Shishi-odoshi is a term that refers to devices originating from Japan that are made to scare wild animals, such as deer or boars, away from gardens using sound.

One of the most well known forms of shishi-odoshi is sozu, pictured above. Sozu consists of a bamboo tube that is weighted towards one end, usually leaning on a rock. The unweighted end of the bamboo tube is then fed a trickle of water until it eventually becomes heavier than the weighted end, and as the centre of gravity changes the tube rotates and and the water falls out. This makes the bamboo tube crash back against the rock it was originally resting on, causing it to make a sharp sound that scares away the animals. Below is a video demonstration:

Although once serving a practical purpose, these installations are now mostly just for aesthetic purposes.

One of the other forms of shishi-odoshi are naruko – these are hand clappers used by farmers to scare birds away from crops.

They are also now commonly used in the Yosakoi style of group dancing, as a form of percussion held by the dancers. I find it interesting how a part of Japanese life that once used to be purely functional is now utilised within a creative performance context.

Shishi-odoshi is an example of how sound is used in global cultures to carry out functional roles that we do not see in the western world. Although sozu is mainly used for decorative purposes now, in the past it carried out an important task in keeping threats to agriculture at bay. I find it really fascinating as this must be one of the first examples of an automated process and mechanism replacing the need for a human being to be there (in this case having to stand and scare the animals off themselves). The fact that it uses sound to do so is very intelligent, and I wish I could find more online about its history as there was a disappointing lack of articles to help me go on further with my research.

References

1. Ikeshiro, R. and Tanaka, A., n.d. Sound in Japan: Silence, Noise, Material and Media.
2. En.wikipedia.org. n.d. Shishi-odoshi. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishi-odoshi> [Accessed 8 December 2021].
3. Spacey, J., 2015. What is a Naruko?. [online] Japan Talk. Available at: <https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/naruko> [Accessed 8 December 2021].

I was a big Doctor Who fan as a young child – I especially enjoyed the original run from 1963 until 1989, and being an avid consumer/lover of music at the time (as remains the case now), of course one of the aspects I enjoyed the most was the theme tune. I was always particularly keen on the original 1963 tune composed by Ron Grainer and ‘bought to life’, as it were, by Delia Derbyshire. This is something so otherworldly, so haunting about it. It was very ahead of its time, made far before the ready availability of commercial synthesisers.

Of course, at the age of 6 I didn’t fully comprehend that I had come across the work of one of the pioneering institutions in British Sound Art – the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The Radiophonic Workshop was originally set up in 1958 with the purpose of providing music and sound effects for shows on the BBC, and was operational for 40 years until it closed down in 1998.

The original Doctor Who theme made use of many techniques that had been featured within musique concrète in recent years, and was made by editing, splicing, and changing the speed of pieces of tape that had recordings of white noise, test-tone oscillators and a single plucked string. Sadly, Delia Derbyshire, who was responsible for the sound and production of this incredibly innovative piece never received a co-composer credit or shared royalties with Ron Grainger due to the BBC wanting to keep members of the workshop anonymous. I personally believe this led to Derbyshire becoming a severely underrated pioneer of sonic production – she has become a cult figure within electronic music and sound art circles since, however I rarely hear her name bought up in these contexts either. One ought to listen to her 1966 project ‘Moogies Bloogies’ with popular actor and singer Anthony Newley to get an even wider scope on just how innovative her work was at the time.

Whilst reading the conversation between David Toop and Adam Parkinson hosted at the London Metropolitan University in 2015, I came across more artists who were involved with the workshop. In particular, I was struck by the work of Daphne Oram. This ‘radiophonic poem’ from 1957 is incredibly innovative for its time, and I almost couldn’t believe it had been broadcast when it was:

A particular invention of Oram’s which I find fascinating is the ‘Oramics’ machine, first developed in 1962. This machine made use of optical scanning technologies to read waveforms that were hand-drawn on to strips of 35mm film, and is sometimes seen as a predecessor to MIDI Sequencing.

I believe it is very important to highlight the work of the women of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop as their names can often be overlooked within the history of British sound art. This is unfortunately due to the BBC wanting to keep the members of the workshop anonymous, and I find this to be a shame as so much of the history of sound art can tend to be male-dominated. Derbyshire and Oram were true innovators, and I would like to hear their names mentioned more when talking about the history of electronic music and sound art.

