Answers to (paraphrased) Questions on "Space" by Paulo Raposo 3/8/07

(how did you become involved in sound-art?)
I started working with sound when I was about 15 years old. I got a four-track cassette recorder and right from the beginning I was more interested in working with the sounds around me than with instruments. I started recording thunderstorms, sounds of breathing, banging on metal and things like that. After I moved to Austin, Texas in about 1994, I started to meet some of the people who were involved in a magazine called N D. Though I knew of a few key things, such as John Cage, the Hafler Trio, Zoviet France, etc, I quickly realized that there were many other people in the world making this kind of music. It was at that time that I met Michael Northam, John Grzinich, and Olivia Block and started several important collaborations. In the past few years my work has diversified quite a bit - from making work for CDs to making work for dance and theatre, making sound installation projects, projects with video and sound performances with participants. It's the last category that interests me the most right now, working with multiple participants, pre-recorded sounds and acoustic sounds. Really trying to bring together all of these different medias, possibly with video as well.

(did you think about space from the beginning?)
Well, I think at the beginning my equipment was not good enough to consider space as an inherent part of most material. But around the I time I met John and Olivia, I started investing more money in equipment, better microphones. We did a lot of exploring of spaces around Austin and there's an early cassette we made called "Tunnels/Stairwell" where we entered into long concrete tunnels to make recordings, bringing objects and instruments with us. The piece on the other side of the cassette was recorded in a stairwell that had a 7-second reverberation. We placed microphones throughout the different levels of the space, and mixed them live to DAT. Listening to the way that architecture changes space and sounds, and at that time mostly working with improvisation. Those experiments really started to spur my interest in the idea of "playing" the spaces themselves. As soon as my first cd, "Tracing the Skins of Clouds", I started becoming interested specifically in the idea of conflicting spaces. That's something that still interests me quite a bit - an idea of bringing together recordings from different spaces, spaces that don't match and weren't 'meant' to be heard together, forcing them into a kind of relationship.
A lot of times the spaces go through multiple processes of re-recording. I'll take something that I've recorded in one space and then bring speakers into another space to play it, adding another layer of activity. So they can become really quite convoluted processes. I think primarily, and especially recently, I've been interested in a quality that I've been calling "awkwardness", by which I don't mean a kind of unresolvedness, but more something that is intentional awkwardness. A kind of tension within the sounds that I think happens when, for example, conflicting spaces are layered together. Something about how the ear is unable to complete a picture of what the space actually is. Despite their varied qualities, these sounds have a distinct relationship, either through their synchronicity or their timbral quality. And yet there's something awkward about a relationship that doesn't quite fit together.
One example which is now fairly old would be the first track on Umbra. I was working with the idea of recording very very close spaces, actually trying to record the space inside of resonant tubes. So I was using a lot of blown tubes, both actual instruments like flutes and whistles, but also things like bottles and jugs, found objects, things like that. Trying to record those as closely as possible and heavily layered, but then behind that straata of the sound, trying to "hide" a very, very expansive sound. I recorded distant fireworks, a sound that reaches miles into the distance. But the relationship between the sounds is one that the more expansive sound is contained within the very close sound. There's a kind of conflict.

(can you tell me about this track you sent? what is it called?)
It doesn't have a title, but it's the second track from my new cd called Amnemonic Site. That track is a good example of the idea of re-recording inside of spaces. I applied a lot of that process in this project. Some of it was re-recorded in a large warehouse, with the microphones placed at quite a distance from the speakers. The track begins with the sound of fabric being whipped, which works very well as a way of revealing the contours of a fairly small room. Over the course of the track, it moves from a small space, opening up into a very large one.

(are you interested in social spaces?)
Yeah, I would say so. I mean, the spaces I'm recording in are usually empty of people other than myself and the sounds that I'm putting into them. I am interested in social spaces in regards to performance, of course. But I feel like that's a very different project. I mean, performance is inherently spatial, or at least in the way that I think of it, so I really want to question some of the standardized architectures in music performance, and to try and disperse the sounds and the audience throughout a space. I'm still working on strategies of how to do that effectively.

