February 2021
On the 21st June, Jean-Michel Jarre performed live in VRChat. He has performed in an online VRChat space before in 2018. This performance in 2020 was free to anyone with access to VRChat, Facebook and YouTube at the time of the event.
This is a beautiful example of initiative taken by people at the time of a pandemic. While I did not personally attend the live performance I have seen it on YouTube afterwards and I’m amazed by it.
It’s stated that this is collaboration with Aero Productions (Jarre’s own record label) and VRRoom. While the modelling of the room and background animation is the work of VRRoom, I do wonder if the music being produced live is from software inside VRChat or whether Jarre is mixing and creating the piece externally and feeding the audio into the virtual room. Either of which is fascinating. My only other experience in online live performance was when I happened to stumble across an online rave whilst playing an online chat room game Habboon.pw. The rave I attended had DJs and artists from Bulgaria though unfortunately I did not manage to get their names.
I remember feeling incredibly lucky to have caught this even by sheer luck as I imagine might have been the case for people watching Jean-Michel Jarre. So it’s to note that in any performance that you should let everyone know your name if you with for your popularity to grow.
The Bulgarian rave I attended was hosted on the chatroom game though the music was streamed via Twitch (an online video streaming platform). I’m honestly rather gutted that I am so blind or out of the loop with events like this as it’s something I enjoy. They posted a link to the Twitch stream into the room to get people tuned in. It would be interesting to see what can be done in my own rooms with resources such as Locus Sonus.
– Reference; (Harry Baker, 18th June 2020, French Electronic Musician Jean-Michel-Jarre To Perform In VRChat This Weekend, Online Article, Viewed 17th February 2021, <https://uploadvr.com/jean-michel-jarre-vrchat-concert/>).
– Reference; (Electro Fields, 28th June 2020, JEAN MICHEL JARRE ALONE TOGETHER Concert In Virtual Reality [4K Quality], Online Video, Viewed 17th February 2021, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omyFUTO4Phc&t=1599s>).
December 2020
Krapp’s Last Tape (Samuel Beckett, 1958):
A scene of a man looking back over an audio diary. The man is a drunk who seems very troubled; frantic in his manner. This piece like many I have come across in sound art is captivating. It holds your attention with key words, quietness placed to set a feeling, this one being unnerved and unsettled. I can’t decide whether or not the man on the tape and the man in the chair are the same person. Their dispositions are very different though they both carry a sinister expression. The man on the tape is calm in his way, expressing his creepiness slowly. The drunk is fast and aggravated, I struggle to understand what he was saying. I would not like to watch this again for a while.
– Reference; (Kyle Hutchins, 30 March 2019, Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett, Online Video, Viewed on 13th December 2020, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CKZ_Sj3–c>).
Adventures in Sound (Various Artists, 2009):
I’ve decided to listen to this album at 15:28 with my university room window open.
The quality is not tremendously clear. I think this is due to the age of this piece. Trains moving along tracks, what seems to be clips of sound cut, layered or mashed together.
The next piece has strings and chimes, but they are aggravated. Unsettling in unison. The strings sound like that of a child’s toy guitar.
A third piece plays, it’s dark, quite cool after it gets into it, synth sounds or manipulated concrete recordings I can’t tell. -I’m interrupted by the train outside my window- Knocks and rhythms are played in section, slowly quieting to be replaced by sinister dull chords.
Piece four and I’m not knowing when they transition to the next track. Metal sounding knocks now with those similar sinister chords, they seem to sway. Addition of softness, recognisable chords that sit pleasantly together. Quiet. Slowly, the piece gains vibrancy -I hear dogs whining and barking outside and the setting has made them creepy. Now the train again.-
Track 5 scratching, dull like a coin. Scratching chords that bounce like a spring, now soft synths. “Can I help you?” sampling, coughing, broken sentences, in unknown languages? Beeps and bleeps, sounds of a printer? It is now very quiet and thin. Back to a coin, back to a scratch.
Next track, high contrast to the last piece. This subjects tone rather than texture mainly? Or is this texture just more pleasing or familiar? -I notice the scrawling sounds of my pencil.- Broken now is my focus as the piece is quiet, though, now back in tune it sounds as though the piece is under water. -I recognise these sounds from an Iris Van Herpen show I watched years ago. She puts musicians in tanks, submerged in water.- Bleeps, vibrations, connection and ripping of sound from one another. What would be pleasant tones now shift their way across the borderline of comfort and unease. -A motorbike drives past- Multiple dull or subdued tones cross one another, they have quick attack and no release. Just quick, pretty, muffled tones fighting each other, harmony is brief among them, usually in lower frequencies. -Does harmony come more easily to those that are slow?-
Quiet
-People talk outside, too far to recognise words- Shifting is track seven, finding a mid texture between the scrapes of earlier pieces and their softness. Quite frightening still, scrapes, under water, dull clashes of metal, whooshing of heavy objects.