References

1. Toop, D., Parkinson, A., 2015. Unfinished Business: A Conversation on Sound Art in the United Kingdom.
2. Butler, D., n.d. Delia Derbyshire – History of the BBC. [online] BBC. Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/pioneering-women/women-of-the-workshop/delia-derbyshire> [Accessed 8 December 2021].
3. Stewart, D., Stewart, I. and Kenny, J., n.d. Doctor Who: The Theme — Derbyshire (1963). [online] Doctor Who: The Theme. Available at: <https://www.dwtheme.com/derbyshire/1963> [Accessed 8 December 2021].
4. Williams, H., 2017. The woman who could ‘draw’ music. [online] BBC. Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170522-daphne-oram-pioneered-electronic-music> [Accessed 8 December 2021].
5. BBC. n.d. BBC Radiophonic Workshop Founded. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/anniversaries/april/bbc-radiophonic-workshop> [Accessed 8 December 2021].

In the conversation between David Toop and Adam Parkinson that we read in class, one particular work of performance art that was mentioned caught my interest. This is the ‘Singing Sculpture’, first performed at St Martin’s School of Art in 1969 by collaborative duo Gilbert and George.

This piece is part of what Toop describes as “an impulse to go beyond a certain kind of art or music practice”. The piece blends together a number of different mediums including sculpture, performance art and sound art. The song that the duo are singing along to is ‘Underneath the Arches’ by 1930’s variety act Flanagan and Allen.

One reason why this piece is innovative is that it is an early instance of people, as it were, being exhibited in a gallery. Gilbert and George insisted on painting themselves silver and having the record play on repeat, sometimes for eight hours at a time. This in a way anonymised them and almost seem as though they were robots running off clockwork. In one interview Gilbert described an audience member saying that the artwork was “sort of like a force of nature, like a waterfall”. Often viewers would stay and watch the sculpture for multiple repetitions, almost feeling as if they were in a trance-like state where they couldn’t get up and leave.

I find this piece interesting and relevant to my own work as I would love to work across different disciplines whilst still using sound as my primary form of communication. A mixed media art piece, particularly one involving performance art, is something I would like to create whilst studying on this course. There is something so eerie and dehumanising about the way Gilbert and George present themselves in the piece, and I think I would like to go for something similar but maybe in a more modern context. The ‘uncanny valley’ would be an interesting topic to explore.

References

1. Toop, D., Parkinson, A., 2015. Unfinished Business: A Conversation on Sound Art in the United Kingdom.
2. ABC News, 2010. Singing Sculpture. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGBaShS_Ktg&t=127s> [Accessed 8 December 2021].

Richard Phoenix is a musician, writer, painter and member of the punk band Sauna Youth formed in 2009. He also works with neurodivergent individuals, helping them to get together and make music, in turn making DIY scenes more accessible for everyone who wants to get involved.

In his lecture he focused on talking to us specifically about his work with acts from the learning disabled scene. In 2013, he set up the non-profit organisation Constant Flux, where he works with artists such as Zombie Crash and The Fish Police.

I found this talk personally relevant as in the past I have worked at summer music schools helping to facilitate and enhance the experience of learning disabled children. I think that it is incredibly important to use one’s own privilege to help amplify the voices of those who may find it harder to do so due to the pre-existing prejudices that western society may impose on them. This is especially true in the case of DIY music scenes, which in my own experiences I have found to sometimes be rather middle class, male and neurotypical-dominated. Sound and music can have a huge impact on everyone’s lives, and I subscribe to the belief that all forms of art should be made as accessible as possible, for every individual.

Another aspect of Richard Phoenix’s work that I appreciate is that he assists in the running of the venue DIY Space for London. This has been one of my favourite venues in London for quite a while, being very accessible to most artists that want to put on shows – I have been there quite a few times in the past. The fact that he works with the venue was something I had not been aware of in the past, so was a pleasant surprise.

He also talked quite extensively about the social model of disability, a concept I have only been introduced to since joining UAL. According to Scope, the social model of disability “says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference”. This essentially means that instead of being ‘people with disabilities’ (a term which implies the barrier is within the individual), disabled people are individuals who are surrounded by obstacles and barriers put upon them by the society they happen to be born into. I find this to be a very empowering way of looking at disability, as it aims to remove a lot of the stigma surrounding the topic and place the onus on wider society to change its values, rather than forcing disabled people to adapt to environments that aren’t suitable for them.