(what about installation? is that one way?)
I've really only done a few projects like that so I feel that many of the ideas have have yet to be realized. The most recent piece was a collaboration with a dancer here in Portland named Linda Austin. It used 3 video projections and 8 speakers. I filmed her performing the same 15 minute dance 3 times from 3 different heights. One camera recorded her feet, another recorded her torso and another recorded her head. Those projections were dispersed in the space along with 3 recordings of the sounds that she made while dancing, as well as a composed sound piece. It was a very anti-minimalist installation! (laughter) There was a lot going on and it was impossible for a viewer to take in all of the information at once. There was no position in the room where you could see or hear everything.
I think some of the ideas that I'm just starting to work with now involve multiple... I've started making animations using a digital camera, still images that are animated. So I'm interested in syncronizing those very carefully with the sound, but then dispersing the images throughout a space. The images that I've been working with are either surveys of the spaces where sounds are recorded - empty rooms, or a kind of fanciful playing of objects that might not actually make sound. Things like crystals, feathers, birds nests, pieces of clay and glass, etc. So I've just been planning an installation piece that would utilize all of that material. It's more just a formal idea at this point, a way of organizing sound and image into syncronized movements but without a shared linear goal.

(and what about the pieces for participants?)
The pieces that I've made for multiple performers in the past have always surrounded the audience, with the performers on the periphery of the space, more or less evenly distributed. I guess my idea with that was a kind of optimization of the listening experience, so that there's a maximum of spatial movement and a general equivalency for all listeners. But an idea that I'd like to move towards in future performances throws that idea out and starts with something that's a bit more choreographed and decentralized. The performers would be completely interspersed with the audience, and I imagine the event in a fairly large space with people standing, so that they are not sedentary listers, they are listeners who are moving, and the performers are doing the same thing. That kind of interspersed quality interests me much more now, and the idea that one will miss things. There is no perfect listening position. That just really changes the way that, as a composer, I start to organize the material, because then there's really not any one ideal finished version of the piece. It's more a matter of creating an environoment that has enough complexity in it to interest anyone at any position, at least over time.

(does this make you question recorded works for CD?)
I don't know if a CD really shares the same kind of concerns, because it's so much more of a private experience. I have absolutely no control over the environment of the listener. Within that type of situation, I'm able to excersize my interest in compositional precision, I guess. So actually going into the level of a microsecond and making changes. Getting interested in those kinds of really small details. But then the end result is a private experience that I have no access to as a composer. Of course, it's private also in its creation, to some degree. I've been involving my friends in recording "sessions", mostly for voice. They glimpse a small part of the thought process, but they don't know how the recordings fit in the bigger picture. The actual of act of putting the pieces together happens in a very personal, focused space. At the same time, I've enjoyed playing works-in-progress to friends and getting detailed reactions.
(would you say there is a gap between composer and listener in regards to studio composition?)
Yes, there is a gap, but I don't think it's necessarily problematic. I think it's more in the nature of the media. I think that what can become problematic is when people (and I'm guilty of this myself) approach performance as if it were the essentially the same as a published media. To not utilize the full capabilities of social space in a performance. SItting on a stage, with a frontal view of a performer sitting at a tab le with objects or a laptop, or whatever. I mean, that can result in interesting sounds and a satisfying listening experience, but it doesn't utilize fully the performative aspect of a shared social space.

(can you tell me about the magazine you help create?)
So I've been working on a magazine called FO A RM since about 2002, and the fifth issue is out now, finally. My co-editors for this issue were Matt Marble, Bethany Wright and Michael J. Schumacher. It started as a fully interdiscliplinary magazine - I think we as editors shared a goal of anti-specialization - but it's become clear over the years that the real interest in the public seems to be for sound related articles, experimental music content. So we've drifted pretty far into that territory. The new issue is almost entirely engaged with sound and comes with a full-length CD with pieces by Michael J. Schumacher, Barbara Held, Jose Maceda and others. Number 5 will be the last issue of FO A RM, though I will be continuing with other projects, releasing a CD by Arsenije Jovanovic of his work of the last 30 years. Another new project is to start an online magazine, which would have space for both discussion and articles. That's in the development stages with John Grzinich, Micah Silver and Matt Marble. We feel like it needs to reach some level of development before we can make it public...

