, I thought I would experiment with turning these calls into beats. I cut basic rhythmic sections out and stretched and pitch shifted as needed. I didn’t add any resonance, but you will hear in the final mix that there is something like a ring modulation happening with some of the sounds. These bats were recorded at a big lake here at the park known as the Pogue.

The first two sounds in the podcast below ‘loop3′ and ‘loop2′ are a couple seconds each demonstrating the kind of building blocks used to create the final 8-minute experiment, ‘bat_beats’ using nothing but bat calls. Apologies for some awkward moments in the mix, just getting a sense of how this could work (if at all…).