Track 8 and a flourish of soft synth beeps, what could be foreign language, it is. Young people singing, again with the beeps. Like an alien ship is tuning and retuning an apparatus to hear into these people voices. A single voice? Overlaid again and again?
I find this unnerving. Sudden shocks of sounds produces by water, bubbles and swooshing. The same single boy’s voice, singing now and then, the jabs of water, deep water.
-It gets too cold, I close my window-
Rattles now synthesized. Rattles that crawl in high pitched clocks, shifts. The singing is now sinister too, out of tune, overlaid, the same quick injections of sound with full attack; no release. Melting now to peace is understandable, and so quickly; out of harmony once more. -I remember the impressionist music shown to us in my high school music class. Realising an impression, I wonder now what it could possible be that this composer now, is portraying-
Quiet
Distress
Signals upon signals with that same boy singing.
Track nine. -I take a break-
– Reference; (Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen et al., 2009, Adventures In Sound, CD, Listened to 7th December 2020).
Sound Walk – 11th November 2020
Yesterday class D wend on a sound walk with Jose Macabra around Forest Hill. We went to a church yard at first and we all introduced ourselves. Then we got into pairs [I was paired with Cai Pritchard] and we took turns to cover our eyes and listen whilst we trusted the other person to guide us around on a walk. At first it took a short time to become confident walking without being able to see, though after a while it seemed to heighten my sense of hearing and the more I relaxed my movement and focused in on the sounds around me; the more I imagined my surroundings. At one point I recall hearing a pram stroll past me and I found myself picturing the object and it’s position. I was surprised at the ability to “see” the pram and picture other things also, such as people talking or walking by and the positions of the people around me. I could tell where I was in comparison to the other people within the space. This was however more heightened at certain times rather than consistently for the whole walk.
We walked through a wooded area also and due to the rain of previous days, the ground had become deep with mud. So with this and the vocal instruction needed when traversing stairs and branches on the path I think it took away that focus I had found when in a more open environment. That is not to say however that I did not notice more, I heard the wind through the trees: Hearing this is familiar to me as I will often go out for walks around Snowdonia when back at home and I’ve always thought of it in a way that the wind allows the trees to speak. Their tonality shifts with the pressure of the winds giving various degrees of expression. It could also be seen as though the earth is breathing, the same way a sigh can lessen tension, I imagine the wind sighs as you can feel the same sense of relief.
I also heard the birds around me, I could sense their movements as the flew around, I could get an estimated idea as to how many of them were in their flocks. There was one bird on it’s own at one point which was to the left of us as we walked by and it interested me greatly because it wasn’t a bird I had ever heard before. It had a very loud and consistent call as though it were threatened or warning. This was the time when I most wanted to take off my eye coverings to see.
The sound I found to be very varying throughout the walk. Jose used a stick to tap or scrape surfaces around us which gave us better sense of place. I picked up on the textures of the sounds being produced which gave me mental cues as to what the surfaces or objects were. We were taken to various places to listen, such as what I think was a children’s park as I heard mothers and their children, and the chimes of a large glockenspiel which are features in many children’s parks. When hearing these chimes the main focus was on them though I recall hearing wind and people also. When I look back to it now I think it’s fascinating how our scope of focus with sound can be changed and is constantly shifting. Whilst sat here now I type and hear my laptop fan though when I wonder about this I hear the bumps and scrapes of the people above me, the distant cars on a main road down from this building and now, the deep hum and rumble of the train as it goes over the shallow bridge. I chose to notice these sounds as before I was fixed on my typing. I do however seem to always pick up on the train as it doesn’t pass by too often and it’s something I’ve only experienced since I started university. When I first heard it I thought it was thundering outside.
This experiment of sensual deprivation I found to be very interesting. I’ve read about people becoming or being born with blindness so they use sound to find their way around [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeFRkAYb1uk “A clip from the program ‘The Boy Who Sees Without Eyes’ about the truly amazing Ben Underwood who, having lost his eyes at an early age, uses echo location to navigate.” -screenocean via YouTube] and I was truly fascinated when feeling as though it had worked for myself. I do wonder however to what part remembering the specific visuals had to play in this, it makes me wonder more about the “visuals” that people who are blind from birth experience.
I have had somewhat bad eyesight for as long as I can remember, most likely due to them becoming to accustomed to viewing things close to me, I can see as far as my arms distance before my eyes become out of focus. This experiment has made me think about what it would mean to become blind, to which I would not truly mind overall, though I think from now on I best use them as much as I can, for as long as I can.