Something I would’ve liked to have seen from Phoenix’s talk however would have been some words from a disabled individual that he has worked with. I feel as though it would have been excellent to hear how Phoenix’s work has had an impact on their life, even if it was in a pre-recorded segment. However I appreciate this may have been difficult to organise, and perhaps speaking to an audience may not have been the most preferable way for a neurodivergent artist to get their opinions across.

All in all I found this to be a very inspiring talk, and if possible in the future I would also like to carry out work to help make art more accessible to those who may feel ostracised from the wider art world.

References

1. Phoenix, R., n.d. Richard Phoenix. [online] Richardphoenix.com. Available at: <https://richardphoenix.com/> [Accessed 8 December 2021].
2. Constantflux.co.uk. n.d. Constant Flux. [online] Available at: <https://constantflux.co.uk/about/> [Accessed 8 December 2021].
3. Scope. n.d. Social model of disability | Disability charity Scope UK. [online] Available at: <https://www.scope.org.uk/about-us/social-model-of-disability/> [Accessed 8 December 2021].

Recently whilst reading up on Sound Art in Japan, I came across the work of Yoko Ono. Being a huge fan of The Beatles I was really interested to listen to her work.

I decided to listen to ‘Voice Piece for Soprano’.

On first impression, I didn’t like it. It caught me off guard and I didn’t know how to react – To me, it just seemed like someone shouting into a microphone and I couldn’t see a meaning to it. In fact, I could’ve sworn I’d been sent this by my friends as a joke before?

So I decided to research further.

I wanted to know the concept behind the piece, and I found that the ‘score’ for it was simply a note with three instructions. These were:

1: Scream against the wind

2: Scream against the wall

3: Scream against the sky

From what I could gather, the piece was intended to be freeing – the idea was that anyone could perform it and sort of use it as a form of catharsis. The microphone had been set up in the Museum of Modern Art and left there for anyone to scream into, and apparently it was so loud that it could be heard from five stories above.

This was where it became problematic. I found this article by Julia Halperin for Observer on some of the negative impacts of the piece:

MoMA Turns Down the Volume on Yoko

In the article Halperin describes how “the loud, sporadic screams that resulted startled visitors, while staff members strained to speak to museum-goers over the noise.” According to one anonymous employee, “‘It was disturbing to the staff at the information desk'”. Eventually the piece ended up having to have its volume turned down, against Ono’s wishes.

This got me thinking about the need to create a sustainable practice in art that doesn’t negatively impact on people’s lives. One example not necessarily related to sound art is the Goldsmiths carrot fiasco from last year, where 240,000 carrots were dumped into a courtyard at Goldsmiths University for a student’s MFA piece titled ‘Grounding’. Although the piece was in a way supposed to highlight issues surrounding food production and farm labour (dumping lorries full of vegetables onto main roads is a way of farmers protesting and creating roadblocks in Spain, where the artist Rafael Perez Evans is originally from), it was surrounded by controversy, particularly by fellow students who deemed the work an “incredibly wasteful art piece” – this was a direct quote from the @goldsmithscarrots instagram, which was set up to protest against the piece. They quite rightly argued that “Lewisham is one of the poorest boroughs in London and this mass dumping of carrots at Goldsmiths is beyond insensitive.”

It does have to be said that Evans purchased the carrots from a bulk animal feed provider and he intended to donate them to farms to feed livestock. He also stated that the carrots hadn’t been deemed fit for human consumption. The students, however, begged to differ, and started to collect carrots from the piece to use for a stall selling vegan carrot cake and carrot soup with ‘pay what you can’ pricing.

Evans has since gone on to flood a gallery with a lake of milk.

Although in different ways, these two pieces of art have both caused considerable discussion around them regarding their unintended impacts. Ono’s Voice Piece for Soprano caused irritation for staff at the museum and made their jobs considerably harder, whereas Evans’ ‘Grounding’ raised concerns about the ethics of using 31 tons of carrots for an art piece, and whether this was just a waste of food in one of the most deprived areas of London.