(what do you think about this community?)
The community of experimental music? Well, I think it's a really interesting community because it's so international. I mean, it's a completely global network of artists who are familiar with each other's work and probably mostly making work for each other, when it comes down to it. With a few interested listeners on the side (laughter). I don't know, I also like the fact that this community has always in some way operated in a similar manner. Before the internet, people wrote lots of letters and sent faxes and found ways of communicating internationally that e-mail and the internet has just made much easier.

(where is sound art going?)
I don't feel like I can make any real predictions about what's happening with sound art, but it does seem like there's an increasing interest on the level of institutions and the kind of places that will make this work available - installation work and those kinds of ephemeral formats. I guess I'm hopeful at this point.

(do you think it's becoming institutionalized?)
Yes, I feel like it is becoming institutionalized, unfortunately just a very small percentage of it. Or maybe fortunately, I don't know. I think we all deserve to have some opportunities for realizing pieces in those kinds of settings, but I think it's really just one possibility of a way of making work. I think it's equally valid and maybe more interesting to make a piece in the middle of a field with a few friends or very non-traditional performances spaces, things like that. But, if a museum offers me the chance to make a piece than I would certianly accept!

(can you tell me about your collaborations with John Grzinich? How is Gyre different from the previous CDs, Stria and Confluence?)
Well, John and I have this history of ten-years of collaborating together. Confluence and Stria were very extended projects. They were things that we started when we lived in the same place, but then John moved to Europe and was itinerant for a long time, I moved to Portland. So those works took about two years to complete and we were working steadily on them the whole time. To me, they feel much more like heavy, solid, very thoughtful pieces. The more recent one, Gyre happened more spontaneously and quickly. When I went to visit John in Estonia, we started making recordings together, with no real goal in mind. Estonia is wonderful for recording because it's so quiet and there's almost no traffic, there are very few planes, there's lots of abandoned buildings. So we had a number of sessions and started gathering material. We then had a residency in Finland and started assembling things. I guess within two months we had completed the CD, with some additional touches over the next few months. So it was very quick, it's probably the quickest thing that I've produced. To me it feels much more light and kind of breezy, in some sense. It's far less processed, the recordings themselves are much more clearly acoustic spaces. You can almost hear the tangible quality of the space where things are happening.

(and your collaboration with Olivia Block?)
The work with Olivia was interesting. I think even more than the work with John, we both found a kind of middle ground between our personal styles and made compositional decisions that we wouldn't have made independently. There was a lot of sending things back and forth for Sunder, Unite. It was pretty much fair game - I could chop up or distort or edit or destroy her recordings as much as I liked and vice versa. The result is really... there are a lot of holes punched into the sound, a lot of cuts. It's not glitch material, but I think the recordings have been pushed quite a bit more. It's a piece that overall has a lot of space in it, a lot of quiet areas. It was really fun to make - it all came together in a nice way. I'd like to do another collaboration with Olivia, eventually.

(do you relate to musique concrete?)
You know, I think the advantage of the current moment is that we can draw from all of these histories and not have to be identified or linked with any one of them. I don't think I could be really part of musique concrete, not coming from that kind of education and institution. I do feel retroactively or just technically connected with that kind of work. Simply by the fact that almost all of my sources begin with acoustic sounds, recorded with a microphone, in the way that Schaeffer, Xenakis, Parmegiani and others collected material. But I feel more connected with an underground noise movement that might include artists like The New Blockaders or Giancarlo Toniutti, things like that. That kind of work was equally inspiring to me, and shares a rawness with the electronic work of Xenakis, which I like very much.