Personally I think in the case of Ono’s work, perhaps some measures such as soundproofing could have been taken to alleviate the stresses on the staff at the museum. This could’ve meant the art stayed at its intended volume, instead of having to dilute Ono’s message somewhat. However this would have been costly and would also raise concerns about how much money was being spent on the piece.

In the case of Evans’ work, I think it did not need to exist. His method of trying to highlight issues around food supply chains and the wastage of food completely backfired and ended up doing more harm than good. Most casual observers would most likely not even know that these carrots had been designated as animal feed, and would just see it as an example of arts universities wasting money on insensitive projects – making the world of art seem even less accessible to those from non-privileged backgrounds.

References

1. Halperin, J., 2010. MoMA Turns Down the Volume on Yoko. [online] Observer. Available at: <https://observer.com/2010/07/moma-turns-down-the-volume-on-yoko/> [Accessed 12 November 2021].
2. Cascone, S., 2020. A Goldsmiths Grad Student Just Dumped 31 Tons of Carrots Into the School’s Courtyard for His MFA Exhibition. [online] Artnet News. Available at: <https://news.artnet.com/art-world/31-tons-of-carrots-goldsmiths-mfa-show-1912145> [Accessed 12 November 2021].

Hi there!

My name is Henry, and this is the blog I will be keeping to go along with my studies at LCC.

For my first blog entry I thought I would look at Musique Concrète, one of the earliest forms of modern sound art. The term was invented by Pierre Schaeffer, and was used to describe music made from recorded (sampled) concrete sounds, as opposed to music made with traditional instruments.

Schaeffer was one of the leading figures of the genre, and some of his most pioneering work can be found in Cinq Études de Bruits from 1948.

The five études (studies) in the piece are:

1. Étude aux Chemins de Fer – trains
2. Étude aux Tourniquets – toy tops and percussion instruments
3. Étude Violette – piano
4. Étude Noire – piano
5. Étude Pathétique – sauce pans, canal boats, singing, speech, harmonica, piano

Each of them utilises separate sounds, and my personal favourite is the 4th étude, ‘Étude Noire’. There is something about it that sounds so menacing and dark – completely separate to the popular music of the time. I think that the crackling vinyl sounds add something to the eerie atmosphere.

Another pioneering artist of Musique Concrète is Halim El-Dabh. El-Dabh was originally from Cairo, and his piece ‘The Expression of Zaar’ from 1944 is a precursor to Schaeffer’s Études, which were composed four years later.

For this piece, El-Dabh captured the sounds a traditional zaar ceremony (a public exorcism) with a wire recorder he had borrowed from Middle East Radio, and manipulated them.

El-Dabh best describes it himself – “I just started playing around with the equipment at the station, including reverberation, echo chambers, voltage controls, and a re-recording room that had movable walls to create different kinds and amounts of reverb. I concentrated on those high tones that reverberated and had different beats and clashes, and started eliminating the fundamental tones, isolating the high overtones so that in the finished recording, the voices are not really recognizable any more, only the high overtones, with their beats and clashes, may be heard.”

I find it very interesting to look at works of sound art that have been produced outside of traditional western contexts, and El-Dabh’s ‘Expression of Zaar’ is certainly an extremely pioneering and innovative piece of work, pre-dating pretty much all other works of Musique Concrète. This is not to downplay Schaeffer’s work though, and the two composers, amongst many others associated with the genre at the time, certainly left a huge influence on sampled music and sound art that was to come in the years following.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite Pierre Schaeffer quotes – “Why should a civilization which so misuses its power have, or deserve, a normal music?”

References

1. MusicRadar. 2020. Everything you need to know about: Musique concrète. [online] Available at: <https://www.musicradar.com/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-musique-concrete> [Accessed 5 November 2021].
2. Patrick, J., n.d. A guide to Pierre Schaeffer, godfather of sampling. [online] Fact Magazine. Available at: <https://www.factmag.com/2016/02/23/pierre-schaeffer-guide/> [Accessed 15 November 2021].
3. Bradley, F., 2015. Halim El Dabh. [online] Ibraaz. Available at: <https://www.ibraaz.org/essays/139/> [Accessed 15 November 2021].
4. Fire Water, 2011. Halim El-Dabh – “Wire Recorder Piece” 1944. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_kbNSdRvgo> [Accessed 15 November 2021].